Dear friends,
One of the biggest drawbacks of our music website at http://www.stanthonysmonastery.org/music/Index.html is that there are almost no recordings of the hymns being chanted by a real human voice. Several people have suggested that instead of those "Hear" links (that open a Finale file that enables you to hear how the hymns would sound played on a keyboard) I should replace them with mp3 recordings of myself chanting the hymns. But an awareness of the many imperfections in my chanting and primarily my lack of free time have prevented me from doing this.
So I wanted to ask all of you if some of you would be willing to record yourselves chanting those hymns so that I could add those recordings to our website. Since there are several thousand pages of music, I don't expect every single hymn to be recorded. I have already found a few volunteers, but we need several more to cover at least the most commonly used hymns.
If anyone is interested in helping out with by recording even only a few hymns, please respond to this message, or contact me privately. We won't be able to pay you for your work, but I am sure you will receive an abundant reward from God for the many people you will be helping to learn traditional Byzantine chant. (More than 2,000 unique visitors from all over the world come to our music website every month.) I will gladly add the names of volunteers to our acknowledgments page, unless of course they prefer to remain anonymous.
I also wanted to mention that we will also accept live recordings of hymns for posting in our website, as long as there aren't any serious mistakes made and as long as any background noises aren't too distracting. Hopefully this will enable some of you to contribute more sound files, since it won't require spending extra time to record them if you were already going to chant them in church.
Thank you very much.
in Christ,
+Fr. Ephraim
One of the biggest drawbacks of our music website at http://www.stanthonysmonastery.org/music/Index.html is that there are almost no recordings of the hymns being chanted by a real human voice. Several people have suggested that instead of those "Hear" links (that open a Finale file that enables you to hear how the hymns would sound played on a keyboard) I should replace them with mp3 recordings of myself chanting the hymns. But an awareness of the many imperfections in my chanting and primarily my lack of free time have prevented me from doing this.
So I wanted to ask all of you if some of you would be willing to record yourselves chanting those hymns so that I could add those recordings to our website. Since there are several thousand pages of music, I don't expect every single hymn to be recorded. I have already found a few volunteers, but we need several more to cover at least the most commonly used hymns.
If anyone is interested in helping out with by recording even only a few hymns, please respond to this message, or contact me privately. We won't be able to pay you for your work, but I am sure you will receive an abundant reward from God for the many people you will be helping to learn traditional Byzantine chant. (More than 2,000 unique visitors from all over the world come to our music website every month.) I will gladly add the names of volunteers to our acknowledgments page, unless of course they prefer to remain anonymous.
I also wanted to mention that we will also accept live recordings of hymns for posting in our website, as long as there aren't any serious mistakes made and as long as any background noises aren't too distracting. Hopefully this will enable some of you to contribute more sound files, since it won't require spending extra time to record them if you were already going to chant them in church.
Thank you very much.
in Christ,
+Fr. Ephraim