Gregorian "Shaboom"

Busy last 24 hours...I went along to a lesson in Chant that St. Anne's parish has been holding. [I hadn't had a chance to go before, but there are a few classes left. It's open to anyone in the county wanting to learn. Most of the people there were in various church choirs, about 12-14 in all I forgot to count. The instructor is the parish choir director, very nice.

30 some years ago, I'd had exposure to nume reading - (and I already know how to read standard musical notation, so it wasn't a big stretch.) I was surprised at how quickly what I had been told about it frosh year in college came back - having taken a "General distribution" course in the history of music, the foundations of western music being built on the Gregorian Chant of the monks. Biggest difference is a 4 line staff instead of 5. I rather like the idea of a non-fixed "do." I was delighted to learn that each choirmaster, as a rule of thumb, prefers to fix the "do" to match the tessitura (sweet spot) of the mix of voices that individual choir has. Thank goodness, I was never one of those with perfect pitch, to whom looking at a standard notation "mi" would be hard pressed to sing "re." Don't know if I'll join the choir yet, I'll have a lot of work to do, but some of the tunes were familiar, and having enough latin helps.

I just need to scour you tube for a lot of the common parts of the Mass (8 different possible tones too -- depending on the character of the celebration.) The notation will take some getting use to but personally, in a lot of ways it's easier than standard notation. Hope I got all that right -- there were some nice hand outs too. The church also has a children's choral group.

Also, finally got an eye exam (I'd lost a contact, and my perscription was long out of date.) I went to Mass this a.m., and work, and also swam 3/4 of a mile tonight down at the Kroc center.

Busy girl, so sorry for all the relative radio silence.