Want to build songs faster and keep your slides 100% consistent? In this training, Joshua shows how to use ProPresenter Arrangements to structure songs quickly, create alternate versions (like “Chorus Only”), and make global edits that update everywhere—so you can serve your church with excellence every week.
Transcript
So you’ve been using ProPresenter for a while, and you’re getting pretty good at building out your songs and your playlist, but maybe you’re wondering if there’s a faster way to build out your songs. In this video I’m going to show you how you can use the ProPresenter Arrangements feature to quickly build songs and structure your songs, and this will save you so much time. Now if you don’t want to watch the whole video, I’m going to show you quickly how it’s done.
You first want to select your song, then make sure that every element of your song is grouped appropriately, verse, chorus, bridge, etc. Then click the Arrangement tab at the top right. Then where it says Master, click the drop-down and click New Arrangement.
You can title it whatever you want to. I usually call them Default. Then you can use your building blocks at the top to build out the structure of the song.
Just drag them in, however many times you do the chorus or the bridge, and you can of course X out as well, and now your structure is set. Okay, it’s time to get better for his glory.
I’m Joshua. I’m the creator of worshipresources.church, and I help churches just like yours learn how to use ProPresenter like a pro. In this video, I’m going to show you everything you need to know about ProPresenter arrangements, and how you can use it to save time every week. So first, I want to start by adding in a new song.
I’m going to press Command F. I’m on a Mac. This is my ProPresenter library. I’m going to switch to my song select library, and I’m going to search for Holy Forever.
Here’s the song. I can make sure that that’s correct. I’m going to click Import, and now I’m going to go ahead and Import, and you can see it automatically.
Song select automatically builds in the structure with verse, chorus, verse 2, etc. But I’m going to clean this up before I start building my arrangement. So first, I’m going to add two blank slides.
I’m going to click the plus at the bottom, and then click Blank Slide, Blank Slide. Now I’m going to right-click, and I’m going to regroup this slide to be a blank slide. I don’t have a blank slide, so I’m going to click Settings, and I’m going to click the plus button here, and I’m going to add a new group, and we’re just going to call it Blank.
I like my blanks to be black. I’m going to go ahead and add one more, and then we’re going to call this Background, and we’ll make this one also black. So now I can come back to the slide, go to Group, and make that one blank, and make this one Background.
Now I’m going to move the Background up here, and I’m basically building out the basic structure of the song before I start with the arrangements. But I noticed this text is a little rough, so I’m going to clean this up a little bit. Let’s start by seeing if we can adjust the size.
So I’m going to see if 80 will change it. So 75, that’s a little bit better, but I don’t like these three lines on the text, so I’m going to click Reflow, and I’m going to break these slides up by pressing Option, Return. I’m going to take out Jesus, because I know we don’t want that on the song.
I’m going to press Option, Return. I’m going to press Return to put that on a new slide. Option, Return.
You can see I’m just cleaning up this text based on how I know the structure of the song is. All right, everything else I think looks good if I come back to show. Yeah, everything is looking good here.
Hey, before we move on, it would really help me out if you would like, comment, share, and subscribe to this channel. Also, I want to let you know that there’s a free download in the description below. This is 12 places to get free media for Pro Presenter.
I’ve looked all over the web to find the best places where churches can download media for free to use in their services, and you can get access to it right now. Visit the link in the description to get this free resource. So now it’s time to build out my arrangement.
So I’m going to click the Arrangement tab at the top where it says Master. Click the drop down, click New Arrangement, and we’ll call this Default. You can call it whatever you want to call it.
It’s totally up to you. Some churches like to call it based on who’s leading the song, or the author of the song, or the arrangement of the song, the professional arrangement. You can name it whatever you want to.
I’m going to click OK. And now I have my arrangement at the bottom, and I have my building blocks of the song, the master building blocks at the top. So now I’m just going to go through the song, and if I don’t know the song, I probably will pull it up on Spotify and listen to it so I know what the structure is.
I know the song pretty well. But one thing I notice is that this pre-chorus here is gray. And I would rather that not be gray because I use black and gray for things that aren’t specific to the song.
So I’m going to right click on that, and I’m going to go to Group. And I can see, OK, this pre-chorus, notice it doesn’t have a hyphen in it. There’s a hyphen there.
And so that’s why it did not, when it came in from CCLI, it did not automatically change to the right color. So I’m just going to change that group to pre-chorus, and now I’ve got a pink pre-chorus. So now I’m going to build out the song.
So I know it’s verse, pre-chorus, chorus. And then I know there’s an instrumental. So I’m going to put a blank slide before the second verse.
So put it before the second verse, and then sing the song forever to the lamb. We’ll sing the song forever, and amen. And then we go right to the chorus, and the angels cry.
So we’re going to go to the chorus, the second chorus. And then I know we go back to the pre-chorus. Your name is the highest.
We’re going to do the pre-chorus twice. And then we’re going to do the chorus, one and chorus two, with a tag and the blank. And so now I have my entire arrangement built just by dragging in the blocks.
Now, one of the great things about using the arrangement feature is if you notice a typo or if you need to make a change in one of your slides, that change will update in every instance of the slides. So if I come back to the pre-chorus, I can see that actually this is not set up properly because the song, your name is the highest, your name is the greatest, your name stands above them all. There’s a break there.
So I need to break that up. So I’m going to right click, and you can quick edit the slide if you want, or you can edit the slide. But I prefer that reflow editor.
So I’m going to come back to reflow, come back to the pre-chorus, and I’m going to press option shift return to add the text after the cursor to the next slide, and then option return. Because I know that’s how the slide, that’s how it needs to go. So your name is the highest, your name stands above them all, all thrones and dominions, all thrones, all powers and positions, your name stands above them all.
But notice, my change is updated in every instance of the pre-chorus, and that is the beauty of arrangements. But there’s one more tip I want to show you, and this is pretty cool. So let’s say you do the song before the sermon, and then after the sermon, the worship leader says, hey, let’s go back and do Holy Forever, but I just want to do the chorus.
Or maybe he tells you that in rehearsal, where you can quickly build out an arrangement just for the chorus without affecting your other arrangement. So if I come back to here, Holy Forever, I’m going to click new arrangement, and I’m going to call this chorus only. And now in my building blocks, I’m just going to take out the verses.
And I know he’s going to start on the pre-chorus, and then he’s going to do the chorus and the chorus and the tag. So in my playlist, I can actually add the song again. So press command F, search for Holy Forever.
There it is. I’m going to add it to the playlist, and I can have two different arrangements. I have my default arrangement before the service or during the worship, and then my chorus only arrangement after the sermon.
All right, so that’s how you use arrangements. If you have any questions, reach out to me, Joshua, at worshipresources.church. Also be sure to check out the link in the comments for that free download I mentioned earlier. Well, this video is one video in a five-part series called Five Propresenter Hacks Every Volunteer Needs to Know.
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(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)