The Ausbund contains no notation. It never has. Each hymn carries an instruction naming the tune it goes to, usually by quoting the opening words of another song, and the tunes themselves have been carried entirely by ear since the sixteenth century. What that oral transmission has done to them is the most striking thing about Amish singing: the melodies have slowed down so far that the original tunes are barely recoverable inside them. A single syllable may be spread across four or five notes, and a hymn of a dozen stanzas can take most of an hour.
The singing is unaccompanied, in unison, and without harmony. There is no instrument, no choir and no director. A Vorsinger, a lay man of the congregation, sings the first syllables of each line alone and the congregation comes in behind him, so the pace is set line by line rather than beat by beat. Nobody conducts, and there is no attempt at the blend a trained choir aims for.
One hymn holds a fixed place. The second hymn of every Amish worship service is always the same, and it is known simply as the Loblied, the hymn of praise. Because it is invariable, it is the piece an outsider is most likely to hear and the one Amish children learn first. The rest of the service's singing is chosen, but that slot is not, and its constancy across settlements that otherwise differ in dress, technology and church discipline is one of the things that makes the Amish recognisable to one another.