It's essentially a gussied up recording-playing machine. Go the the GIRM, among other places.

https://www.ewtn.com/library/Liturgy/zlitur59.htm

Beside , the music will be like chopping vegetable in same rhythm "chomp chomp chomp"

Sing to the Lord, Nos. 93-94:

93. Recorded music lacks the authenticity provided by a living liturgical assembly gathered for the Sacred Liturgy. While recorded music might be used advantageously outside the Liturgy as an aid in the teaching of new music, it should not, as a general norm, be used within the Liturgy.
94. Some exceptions to this principle should be noted. Recorded music may be used to accompany the community’s song during a procession outside and, when used carefully, in Masses with children. Occasionally, it might be used as an aid to prayer, for example, during long periods of silence in a communal celebration of reconciliation. However, recorded music should never become a substitute for the community’s singing.

when used carefully, in Masses with children

What an insult to children!

With respect to Noel's query, I should think that the answer should be obvious to anyone with an ounce of intuition, cultural maturity, and understanding of the sacred act, which is, more than anything else, the encounter and inter-action between the totally human and the totally divine. Recorded music is as appropriate as recorded lectionary readings, recorded homilies, recorded eucharistic prayers, and.... well, why not just stay home and listen to a recording and partake of a prepackaged sacrament mailed out weekly by the chancery. Listening or singing to recorded music in church at mass is the clueless act of a culturally dead and spiritually impoverished people - people, that is, to whom the answer is not obvious... perhaps even incomprehensible.

Occasionally, it might be used as an aid to prayer, for example, during long periods of silence in a communal celebration of reconciliation.

Sensible people would add: "However, this music MUST be the Dies Irae."

I've been subjected to continuous-music-reconciliation. The poor schlep played every hymn in the book (those that he knew, anyway) and then began again at the top. Good part: my penance was done before I got into the box.

"You can't tell, but God can."

"Your insouciance is on display".

"Try this: say 'I love you' in computer monotone"

"Should Father give Communion to a picture of you?"

There was a belief early on that this meant a prohibition on electronic musical instruments such as the Hammond Organ, but this was later clarified that electronic instruments designed to imitate the pipe organ were permissible.

This was ALSO poor judgement, and had everything to do with saving money and nothing to do with giving God our best. Down with the simulacrum!

A simulacrum (plural: simulacra from Latin: simulacrum, which means "likeness, similarity"), is a representation or imitation of a person or thing.[1] The word was first recorded in the English language in the late 16th century, used to describe a representation, such as a statue or a painting, especially of a god. By the late 19th century, it had gathered a secondary association of inferiority: an image without the substance or qualities of the original.[2] Philosopher Fredric Jameson offers photorealism as an example of artistic simulacrum, where a painting is sometimes created by copying a photograph that is itself a copy of the real.[3]... wiki

Ask them this:

Tell me, are you using a polimar based, nueral relay to transmit the organic nerve impulses to the central processors of my positronic net? If that is the case, how have you solved the problem of increased signal degradation inherent to organo-synthetic transmission-

(Question from Data to the Borg Queen, First Contact)

Good points, Andrew Malton, but none of those things is used within the Mass as part of the liturgy. To the extent that they may be or things akin to them are, it is not the prayer of the artist/lighter that plays a role in the liturgy, but the person making use of them by physical act or observation. In the same way, it would be the person pressing play who is making the liturgical act, but as shown above, a recording lacks the flexibility and real-time act of live production. That's why its use is reserved for outside of the Mass, the requirements of which are less binding.

This whole discussion reminds me of this story:

http://www.snopes.com/autos/law/handcuff.asp

Are you talking Kantor Karaoke?

If it's okay to mimic voices in realtime, what about an organ that actually sounds like a choir? You hit the "Gloria" stop on the organ and every note you play comes out as a choir singing the Gloria.

The only way that God will allow 'silicon chips' to praise him is when his own people don't. (or won't)

To whom he said: I say to you, that if these shall hold their peace, the
stones will cry out. Luke 19:40

And that ain't the rolling kind.

An organ doesn't praise God. It helps the faithful to do that. As do all the other objects we use in Mass.

Number 5 is still alive!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xPu59_MHQ0

If it were to be used only, say, in the form of a monitor speaker to help the schola to chant; or even an earbud for a cantor, I could see that as tolerable in very limited circumstances. Even in this circumstance it should be such that only the vocals are audible to the congregation, recorded music should never be "played" as part of the liturgy, but in some exigent circumstance its use to aid the singers in some minimal fashion might be forgivable.

SM, you portray perhaps the worst possible scenario of outcomes. I'm tutoring a celebrant among whose primary, initial goals was the Exultet. He asked me about your very solution, a "discreet" earphone "feeding" him the practice recording I created for him. I had to explain the ten's of things that would likely go wrong until he understood that a slight error, live and un-tethered could be overcome, whereas trying to Karaoke-lipsynch would likely result in a meltdown.
I have declared this before. There are subtle but clear distinctions between audio recordings and digital sequencing. First and foremost, unless one relents to second source sequencing, a sequence created under the guidance of the director and the player is essentially a "fingerprint" artifice. Secondly, a digital sequence can be modified. However one wants to parce the "human" factor in both those scenarios is a matter of philosophy. But, sequencing is a first generation version, recording is secondary. That their original source was a human is a given, but sequencing is not identical to recording. (Caveat, I'm not defending anything, just delineating functions.)
Despite the valid objections Jackson and others may raise, Noel's point of "ex machina" about any type of organ is quite valid. Bottom line, it is no more a human voice than any other instrument, be it oboe, violin, flute or trumpet. The defenses that focus upon simulacrum, therefore, are straw man arguments. Don't bother quoting Pio X, thanks. We're dealing in the real world, 21st century. If you hold to the stubborn philosophy, then be prepared to pay real gambists and lutenists the next time you do the Monteverdi Vespers.
OTOH, the voice (as Pio also noted) is the instrument par excellence most suited for worship of the Creator Almighty. Why? Because not only does it emit from the creature formed in His image, but it is the vehicle for the re-creation of the Logos, as well as inspired text intended for praise of Him. But as in all things, RCC, either we have the ganas to legislate a capella (as the Church of Christ, and even they've started relenting) or we stop fussing over the secondary aspects of our musical praxis, and get our vocal act together, and employ whatever accompanimental devices that minimally assist in that noble endeavor.
RC's are so prone to see trees over forest.

PS. I don't use sequencing or recording.

Male sopranos and altos, one reason why Chanticleer is so wonderful to listen to.

O Frondens Virga by Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGXXrUvNzec

Victoria - O Magnum Mysterium

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg1l65xiGkY

Nigra Sum Sed Formosa - Tomás Luis de Victoria

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTEDD-G2yOw

Lauda Sion Salvatorem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwBsQ7FMpH8

Have a cantor performing to a feed in his earbud, and pretty soon the liturgy will look like a scene from Wag the Dog.

melofluent,

I am not sure I made the point I was offering quite clearly, and I frankly don't know quite what you are exactly getting at in your response to me above, so I am just going to leave it without reply, because I don't understand in the least the technical distinctions you are making, sorry, just an amateur here.

Now your most recent post: "Just do what it takes to get the vocals right."

I do agree that lipsynching to a recording is, generally, a very bad idea, and should be avoided.

Never as the option you plan for, but perhaps a prudent choice in the moment under exigent circumstances, that is my view of technological gadgetry for liturgical use. Take for example the time the schola I was singing with arrived in the chapel for the liturgy only to discover that the piano we were counting on to give pitches (all of our singing was otherwise a capella) had been removed without anyone telling us. So, the fellow who was supposed to do that for us pulled out his iPhone and loaded an app that let him play an on screen keyboard. Certainly I would never promote the idea of using an iPhone as a liturgical instrument, but it worked in that moment.

I have wanted to use my phone for a similar purpose leading the singing for a outdoor prayer service, but I just could not bring myself to do it. Visions of technical difficulties, and my gut reaction against artificial recorded music, just wouldn't allow it. Also, it would look silly, very silly indeed. So, instead I just tried to do it from memory, and ended up high enough that even the boys present needed their falsetto range (and I am a baritone!).

If someday I should hear of a cantor, discovering the accompanist is a no-show, should load up a practice recording or some such and lipsynch, I wouldn't be able to bring myself to turn them over to the Inquisition or the civil authority on that account. I know the purists would say liturgical law must be upheld, even at the cost of an otherwise good cantor, but I just don't have the intestinal fortitude for public executions, and a burning would certainly ruin my appetite, the smell being most displeasing (doubly so if you are a fan of BBQ pork, my firefighter friends say it never tastes the same after the first time you smell cooked human).

Is there a difference between using a pitch pipe and an iPhone in a liturgical setting?

A piano in place of an organ?

A digital piano in place of an acoustic piano.

An electric guitar...

An acoustic guitar playing over an amplified sound system.

It's really more of a matter of using a tool in a way in which it was never intended.

Otherwise we'd be singing by torch light.

And incandescent is little like torch and candlelight...let's not even get into fluorescent and LED lighting.

The problem, worldwide, is not that there are not rules but that there are priests, bishops and lesser/better, who have no interest in the beauty of liturgical ceremonies...as well as lay people. The colors and fabric of vestments, the trappings of things that they can adorn themselves is more important that the liturgy. The maniples, the lace...

It's sort of like the joke about the man visiting the funeral home and standing there, viewing the body of his atheist friend, very neatly laid out in a suit.

Shaking his head he turns his head to the funeral director and says, "All dressed up, and no place to go."

'sounds like a piano (organ, etc) because it is a piano' and 'sounds like a piano but isn't one'

But Jackson, what Noel (and I) are trying to establish is that the lovely Steinway you may or may not have was preceded by a forte-piano, it a harpsichord, it a virginal, and at its genesis, some sort of harp, if not the modern chromatic version. So what is verity? The manner in which an instrument (such as the guitar's topwoods) disturbs and changes the frequency and equalization of the air by its vibrations, or the ear, which may or may not be capable nor interested in the means of vibrations, simulated or analog. As a subservient to the real human voice if edified, all things being equal, how does that diminish the affect of the import of the voice?

MJO,

Something like this? If it plays in your neighborhood, don't miss the documentary Wavemakers.

As long as we're bringing virginals into the discussion, can we at least agree to spell the singular with an s? ;-) While one hears arguments that some repertory is idiomatic to mini harpsichords, there's no doubt in my mind that our Steinway console upright is a simulacrum, perhaps even a more honest one than a unit organ.

It should be easer to draw the line at non-human performance (DId I just say 'performance'?). Nevertheless this as well as this is certainly not what the composer had in mind.

This thread has reminded me it's been an unreasonably long time since I listened to Nancarrow's Etudes for player piano. There's an interesting interview with Ligeti (Nancarrow himself mostly edited out) here (German w/ Spanish subtitles) in which he ranks the music next to Bach and late Beethoven.

For those interested, the film "Wavemakers" is available for viewing on-line for $4 through several of the big streaming services: Google Play, Amazon, Vudu, etc.

(W)e are here speaking of deception, even, often, outright lies (which is sin), not of admirable artistic accomplishment. Which leads, further, to the fundamental fact of the laws of physics, namely, that a sound electronically (or, ahem, should I say 'digitally'?) produced cannot possibly sound just 'like' one produced by vibrating strings or columns of disturbed air in a pipe. This is not physically possible. The immutable laws of physics forbid it. One is left inescapably with, if you will, a computerised (digital?) copy of the Mona Lisa which would fool the elect. With or without the necessary fools, it is a fake, and its maker a charlatan.

An extraordinary paragraph there, Jackson. I would have thought you'd've already presumed I understand the distinctions made there and other innumerable postings. Regarding the perpetration of simulacra at service to worship, are we to conclude that to be an occasion of sin, whether by omission or commission? Were you speaking figuratively or literally or somewhere in between? And as it doesn't bespeak an "admirable artistic accomplishment," is the offense against God, His Faithful or both? I'm not excoriating this notion either, words and actions mean something.
Your statement about the fake DaVinci reminds me of the film, "The Thomas Crown Affair," in which the title character goes to ridiculously extreme levels of deception just to have apparently one single night with the stolen Monet sequestered in his office. The upshot of that is that it calls into question the value of values, the purpose of art, the stratification and segregation of those whose interest in art may prove them fools or sophisticates. Is it a fool's errand to consider the Mona Lisa from within the confines of a university seminar hall, or must we all make a pilgrimage to the Louvre and parade around her cell as if we're at the Kaaba in Mecca?
I likely have exhausted the discussion. But Adam summed it all up quite succinctly with his uncertain declaration "And still not really suited to liturgy."