I've been learning and singing Byzantine chant for over a decade now. In fact, I ended up learning programming because I wanted to create software for Byzantine notation, which is very different from western notation. Here's an example of (modern) Byzantine notation with renditions in western notation: https://cappellaromana.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Cherub...
The top line of western notation shows a fairly straightforward version, while the bottom line shows one fully-ornamented interpretation. Note that microtones are used. As far as I can understand, ornamentation/interpretation can vary by teacher, and I once found a paper that analyzed the microtones used by various famous chanters to see the differences between them.
I never did end up creating any useful open source software for Byzantine chant. I did learn Racket, then Django, then became a programmer and now I'm a data scientist. So I partially ended up where I am because I was sick of typing out Byzantine chant using special fonts in Microsoft Word! There are now actually a lot of symbols in unicode for Byzantine music, but I don't think there's any way to handle the typesetting necessary for combining neumes in the various possible ways yet (think of how Korean works)... but I haven't looked into this for a few years.
I love this music, not only for the beauty of its sound but also the incredible richness of the hymns. There are teachers in the United States working on developing good methods for teaching all of this to people without such a cultural background, and critically, singing it in English so that the meaning can be understood by those who don't know Greek or Arabic. Chanting with my choir is one of my greatest joys in life. Glory to God for all things.
I appreciate the links and your story sounds interesting. I’m an Orthodox catechumen myself and am very interested in learning to sing the Liturgy as well as other chants. Might you have any tips or resources on how one might start really learning (besides just practicing)?
For Byzantine chant, I strongly recommend immersing yourself in the music by listening to it as much as possible. Try to focus on music in your native language--if it's English, then there are more and more recordings coming out. Become familiar with the scales that are used and learn what tone each song is going with. Memorize and sing back the simpler melodies that you can manage, such as the troparia commonly sung every week.
If your parish does chant, express your interest to the lead chanter and see what they have to say about learning. While we of course want everyone to be able to participate, if somebody is really off (especially with ison, which are the held "bass notes"), it can confuse people and cause a lot of chaos in the middle of a service. :)
If your parish doesn't chant (meaning they only sing perhaps Russian-style four-part harmony), then you have a more difficult road ahead. It's hard to develop this skill without a mentor and without often practicing it in the real life context of the services. And it's of course nice when you don't have to lead a service while also being a beginner!
I encourage you to check out https://www.byzantinebeginnings.com/ It's a unique teaching method for chant using games and exercises, rather than just reading sheet music. Although I had chanted for many years, after I took the first course I really improved a lot. A good friend of mine is involved in creating it and has used her professional teaching experience to shape its pedagogy, although it's still being refined between sessions.
Finally, I strongly recommend learning Byzantine notation over using western notation, even if you are familiar with the latter. Byzantine notation is a DSL optimized for conveying the subtle rhythm and ornamentation that is often lost in translations to the western staff. The loss of this can make renditions sound stale and lifeless. As you can see in my original comment, fully translating such nuances results in way too much boilerplate! An experienced chanter can read a series of neumes like words in a sentence and know all of the musical richness to impart to it.
May you have a blessed start to your Lenten journey.
Just show up to liturgy early and practice with the choir! They'll be happy you're there, and you don't have to sing during service if you aren't comfortable.
I've been learning and singing Byzantine chant for over a decade now. In fact, I ended up learning programming because I wanted to create software for Byzantine notation, which is very different from western notation. Here's an example of (modern) Byzantine notation with renditions in western notation: https://cappellaromana.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Cherub...
The top line of western notation shows a fairly straightforward version, while the bottom line shows one fully-ornamented interpretation. Note that microtones are used. As far as I can understand, ornamentation/interpretation can vary by teacher, and I once found a paper that analyzed the microtones used by various famous chanters to see the differences between them.
I never did end up creating any useful open source software for Byzantine chant. I did learn Racket, then Django, then became a programmer and now I'm a data scientist. So I partially ended up where I am because I was sick of typing out Byzantine chant using special fonts in Microsoft Word! There are now actually a lot of symbols in unicode for Byzantine music, but I don't think there's any way to handle the typesetting necessary for combining neumes in the various possible ways yet (think of how Korean works)... but I haven't looked into this for a few years.
I love this music, not only for the beauty of its sound but also the incredible richness of the hymns. There are teachers in the United States working on developing good methods for teaching all of this to people without such a cultural background, and critically, singing it in English so that the meaning can be understood by those who don't know Greek or Arabic. Chanting with my choir is one of my greatest joys in life. Glory to God for all things.