iPhone Apps for Chant?

bgeorge77

So the only iPhone chant app out there is the Liber Pro, a iPhone version of the Liber Usualis.

What other types of applications would people like to see for iPhone and iPod Touch?

What would you as students, teachers, directors of chant like to see?

Steve Collins

How about chant ring-tones - for those people who cannot go anywhere without their cellphone, and who also cannot remember to turn them OFF?

Jeffrey Tucker

I need to contact the LiberPro guy about getting one for us shabby OF people.

Adam Bartlett

I can tell you what I want, and I've wanted for a while, and have even set out to create myself but am limited by my lack of geekiness and funding:

I want an entire open source, creative commons music library, liturgically organized on the Apple Tablet, which is supposed to be announced on Wednesday.

Any developers want to go in on it with me?

Steve Collins

This request is not so much for iPhone apps, but just plain database. We are in a period now between Epiphany and Lent where the Propers between the EF and OF do not match at all. Last Sunday had a Communio that was not even in the LU, therefore it was not in the NOH. So I chanted it without organ accompaniment. (Yes, I can and will do that, even though I prefer it with the organ. I even got compliments!) So, I'd like to see a database that shows either where the Propers came from, or (especially) if a Proper in the '74 GR is taken from an earlier Proper melody with different text, or both.

bgeorge77

Adam, are you maybe talking about something like the musicfortheliturgy.org website?

francis

and to add to Steve's idea, during Mass their ringtone would automaticaly download and play this...

Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa. John Doe, the owner of this cell phone doesn't understand the sacredness of the Mass and therefore didn't bother to turn me off!

Adam Bartlett

"Adam, are you maybe talking about something like the musicfortheliturgy.org website?"

Well, the goal is similar, but really what I'm talking about deals with interface. Jeff's sites are nice but doing this kind of work in old fashioned html has got to be an incredible amount of work, and it is very very difficult to maintain and update--more manual labor than most of us can offer! To echo Steve, yes, it is a database, but how the database is managed is the real key, it seems. For example, I have been talking with some people who have imagined a database backend that, through the use of scripts, can pull metadata from the header of a file (music score), analyze it and lay the file out wherever it needs to go on the front end. Therefore if a proper is in different places in the EF and OF calendar there is no problem--the front end is built out once and uploaded content, if "tagged" properly, will go wherever it needs to go. The real advantage of the iPad form factor is that the interface replaces paper. One can sing or play right from it and have an entirely liturgically organized library of public domain or creative commons sacred music right at their fingertips.

francis

Adam:

Are you also interested in supporting plainsong chant? If so, Vespers in English would be invaluable.

Adam Bartlett

Francis--If you're referring to Fr. Columba's work at the Sacred Music Project the answer is yes, but this will have to wait until the new ICEL translation is finished. I'm told that this is the next item on the agenda after the Roman Missal is complete. He has a complete office in use at St. Meinrad but if differs from the current English "Roman Office."

francis

Adam:

No, that is the Mass. I am looking for the sung LOTH.

Adam Bartlett

Sorry Francis, I should have been more clear:

The answer is yes, but this will have to wait until the new ICEL translation [of the Liturgy of the Hours] is finished. I'm told that this is the next item on the agenda [of the USCCB and ICEL] after the Roman Missal is complete.

francis

hmmmm. until then i am using the mundelein unless you have any other recommendations. I have looked at ebreviary and universalis, but it takes a lot of work to make their offerings singable.

Adam Bartlett

I second your "hmmmm"! I also use the Mundelein Psalter for my own praying of the office for now. The other thought I had was to get the antiphons that Steven van Roode is typesetting (these are from the Ordo Cantus Officii) and use them as a supplement to the MP (although psalm tones would have to match antiphons in this scenario). It seems that the MP is about the best we're going to have until the new LOTH translation is promulgated.

Ragueneau

Just FYI:

Jeff's sites are nice but doing this kind of work in old fashioned html has got to be an incredible amount of work, and it is very very difficult to maintain and update--more manual labor than most of us can offer!

Here are some examples of sites from musicfortheliturgy.org that are NOT in html:

Chabanel Psalms (all feasts, as of a few months ago) ---- JoguesChant.org ---- GoupilChant.org

bgeorge77

Hey Adam, I develop iPhone and iPad apps.

Email me. bgeorge77 at gmail

Adam Bartlett

@bgeorge--Email sent. If you don't get it for some reason my email address is in my forum account.

Jeffrey Tucker

We really need the Liber Pro for Gregorian Missal

Pes

If we get LiberPro for the Greg Missal, would that app be portable to the iPad?

Adam Bartlett

Re: "Gregorian Missal Pro"

Yes, absolutely... but this is just entry level. Dream big everyone! Do you see the paradigm shift here? Hyphothesis: iPad = disruptive technology. There is so much opportunity here!

Aristotle Esguerra

Okay, I'll bite. I'll limit myself just to the Latin options:

Liber Pro — Ordinary Form Edition.

For Mass:
- Everything in the Gregorian Missal
- Possible additional Introit verses
- Everything in the Chants Abreges, keyed to the OF calendar
- Everything in the Offertoriale Triplex and Richard Rice's psalm-tone reductions
- Everything in Communio

For the Liturgy of the Hours:
- Every chant needed to celebrate the sung OF Divine Office

Multimedia:
- Didactic MP3s for both bass and treble voices in the most accessible vocal ranges, divisible by phrase (meaning: double-tap on a phrase of a chant, the program will play back the phrase in question)

Pes

Here's a dream:

- An object database of every chant and choral piece conceivable
- Organizing presentation would be "the liturgical day," so everything would be included, from the Office to the Mass
- Users select items according to chosen calendar
- You have choice of neumes or modern notation (toggled)
- Data contains musical content, so as you run your finger over whatever symbol, music plays
- You can tap buttons to select transposition and tempo
- Of course you could zoom, see the entire page at a click, etc.

In short, the entire chant and choral repertoire online, for instant use on etablets. Servers would be robust to handle the load.

Jeffrey Tucker

Ok, I will add Bruce Ford's American Gradual
Fr. Kelly chant
Anglican Use

chonak

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I don't see how this would be so useful. Most of us are used to writing on sheet music.

renegadetrad

Someone needs to get on this database. If this GABC format contains all possible info, then use that. You should be able to "subtract" stuff like the rhythmic signs automatically though, for people who prefer another interpretation, and ideally there'd be a way to include 'triplex' neumes in this info, and log a variety of translations (English, German, etc) right in the raw data so people can deploy it in a variety of ways. Start with the entire repertoire for the novus ordo and for 1961 (Graduale, Antiphonale, Nocturnale) and then supplement with other like the most recent reconstructions, and the "Medici" editions (from the late 19th century; has anyone scanned and uploaded these yet?). Then CROSS-REFERENCE various versions of the same chant. Make the database searchable and organizable in several ways including by various calendar versions old and new (divinumofficium/sanctamissa has an automatic algorithm for finding the propers based on various year-versions of the EF rubrics, for example).

Then people could use this raw data however. I'd imagine an app like divinumofficium/sanctamissa except with full gregorian propers appearing (with options you can pick; rhythmic signs, triplex neumes, which version of the chant, translation into some vernacular, etc). You should be able to play the whole chant or phrases or words in midi.

Getting more pipe-dreamish, someday a choir [ideally of canons] would, over a few years, prepare a library singing the whole repertoire in its various variations, and you could then play these with the chant in whole or by word or phrase.

Whole digital musical missals and breviaries (notation and sound files) with various options regarding both regarding liturgical edition and regarding formatting the text and notation on a page (for people who need to cull stuff for their own booklets, etc). That's what I think needs to be worked towards.

Besides the recordings of real chanting, everything else in terms of an app or program like this could be easy if a database existed that included all the raw info (or was flexible enough to allow people to collaboratively enter it) and if something like the illuminate program could be used for the typesetting and reading the notes into midi.

Richard Mix

Something like the index desired by Steve Collins has been begun at CPDL: here's the page for http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Category:Ordinary_Time_30 which is linked from http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Ordinary_Time

The embedded url button seems to be broken here, at least for the time being...

Andrew Hinkley

I started a database for my GABCs. If anyone wants to help, be my guest! It's really a matter of copy&paste from the GABCs I've created. My GABCs can be found here:
Graduale
and Liber Antiphons (first drafts)

Here's the database

Adam Wood

we must all lrn2github

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