Well, by the grace of God and my sweet husband's generosity -- he underwrote this development with his earnings from last weeks' conference -- I have a nifty new computer. Oh boy, oh boy, repeat ad infinitum.
Now, I've long been interested in the idea of podcasting. My friend The Anchoress has often recorded herself reading or singing the Daily Office, and some time last year, when I was trying to explain to someone how we have chanted our prayers here at home, it occurred to me that it would be cool to be able simply to sing them into the computer, provide a link to them, and say, "We do it like this."
So I've been messing around with things, and have managed to 1) record myself singing some chant, and 2) figure out how to upload the file to a site on the net, so that I can link to it from here.
Buyer beware. I am not a trained singer. Besides, singing to the computer makes me feel like a dork, and when I'm self-conscious, my throat just closes right up. But I gave it a try because, you know, this whole audio thing has potential beyond my inflicting my singing on an unsuspecting world, and I'm very keen to try it out.
Chant is easy to sing, and at Saint Dymphna's we tend to sing a lot of it, partly because if we don't, nobody will ever hear it or know that it's part of their heritage; and also because when your choir numbers range from six down to . . . well, sometimes zero, and very often one, you have to have something simple-yet-effective to whip out of the binder and unleash on the congregation.
Today's chant, and I really did sing this at Mass this morning, in front of real live tolerant people, is Ave Verum Corpus.
Let's see if it works . . .
5 comments:
This is great, Sally. Thanks for sticking your, er, voice out there like that. It's certainly not unpleasant to listen to. I was a music major in college (not in voice, much to the relief of all my classmates) and, I have to say, I don't particularly enjoy trained-vocalist-as-worship-leader. I think it requires a different type of training that few receive. I always feel fortunate when someone with a pleasant voice and a better sense of liturgy and worship--as you seem to have--is the one singing the psalms or leading the chant.
We pray the Divine Office "every day" which is to say, ever day when things are going well. As a reasonably musical family with children approaching the reading and singing age I'd like to do more chant for our prayers. We chant only the Magnificat and Pater Noster now. I'll look forward to hearing what you all do at home.
And, double commenting because blogger no longer e-mails replies to me unless I comment twice. Grr.
Sally, this is awesome! I am so looking forward to your podcasts!
And your voice sounds perfectly lovely to me. How nice to be able to hear you! And you are right, so much easier when you can just sing it rather than try to explain....
Thanks very much for the kind words, both of you. Susan, I'm not much of a fan of the whole worship-leader genre itself, actually, and my strong preference, especially for chant, is a light, natural voice that doesn't call a lot of attention to itself -- really it should be a number of voices singing in unison, but a solo voice singing chant really shouldn't sound like a soloist, if you know what I mean.
That said, singing lessons are something I'd really like to have someday, just for the sake of having more control and flexibility. I don't need to sound like the alto soloist in Bach's Christmas Oratorio, which we were listening to in the car today for some reason -- I love that sound, but it's not a sound I see myself making. I'd just like to sound like a better me.
Melanie -- I was thinking of that conversation about chanting the office we had sometime last year, and would like to get back to it with some demonstration, just for grins. We were on our way out the door, and I didn't have time to pull up that old post, but I'll link to it in a subsequent one. Simple hymns and chants to use as prayer with children are a great interest of mine, and we've used some nice ones over the years which I look forward to sharing.
Oh, and Susan, we've been very much in and out of the Divine Office. We pray it after Daily Mass at church, so have tended lately to let it slide at home, in favor of the rosary and other things. I would like to get back into the rhythm of praying Night Prayer, at least, on a regular basis.
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