OCP publishes CDs each year with all of the psalms and gospel acclamations from Respond and Acclaim and it's Spanish equivalent.

GIA has CDs available for the whole Guimont Psalter. They also have recordings for their Lyric Psalter, Cry Out with Joy Psalter and Lead me Guide Me Psalter,

I seem to remember that the OCP recording of Respond and Acclaim only records one or two verses for each. GIA advertises that the Guimont recording is of each psalm in its entirety. For the Lyric Psalter, the recordings are also complete, and for Cry Out With Joy, just one or two verses.

Having suffered through a CD project at my last parish, I imagine it can be quite an undertaking to record an entire psalter. I'd say it's not too bad that GIA has done it at least 4 times, and OCP does it each year. That sounds like a nightmare to me. With the right OneLicense license, you'd be able to copy the recordings for your cantors. In my previous parish, we made our own recordings—having secured permissions from the relevant publishers. I don't blame them for not putting them on YouTube. YouTube can be challenging for publishers to recoup their expenses—though it's worth noting that OCP has hundreds of tracks from it's recordings of some of it's hymnals available there.

Marc

You mean no one else just makes something up at the last minute?????

Some people volunteer to be cantors
then listen to youtube for hours each week to get ready.

Then there are people who just wing it...

There are some singers who glory in the fact that they don't know how to read music... as if it is a virtue or an indicator of something special. I, too, have often wondered how people can avoid making the connection with learning to read and then reading.

In defense of those who don't read music or read it well, with the right encouragement from a choir director, most people will try and then they will improve. We began a small choir with 20 singers. Of those 20 some are barely able to carry a tune and 18 do not really read music. My husband uses warm ups to teach a little about reading music each week and just immersion in pretending you can read music helps it to happen. In a small parish, you "take what ya got" and work with it.

People usually learn to read as children when they are expected to by everyone around them. Learning to read music is barely taught in schools anymore. My children went through 9 years of Catholic grammar school and rarely were exposed to proper music education. Band, for which we paid extra $, is where my boys learned to read music and music history and appreciation they learned from us. The Catholic high school music programs were much better but Catholic high school costs much more than community college!

I'm going to be the old fogey I am, and simply posit that any soul that needs to "study" R&A settings (and heck why not for AOZ/JMO Psalters as well?) via recorded example perhaps ought not to be in a leadership role as a Psalmist. Such presented inability can surely be remedied by earnest study of basic music literacy, but whatever unwillingness to "go there" doesn't bespeak a fundamental responsibility to both correctly interpret and to lead others in a humble, but profoundly confident way. Flame ye on, if ye must.

There are excellent musicians that are better than I that do not read well, but simply need to be "primed" with audio to take off on their own. I am interested in the final product. I don't care if someone learned it by accompanying themselves or learning by ear. To those that are just wading into chant, it is the chanted rhythm that they struggle with; in my experience, the newbies either rush through the verses or slowing chants in a tight, almost robotic voice. Learning the natural rhythm of the chant verse comes through hearing. Surely you recognize that chant has been passed down orally through the years. Learning from me (who does not have time to work with individuals each week) or a video is very appropriate for chant.

"Perhaps your director can do that so you know you are practicing what she/he expects to hear."

Well, I AM the director so I certainly sing it the way I expect to hear it with rare exceptions. : )

For many reasons, I am stuck with the cantors I have, some of whom need more regular help with learning notes than I can provide (I'm hourly part-time). My preference would certainly be to have cantors who read music and can show up and sing it, but we don't always get what we want and have to work with what we have. I've set up a password-protected website for musicians at the parish, and actually just ended up recording and singing the psalms myself to my iPhone voice record function and posting them that way. Not the best quality, but it does the job. I'll definitely look into the recordings suggested for the future, though.