Be the first in your parish to own one!

  • hymns8tones_cover.jpgLike a lot of churches, our church is always look­ing for a fundraiser. So we’ve put together a CD of some favorite Ortho­dox hymns, and I’m shame­lessly hawk­ing it on my blog. Yes, I am exploit­ing the hal­lowed spaces of the Ortho-blogosphere to sell wares, and I promise to feel really bad about that at some point.

    But for right now, I can give you three com­pletely objec­tive rea­sons why you con­sider pur­chas­ing this fine item.

    .

    1. It came out really neat. Okay, that may not sound very objec­tive, but I couldn’t help myself. We’re a small choir and we have our good and bad days, but we also had the ines­timable help of a cer­tain god­son who actu­ally knows about record­ing and stuff. (I know. Very un-Orthodox.) And so we were able to do a few tricks.

      Give a lis­ten for exam­ple, to this, “The Great Prokeimenon” in tone 7 (which is mis-labeled as are the other mp3s here. Sorry … technology-challenged):

      Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

      Ready for the fun part? All of the singers are me. Using Nicode­mus’ fab­u­lous multi-track recorder, I could record this dealie once and then go hunt­ing about for inter­est­ing har­monies. That was SO fun. (I’ll deal with the trou­ble­some nar­cis­sism over Lent.)

      Con­sider also Nicode­mus “Lord, I Have Cried” in Tone 1. (I think it’s Tone 1. Sorry again … too lazy to go find the music and check.)

      Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

      Same trick — he is doing the chant and both the isons. Isn’t that cool? (This is a lit­tle abbre­vi­ated, just to keep the file size down, but we all know the words, right?)
      .
      And lest you think that the choir direc­tor and her god­son hogged all the good stuff, here’s our choir doing the “Tropar­ion of the Res­ur­rec­tion” in tone 3.

      Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

      The other Magic of Tech­nol­ogy is that the catacomb-like ambiance was added later. We recorded this in our rec­tory, which has low ceil­ings — the lovely echoes (and, inci­den­tally, the isons) were added by Nicode­mus.
      .

    2. Good cause AND a lim­ited time offer. Our lit­tle church has a golden oppor­tu­nity. We’ve got some­one who will match any funds gen­er­ated for our build­ing fund until March 31. I’m going to repeat that, because I could hardly believe it myself. »We’ve got an anony­mous “Chris­t­ian entity” who will match any money we bring in for the build­ing fund for the next two months, up to $100,000. < « I don’t have to tell all you mis­sion church-goers how sig­nif­i­cant that is. We’ve been try­ing to start con­struc­tion for two years — some­thing like this could give us a much-needed boost.
    3. Cover design and every­thing. Did you ever won­der what I do for a liv­ing? Well, I’ll tell you any­way. I’m a graphic artist, and I can tes­tify that the vital skills of design­ing brochures and adver­tise­ments almost never comes in handy at church. So this is one of the rare oppor­tu­ni­ties I got to design some­thing for church. And con­se­quently, you can pur­chase it and won­der that any­one is able to pay their rent by doing this.(Well, almost.)

    So enough of this idle chit-chat. We’ll wrap up pro­duc­tion in the next week or so, so com­ment below or drop me an e-mail (see the bot­tom of the “About/Contact” page for my e-mail address) if you’d like to pre-order. The cost is $12.50, and we’ll fig­ure out mail­ing costs depend­ing on where you are. Obvi­ously, any­thing extra you’d like to donate would really be appreciated.

    And by the way, even if you don’t want to order, we’ll let you have the songs above for free if you want. We just ask that you give credit to “St. Basil Ortho­dox Church Choir.”

    If any of you is about to release a major motion pic­ture and wants this for the sound­track, we can prob­a­bly work some­thing out.

    (Hey, I can dream, can’t I?)


    Related posts:

    1. Just another failed church
    2. Really red counties
    3. Bro­ken voice­box, bro­ken head
    4. An addi­tional Cross-word
    5. More about Chris­t­ian percentages

    January 31st, 2008 | Grace | 10 Comments |

10 Responses and Counting...

  • Mimi 01.31.2008

    Oooooh, I want one!

  • s-p

    Wow… very cool! Can I have one and we’ll play it on the radio pro­gram and promo it for you in the newslet­ter. Nice work. You har­mo­nize nicely with your­self, if I may tempt you even more.

  • Grace

    Exxxcel­lent! I’ll give a heads-up when they’re ready to send.

    s-p — (blush of false mod­esty) Thanks.

  • Grace

    s-p,
    I was in such a hurry last night I didn’t men­tion what a very kind offer that is. I thank you, the St. Basil’s choir thanks you and my priest thanks you. :-)

  • –c

    Wow — how lovely!
    I’d love to buy one (price is cer­tainly right!)
    We belong to a Russian-rite parish, but my spouse is so par­tial to Byzan­tine style — it would make a nice Valentine’s Day gift for him.
    Think they’d be ready in a cou­ple of weeks? If not, I’ll be happy to buy it when­ever I can.

  • –c

    I didn’t mean to say Russian-rite — the liturgy is the liturgy. I meant to say that we belong to a church which uses Russ­ian style music for liturgy.
    (oops.)

  • Grace

    –c:
    I think I knew what you meant by Russian-rite. It’s funny — no mat­ter which musi­cal tra­di­tion you have, you miss some things from the other. Both have a lot to offer.

    As far as the tim­ing, I am guess­ing they’ll be ready in two weeks just to be on the safe side. It may be sooner than that.

  • –c

    I’ll send you an email (if I can find your addie on the site here) to get pay­ment infor­ma­tion and to give you ship­ping info.

    Thanks!

  • Molly

    Those are all very lovely!

    I so wish I did have an upcom­ing block­buster film to include them in!

  • Grace

    Well, the week’s not over yet. ;-)

    Actu­ally, now that I think of it, when­ever Hol­ly­wood includes music that’s really reli­gious (as opposed to just religious-sounding) in the sound­track, it’s done iron­i­cally or used to denote some lurk­ing evil. So I’m prob­a­bly lucky we’re not com­ing to a the­ater near you.

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