I find chant difficult. I'm a good pianist (classically trained, but I play all kinds of music), and I'm learning the organ.

Perhaps because I'm not 3 years old, but 55 years old, I don't have much ability to sing by ear. I have to read the actual music. I have a hard time singing the Psalm in the OF Mass--the cantor can sing it perfectly, but I can't remember what he/she just sang! (I also can't memorize piano music or any kind of song lyrics, and never have been able to do so--it's the main reason I didn't go into music as a full-time career.)

Neumes are hard for me to follow, and even if they are modernized, I find the intervals tricky. I think this is because my "Western brain" demands a regular melody and rhythm, and I find it very difficult to sing or listen to random notes.

I also find chant difficult because of the type of singing voice required to make it sound tolerable. There is nothing more ugly than chant sung in a nasal voice, or a chest voice, or in a "pop" voice--that's the worst. It needs to be sung in that ethereal head voice, but so many of us have a hard time doing that, so the chant comes across like cats or squeaky gears grinding. I try to sing in head voice, but when I'm trying to get the neumes, I tend to forget to use proper singing technique.

I don't like Latin much, because I don't understand it. Our missallettes include several chants that are sung during Benediction. Last week, my husband pointed out that the "English translations" next to the Latin versions of these chants are NOT translations at all, but merely English alternative words. He said that unless he can have the REAL translation of the Latin, he would prefer NOT to sing these chants, because he has no idea what he's actually saying. That made sense to me. I can't understand why the publishing companies do this--if they're going to publish Latin, they should print the EXACT TRANSLATION next to the Latin! Make sense?

Finally, I have a hard time with chant because I don't find it particularly pretty. It's simply too random for me, too meandering, and I have enough randomness and wandering around in my life that I prefer most of my music to have a nice melody. Even John Rutter's "irregular" rhythms have a discernible pattern. But chant doesn't.

Those who love chant tend to think that everyone else will love chant, too. (That's the way it is with all musical styles--we always assume that others will love what we love.) But I'm guessing that quite a few people feel the same way I do about chant. Yes, they don't mind singing a chant during the Mass, or listening to a chant during Mass. But I think that a steady diet of it with no other music styles would be unpleasant for many people.

Although I realize that some Catholics, especially those on ===, do not like or appreciate contemporary Christian music, like it or not, tens of thousands of Christians flock to the Protestant megachurches that feature good professionally-done contemporary music, while the Catholic parishes that feature chant do not attract tens of thousands of music lovers. That's reality in 2012, like it or not.