Though not Moleskine, at least as I understand the term, years ago we were required to buy 4-line staff notebooks in Theodore Marier's chant class at CUA. The notebooks were very useful for written exercises - particularly for learning the various kinds of neumes.

But to be honest, I never used or referred to the notebooks again.

Can you click on that link to see if it works? (Hint.)

That booklet that Noel put together is paperback, and not on journal-style paper.
This is how it is when you do print-on-demand things.

But I got some quotes from manufacturers a while ago on nice, journal-style books.

Here is what Moleskine has for conventional 5-line music:

http://www.moleskine.com/en/collections/model/product/music-notebook-lar-1


I am just wondering if anyone thinks that a similar product in a four-line version would be helpful to anyone. Or what about spiral bound, like those cheapo music notebooks we all got for undergrad theory?

This is very interesting. At our children's schola chant lesson today, I was thinking how extremely handy it would be to have a four-line notebook for the children to copy the neumes from the board and to do assignments. Please count me in if you ever get these made!

Perhaps it'd be better not to have something as 'permanent' as you are describing, Adam--perhaps something like the spiral-bound Archives MS books might be better?

I took the same class with Dr Marier that Randolph Nichols did. Marier's comment that really stuck with me: When you are learning to read, you learn to write at the same time. You just do.

Every day's homework included copying out a chant from the Kyriale that we had worked on in class. (We used felt-tip, squared-off calligraphy pens). There were also times in class when we just wrote lines of DO clefs, FA clefs, podatus, clivis, etc. Just like in first grade (I was 40 at the time). It was a bit of a chore, but after the fact, I'm glad to have done it.

It would be an important part of a class, and especially beneficial for children, I think.
(Randolph, it looks like you're in for more snow--thinking warm thoughts--here in DC it's 22 degrees right now!)

Thanks for this, Noel. This looks great, and thanks for the tip about the markers, David S.!

Since I'm left handed, I really don't like the spiral bound notebooks.

I have unlined Clairfontaine paper that I print chant lines upon. I bought the paper in France. I also use an old Parker Vacumatic fountain pen that has a stub nib. Makes great chant notation. I actually prefer doing that and making copies rather than doing it on the computer. Call me a Luddite but it is more satisfying.

And I too took a class from Dr. Marier and was asked to copy neumes. Not fun at the time but now I know them reasonably well.