Challenges with recording projects
  • TheUbiquitous
    Posts: 70
    I'm feeling inspired to sing the Gospels, and record it for download. However, I haven't done this sort of thing before.

    1. What would the cost, in time and money, for a professional-level recording?
    2. What are the other challenges?

    (The Gospels work out to about 65,000 words, and when sung you might want to figure about 100 words per minute rather than the customary 120. To skip the number crunching for a moment, the final product would be anywhere from 9 to 11 hours of audio.)
  • melofluentmelofluent
    Posts: 4,160
    With malice towards none.....
    TU, consider-
    1. In some cases, only $100 or so for a Zoom or similar digital recorder ( you can find a resonant space, uh, like church for ambience.) Answer to your actual cost question: an arm and a leg, one kidney, billions of brain cells and chiropractic for a taut spine, and hopefully not your heart.
    2. The utter realities:
    a. Your chanting will be in your comfort zone (fach) and "key." Not all celebrants will be able to mimic your key and range.
    b. Not all celebrants will likely devote the substantial time it would require, should they be true neophyte chanters to pressing go, stop, rewind, go, stop etc., on gospel passages that run the gamut of length.
    c. Such a project is not really analogous to the demos of J. Ostrowski and M. Curtis. It's one thing to master a three or four line proper antiphon by imitation and modeling, But a four or five paragraph gospel? Like the Prodigal SonFather in Lent? Quite another thing.
    d. Should you see this through, which I encourage you to do if your inspriration holds fast and true, you might provide the insight to a few priests that the pointing of the texts of gospel and other lessons is both codified and intuitive. That's a plus.
    e. If the pitch-intimidated celebrant wants to chant the lesson, give him Matt Meloche's email address.
    f. Re-tool your project to show the priest how to fish, aka how to point (make visual notations on the texts) with a few demonstration examples.

    All I got.
    Thanked by 2CHGiffen TheUbiquitous
  • TheUbiquitous
    Posts: 70
    Thank you, Mr. Fluent!

    I was actually thinking just singing the Gospels straight through, from the genealogies right through to the Ascension, and not with the intention of modeling how to sing the Gospels during divine liturgy.

    At the risk of re-inventing the wheel, I was thinking using a variety of different tones, as with the Passion, but more tones than the Passion uses.

    Baritone
    a. Narration.
    b. OT citation.
    Tenor
    c. Jesus.
    d. Jesus w/OT citation.
    Baritone
    e. Angels, apostles, and saints.
    Bass
    f. Scribes, Pharisees, Herod, and devils.
    g. Scribes, Pharisees, and devils, with OT citation.

    1. Do old tones made for Latin work in English?
    2. Are there standard English tones?
    3. Churches in my area aren't made well acoustically. If I could steal a sound-proofed room, would that work?
  • TheUbiquitous
    Posts: 70
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4M56qx55jJI
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,215
    Tones made for Latin have to be adapted for English, as English phrases often end on a stressed syllable, an occurrence rather uncommon in Latin.

    The Roman Missal Third Edition (in English) includes a set of tones based on the Latin tones. They're not mandatory, but since the bishops' conference approved them, they're officially supported.
    Thanked by 1TheUbiquitous
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,215
    I guess you have to decide up front how you would like these recordings used. If you'd like them used as training material by priests and deacons, they need to follow the current Lectionary text, and they should probably use the tones provided by ICEL in the Missal.

    If they're for personal devotional listening, you can be more creative about the voicing as you have suggested.

    If you want to make videos rather than just audio files, and they're for training, it would be good to make a video overlay of the score scrolling -- comparable to the music practice videos made by CCWatershed.

    If they're for devotional use, then a scrolling text would be sufficient.

    --
    For audio advice: there may be web sites with tips about equipment for people getting into podcasting. Maybe the Catholic podcast network SPQN would know where to look.
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