SEP is usable at any English Mass.

I would start with the communion antiphon before the hymn.

Don't forget, you can also sing without verses, so the introit and offertory could also be used right before or after the hymn easily.

I believe all the translations of the propers out right now are from the New American Bible. Canadian Catholic churches use the NRSVCE. That being said, these aren't the "readings." Singing the propers is a good idea even if the translation is not perfect.

For the weekday Masses I sing the proper as found in one of the daily Missals (for example "Living with Christ.") and use one of the Gregorian tones.

I would opine that although the communion seems to be commonly considered the one to start with, on account of its being supposedly the easiest, the introit is a better candidate for the most important, as it is more prominent, sort of like a "figurehead" on a ship: it is the chant that marks / distinguishes the Mass, e.g. Requiem, Laetare, Gaudete, Rorate, Puer natus.

At any rate, this is my experience from the TLM; for better or worse, we started with the introit when we started moving beyond Rossini.

I wonder though if there is also something about having the introit in place which begs for the rest of the chants to be added and makes it easier to take more steps in that direction.

We started singing all three simultaneously. The refrain from the SEP usually takes all of 20 seconds to sing. Our priest insisted on this when he arrived at our parish.

My priest probably doesn't know the difference between Veni Creator and an introit. I would be allowed to use Ubi Caritas as the introit.

Anyways, I will talk and see what happens.

Ben: quite right. I was thinking of Rice's book.

Fact remains though that when the Gradual agrees with the Missal, for an introit or for a communion, the SEP does not use the current liturgical translation (nor, as you rightly point out, the older one). This happens what half the time for the introits, rather less for the communions.

Which is another good reason to use Fr Weber, because he takes his texts from the Missal.

It might be easier for our choir to sing the Simple Choral Gradual in unison with organ, but we will see...

I will take your ideas, I will try to see if we can start with the Communion antiphon, then I will try to start the offertory antiphon, then slowly progress to the Introit. I am hoping my fellow choir members agree, just for one of the 3 masses per weekend...

It might be easier for our choir to sing the Simple Choral Gradual in unison with organ, but we will see...

I would lobby against this approach. The formulae Richard uses are extremely accessible to the smallest of ensembles (1 per part e'en) and could even be trimmed to SAT if the organ is used.
The whole point of using (quasi Orthodox) homophony is to create a whole cloth sonority. We've been using them for Communion only (Introit/Offertories feature SEP/AG/Weber/Kelly and soon, Ainslie) for seven years now. We sight sing them on Sundays. After some length of usage a choir can graduate up to Rice's wonderful Choral Communio collection.

if you are going to sing English chant, Ford's American Gradual is by far the best musical choice, hands down.

My Tuppence --

If you start with the Communion Antiphon, you can expand from there into areas which are usually considered "congregational time". If you start with the Introit, it might live side-by-side with a hymn in perpetuity.

Just a quick note about the Hymn Tune Introits.

I agree with what has been said above, that the Communion antiphon is the first and easiest Proper chant to introduce in parishes. It's so easy, in fact, that it can almost slip by unnoticed by any potential nay-sayers.

The introit, on the other hand, is more difficult. Usually textually longer than the Communio, it sets the tone for the entire Mass. I don't usually have a problem with singing a hymn of praise at the entrance of the ministers, but that does not set the same tone for the Mass as the introit text.

Since it's hard for many congregations to accept anything other than a hymn at the entrance, at least at first, the Hymn Tune Introits meet people halfway, using the hymn form, and familiar tunes, but with the Proper text. Of course the text is rearranged for rhyme and meter, but a major concern of my editors and me was to keep as much of the original language and sentiment as possible.

Ordering information, and sample pages, are available on the WLP website.

That's how we do it, Charles. Works well for us.

we often do a hymn and then Latin or English proper during incensation

I second (third, fourth) the Communion Antiphon as the first thing, unless...
If you are already doing a choir-only piece at the Offertory, there's no reason you couldn't do a simple choral setting of the Offertory.

Also, I recommend the Lumen Christi Simple Gradual over the Simple English Propers. The translations are better (more in line with ICEL's MR3 translations) and the music is more interesting (without being any harder to sing). To use a software term, I consider SEP has been deprecated in favor of LCSG. (Or: SEP was the beta release of what became the LCSG.)

just a bit more difficult because they aren't compiled into one

I don't understand this. The LCSG is a single book.

We started propers by singing Richard Rice's Communion antiphons. Then about a year later our parish purchased the Lumen Christi series, and so we replaced the Rice with the LC Communion Antiphon. This was during Advent 2014. Then, beginning with Lent 2015, we introduced the Introit by saying that for Lent, we were not going to do a hymn but would sing the Introit (exclusively). Once Lent was over, we added the hymn back, and most of the time we do the Introit (antiphon-verse-antiphon) while Father and the servers stand at the door ready to process, and as we finish, they begin walking out and then we do our regular hymn.

Since then, a few things have happened: this past Advent, we used the Latin for both the Introit and Communion - We did a psalm-toned Introit and the full Communio from the Graduale.

Then, Father had this idea that since people were to have been exposed to the Latin for four weeks, he decided to make his Midnight Christmas Mass an Extraordinary Form Mass. So that was amazing. We did all of the full propers and a few wonderful choral pieces. After Christmas, we went back to English for antiphons.

This year we did the same thing as last year for Lent - i.e., no hymn, just the Introit for entrance - except we used Latin psalm-tones again, and we also went back to using the full Latin Communion proper.

Now, it seems to be our "thing" to always do the Full Latin Communion proper, which, because of that, makes Communion easily my "favorite" part of our OF Sunday "High" Mass. I wish there was a way we could just scrap the entrance hymn...particularly because Father's procession is never very long and so there really isn't time to do both, unless he decides to use incense. But oh well.

In terms of adding any other propers, well, we flirted with doing the Offertory Antiphon for Easter Sunday (psalm-toned, Latin) before doing our regular hymn, but it didn't happen. I'm hoping that in the near future we can start to do a proper Offertory. The problem with the Offertory is that (again, unless he uses incense), along with the fact that the OF Offertory prayers are a fewer/shorter than the EF ones, our priest barrels through it...haha and so Offertory is always very short. So it would be hard for us to do both an antiphon and a hymn. To which I would personally say "great, then let's just do the proper and say to heck with the hymn" :) I think hymns are fine but frankly, I think hymns are proper to the Divine Office, not the Mass, so I'd always be in favor of ditching hymns at Mass! In favor of one or more of these three things: a) Firstly, the Proper; b) polyphonic/choral piece; or, something which might possibly be overlooked by a lot of music directors, c) silence. I'm not one of those that thinks there always has to be music going on at a High Mass. I recently made a visit to a certain Benedictine monastery (which celebrates the EF only) which, for their conventual/sung Mass, sung only the Propers and the Ordinary - no organ (other than accompaniment of the Kyrie/Gloria/Agnus Dei/Sanctus), no choral music, nothing - just the chants of the Mass. And it was wonderful!

In terms of Graduals/Tracts and Alleluias, I definitely don't see those happening anytime soon at our parish (unfortunately). It would be interesting, though, to use the full chants at one Mass just to see what people think. Doing the full chants would require a competent schola. I am competent by myself but I don't think the average OF crowd would appreciate a solo chant in place of the Responsorial Psalm or the Alleluia!

During Advent and Lent, our children's schola used the Graduale Simplex, followed by the Choral Graduale Simplex as a translation with similar melody. During other times we used SEP. We only did the Offertory and Communion, as we encountered the same problem everyone else does: replacing the Entrance Hymn with the Introit would be "too much of a shock" for the congregation and would probably result in lots of people questioning the practice in front of the pastor, or saying something to the principal, neither of which would have an answer at all for them, and neither of which understand the importance of singing the propers in the first place. Ignorance would win out in the end, and as usual, no one would listen to the expert in the matter.

@CharlesSA Wow, Father did Extraordinary form mass at midnight for Christmas? Never would that happen around my area! You are so lucky!

On a side note, I've always objected to the term "gathering hymn," since that particular part of the Mass is more appropriately a processional: Christ entering the altar of God. To me, it would be more appropriate to treat it as a processional event, not a gathering event. Again, just a side note, not really related to the original topic.

Or...use a more forgiving method.

Well I talked to my director, and he said he didn't like the idea of propers at all. This is coming from someone from St. Michael's Choir School, and their Senior choir sings the propers at masses.

Don't really know what to think about it but I will keep trying to persuade him.

I love a festive hymn as much as the next person, but in theory, I would think that the Gloria should be the apex of the Introductory Rites, and that doing a festive entrance hymn AND a festive Gloria induce liturgical burnout! In people's experience, is a chanted choral Introit more accepted when coupled with a festive metrical congregational Gloria?

I think a chant Gloria can be really festive, too: just listen to Notre Dame de Paris sometime!

doing a festive entrance hymn AND a festive Gloria induce liturgical burnout!

This was common wisdom back in the 70s--with the result that the Gloria was often said rather than sung, or even in some places omitted.

This makes the case for both propers and the pre-1967 form of Sung Mass.