Visits can consist of one or more page views.

Doing some simple math, visits have increased over 10k from last December. Furthermore, in Dec. '07 the average visit consisted of 2.43 page views. So far this month, the average visit consists of 3.7 views. This doesn't count views of RSS subscriptions, as no tracking software is embedded in them.

Much of this traffic growth is undoubtedly due to the inclusion of the forum, which was only introduced in November '07. It also helps that search engines tend to index the entire site, including the forum, quite favorably.

What went online in April 2008?

That is really thrilling.
I had an interesting encounter a couple weeks ago, met a Catholic school music teacher, recent ND grad, obviously wanted to "do the right thing," had Christianized secular songs the kiddies wanted to sing for concerts, had introduced By Flowing Waters for school Masses... she wasn't happy with the usual junk being pushed by TPTB but she had never heard of CMAA, or CPDL, or The New Liturgical Movement, or the Chabanel Psalter. (I was happy to provide her with the web addys.)
Evangelization!
I'm thinking we need to.. there's a better word, but all I can think of right now is "inflitrate"... the less enlightened web-sites, groups, etc., and spread around the information they need (although they may not yet know that they need it...)

(Save the Liturgy, save the World)

G -

You've hit upon a critical point. While I thoroughly enjoy what the CMAA does, sometimes I fear that it is quite literally 'preaching to the choir'. What a shame the Colloquium this year will miss coinciding with the NPM conference by 2 weeks. Two years ago the NPM cancelled the Chant workshop for lack of registrations. They're offering it again this year, and I hope it doesn't follow the same path of obscurity

I don't want to challenge Jeffrey's assertion that CMAA is not elitist, but it might pay to mingle with the largest gaggle of music directors to assemble and remind them of another way. Perhaps all wearing hats with "We're Baaaaack" in chant notation. You're right that they may not even know that they need it. If they're under 50 they've likely never heard it in a church at all.

We can complain about poor musical decisions all day long, but unless we start reaching out and showing the way, we really aren't doing anybody a lot of good. Christ gave the example by speaking to thousands, mingling with lepers, and seeking out the sinful. Those, after all, were the ones who stood the most to gain from his message. It was the Pharisees and their ilk who stood back and said "tsk tsk".

But there are a lot of amateur musicians running church music programs out there who need to find out about the CMAA and are not getting the word. A booth at Southwest or an NPM convention would be money well spent. Go to an NPM convention and you'll see it on lots of faces--frustration. People KNOW there's got to be a dependable source for all the information and resources the CMAA provides, but they don't want to look further than the vendors. There seems to be a strange assumption that a presence at the convention guarantees some level of legitimacy.

Jeffrey, since you ask...

There is no question about it that the CMAA is a wonderfully responsive organization, particularly given the financial constraints of which you speak. But your own statement above says that 95% of your "market" has not even been reached. What's being done to change that? The membership growth means that you have 8 times as many members today as you did 3 years ago; does that mean you've gone from 10 to 80? 100 to 800? 1000 to 8000? It's a bit vague.

And while you're certainly responsive when people approach CMAA, what true *reaching out* is ongoing to take news to people who won't otherwise hear it? Does CMAA or Sacred Music have a booth or display at the NPM? Is the Parish Book of Chant available for purchase there? Have you reached out to your own membership to see how many are also NPM members or at parishes that are? Will they attend national and/or regional conferences? Do you have a "how to" booklet for people to reach out within their own dioceses to organize Chant exposures? Can board members share their successes -- and just as importantly their failures -- in spreading Chant within their own dioceses?

Let's face it: given your huge membership increase of the past three years there is a pool of resources available to you today that wasn't there at the end of 2005. Why not use it?

Dan F. - Looking at the MusicaSacra.com archives, The Parish Book of Chant was announced on April 3, 2008.

Thanks, Aristotle!

This is a good idea! We recently printed up a good quantity of brochures, which we hadn't previously had. So we can send them out to anyone who wants to distribute them. That's a great help.

When I say that we have reached only 5%, I don't mean that the other 95% are all sitting in a room somewhere. Our potential market is incredibly diffuse. The dominant part of it consist of people involved in Catholic music who have never felt the inspiration to do anything or change anything beyond what they do week to week. The existing hymnals and tools that people use have raised a generation that is woefully uneducated and strikingly passive, plodding from thing to thing with no real desire to do anything different.

One thing I did was that, since I can't afford to go to NPM convention, I went to a local chapter meeting. Usually a MD who volunteers to host the meeting at her/his church will send the info to other church musicians nearby. Most of the time they will be talking about contemporary (like Haas and Haugen styles). But I made a chance to talk about Gregorian chant and our beautiful tradition. Actually some people nodded their heads when I talk about the Gregorian chants being eternal and so is our Eucharist. I showed chant books and explain them briefly. I think CMAA brochures will be a good thing to have (and maybe Colloquium too). Eventually, if you are willing to sit and persevere to listen to the discussion of the different 'styles' of music and get to know them well, you can even offer to give a workshop to help them out to learn Gregorian chants and introduce them different sacred music, including modern sacred music.

No one person or organization can reach out to others and spread the word like we can each do in our own sphere of influence. We each meet people at our local areas, email family and friends, and connect with our own Yahoo or Google groups of friends.

By mentioning what we are doing and how much we like it, we can each be a messenger of the good news about CMAA to the larger public. I am periodically scouring the events section of CMAA and sending our messages about workshops to folks who live near one. When I was back home in the fall, I told a friend from my home parish about the colloquium and she is hoping to attend it next summer... a schola member from my last parish is now planning to attend a workshop in Sugarland after I sent him the information...

Basically, I think we each need to think of ourselves as CMAA marketers! We can be more effective (and certainly more cost-effective) than any paid group could ever be.

Jeffrey, I have been inspired. I am going to contact my local Diocesan newspaper. I hope others will, too. After all, the papers are probably LOOKING for something to print.

If someone wants to draft a letter (PDF) I will use that

I encourage everyone to submit articles, news items, and photos to his or her diocesan paper. I'm the editor of one, and I practically beg parishes to send us their music news. We get a small response near Christmas and in Lent and always publicize concerts, special Masses, and workshops when we receive the info. But too often music directors don't think of us as a publicity vehicle.

Here's what we do get: announcements about concerts being given by "contemporary" Catholic solo artists from out of town. I am very willing to publish those too, but I'd rather promote local efforts.

A couple of suggestions: Learn the editor's name before you submit. It's irritating when locals who should be receiving our paper (it is sent gratis to all registered Catholic households) address me as "Dear sir."

And if you don't get a response after a decent interval, send a (polite, not demanding) follow-up e-mail. The goal is to make friends with the editor.

Mary

Okay, this is exactly the sort of brainstorming for which I have been hoping.

Re: article for ones own diocesan paper.

There was talk on TNLM, maybe 2 years ago? about a "pamphlet campaign" a la the sort of thing done by the Oxford movement, IIRC, widely disseminated tracts aimed at teaching the basics.
Did anything come of this?

Many of us are not writers, and with all the will in the world, not learned enough to do this.

Would there be something wierd, or unethical, about those among us who have the ability, writing some basic outlines for suggested articles, which the entire membership could take and expand upon, including local facts and information, and then submit to our diocesan papers under ones own name?
Alternatively, I know Jeffrey, for instance writes for a paper on assignment, so I imagine those pieces would be off-limit, but is there any reason we could not print off various essays by JT, AOZ, Fr Rob, AE, and giving them credit submit them to our diocesan paper, or our parish bulletins? or even local secular papers?

All the big publishers push their agendae via "bulletin inserts," why not those of us whose agenda is, uh... doing what the Church says we should do?

p.s. Although I make the suggestion, our bulletin is very stingy with space, so that is not a direction i could take.

Can we insert
What does it mean for music to become sacred? by Dr. Marht?

Maybe I missed something. What do you actually want to talk about? Sacred music in general, CMAA and colloquium, or our schola?

I still think we're missing a good thing by not having a booth at the major conventions. No article in a diocesan paper can replace the opportunity to leaf through a copy of Sacred Music or The Parish Book of Chant. Have a laptop around and show people how easy it is to download the communion antiphon for x Sunday in ordinary time and you are going to have quite a crowd around your booth. The other option I see would be to get into some of the seminaries and start a relationship with the senior seminarians who will soon be priests. Hopefully they'll steer their MDs CMAA's way. But the best selling point for CMAA is the resources it produces. Gotta get those into other people's hands. I'll never forget walking past an issue of Sacred Music in my college music library. I was drawn to the incredibly beautiful sacred art on the cover. Once I opened the journal I knew I had found a pearl of great price. You just can't do that with an article in a newspaper.

Oh, and believe me, if the Wanderer held its articles as properietary, I wouldn't write for them. Please take anything and attribute them to anyone. The point is to get the ideas out.

I just pulled the Sacred Music Frequently Asked Questions publication that Jeffrey posted in the NLM site in August. There is plenty of material for a gradual Sacred Music education course for parishioners in inserts. My thought is that we could plan a series of weeks with excerpts from that publication and begin trying to increase the parishioners' knowledge level. On each insert, we should give the link to the entire document online so that they could read any parts they may have missed or just read it all at once if they wished... Even if we only added a few lines about what we are doing at the parish and then include the excerpt from the document, we would have personalized it and given lots of good information without necessarily having any real writing talent... that would be acceptable, wouldn't it?

yes, that sounds great

G: Go for it. The original post can be found here for those who are interested. Reading it again, I think it definitely could use some tweaking -- especially as it was written before the latest General Instruction of the Roman Missal.

This forum is so awesome!

Looks good, although I might mention specifically what the CMAA is trying to accomplish, such as chant and polyphony. Then again, it may be better for them to look themselves, be amazed by it, and THEN find out that we're not doing all this to further "One Bread, One Body". And I wouldn't mention the forum; it's helpful, but it's not a part of what the CMAA does. It seems to me the primary goal of the CMAA is education. Besides, if people start poking around here they'll find out we're a bunch of angry obsessive nutcases (at least myself!). From an academic perspective, it's all well and good to debate the value of publishing companies, Bach at Mass, organ accompaniment of chants and hymns, new vs. old solesmes, vox dei, etc. But somehow I suspect a diocesan newspaper wouldn't cast such discussions lightly.

At least at my local seminary, they have a full-time music director who's a MEMBER of the CMAA, as well as a long line of composers and chant directors. They have an accomplished schola and a required choir. Obviously there's much work to be done, but this particular seminary is doing great work.

I have translated the FAQ document into Spanish using the Babel fish online program. I made several corrections that I could find. However, I am not a native Spanish speaker, so there are probably many things that maybe aren't quite right that could be spotted by someone really fluent in Spanish. Would anyone be willing to take a look at the document and help with this? I can either send it directly or upload it in pdf or doc form.

Yes... I know it is very weak on many things... thus my first work at trying to correct errors and request for assistance for another set of eyes. It is funny how many seemingly simple things it gets wrong... for Mass -- it either gives me Massachusetts, or masa (instead of Misa)... similarly, for spirit, it gives alcohol! Although I have studied a fair amount of Spanish in HS and college and when I worked for GM, I really was never fluent.

I do use Babelfish occasionally to help me with letters to the German relatives... I find it makes a lot of mistakes, but it is fairly easy to correct. I often find myself searching for the vocabulary (that has left me since I don't use it daily any more)... so it is helpful. That being said... the first (edited by me) draft isn't too bad, I don't think... but I wouldn't want to disseminate it without a critique by someone who knows. At first glance, I find the translation to Spanish far superior to the translations to German I have had in the past.

Are you fluent in Spanish? Would you be able to help?

Daniel Bennett Page: "One segment of the next frontier of publicity is the vast, widely read world of diocesan newspapers"

I was just now surprised to find the following diocesan newspaper article:
http://www.catholicvoiceoakland.org/09-01-05/inthisissue2.htm
Fr Keyes, chant, etc.

Time to launch "Project Spartacus" around here. :-)