Musical resources for High Holy Days

[liv]

My community is wonderful in many ways, but the big problem we have is that there is no overlap between people who know the traditional tunes and people who have musical ability. Me, I have a pretty good knowledge of various different liturgical styles, but since I can't hold a tune*. I have no sensible way of giving anybody else access to the knowledge that's in my head. The community is kind of Orthodox-ish, at least in tradition, so they don't really want to use instrumental or recorded music during most services.

It's a bit depressing to go through the High Holy Days with no singing at all; having even a little bit of music can make a big difference to how emotionally effective the liturgy is. So I'm trying to find stuff online that the singers among the community can learn from. I would like to focus on a couple of piyyutim and big set pieces that people can sing effectively as "hymns", even though that's not the most traditional approach. Nusach would be lovely, but it's also not happening because we have a further lack of overlap between people who can read Hebrew and people who can sing.

My searches have found quite a lot of material, but none of it's exactly what I'm hoping for. So I'm asking if anyone happens to know of a resource better than what I can find by searching. Or even if anyone is better at doing very specific internet searches in Hebrew than I am, that might help as well. I'm looking for audio files that people can learn from even if they're not particularly skilled singers or particularly well versed in Jewish musical traditions. So for example, a lot of what I've come across is either chazzanut with lots of fancy ornamentation, or it's Carlebach-style almost polyphonic. I would like something with a single, clear melodic line. Preferably something that will not sound too weird to a European, Orthodox, Ashkenazi community (rather than Israeli music or American Reform stuff or Chassidic style), though I admit the chances of actually resurrecting the community's traditional tunes that people remember from childhood but can't sing any more are fairly remote.

Particular wish list:

The extended Kedusha as used on the festivals

יגדל (the festival tune)

אבינו מלכנו (we at least know the final line, but not the rest of it)

The piyyut כי הנה כחמר since this town was built around the pottery trade, so it ought to be our theme song.

*No, seriously, I can't. And yes, I have tried to learn, over many years and with many different approaches, I just can't reliably sing in tune.

Comments

[emperor]

Do you think you could approximate the tune well enough for a musician to notate it and sing it back to you for revision (iterating until correct)?

[atreic]

Or presumably if you had an on-line thing that was very ornamented with lots of different harmonies, you could get someone musical to listen to that, and then record themselves just singing the tune?

[Emp - I think a 'here is a recording of what this should sound like' is as important, if not more, than 'here are some dots of what this ought to be' if you're trying to teach a group of not-very-frequent singers and can't sing yourself.

[liv]

Yes, as a last resort that would work to get me what I want, but I would rather not have to ask someone to do that, if the simpler melody-only version is already available online somewhere I'm not finding it.

I agree I need audio more than I need sheet music, because the people who are musical don't have any particular training in singing from scores, and also because Jewish liturgical music doesn't mesh very well with Western classical music notation. The sort of musical tradition I'm talking about tends to be quite flexible about how to match syllables to notes, which is fine if you're experienced either at that style of singing, or at reading and interpreting sheet music, but I can't really assume that.

[liv]

That's a good suggestion, but I think probably not, because of the nature of the thing I can't do around singing in tune. The thing is, I am in no way tone deaf, I can reliably compare two notes and decide whether they are the same pitch, but only if I can hear them simultaneously. But if I hear one note and then another more than a few seconds later, I can't remember what the first note was to be able to compare them. This means that if there's a tune I know reasonably well, and I have an accompaniment (either singing in chorus or an instrument) I can match my tuning to what I can hear. Mostly, anyway, it's still not perfect. But I can't sing on my own, basically ever, not even the most familiar tune you could think of eg Happy Birthday, which I'm pretty sure I can hear in my head except that my memory of the tune is imprecise enough that I would be out of tune if I tried to reproduce it. (Having sheet music doesn't help with this, because it's not remembering the sequence of notes so so la so do ti, it's remembering what those notes actually sound like.)

So I can approximate a tune enough that someone who already knows the tune can guess what I'm trying for. But if the musician were to sing back to me with their best guess at what actually makes musical sense, I wouldn't be sure enough of my memory to be able to correct them for the purposes of iterating.

[tig_b]

I know someone who leads choirs and does music for High Holy Days - she may be able to offer advice/links to music.

Would you like me to send her your link?

[liv]

Yes, please do, that sounds like a really useful contact. Though she's probably ludicrously busy this week, but hopefully would have time to just send over a couple of links!

[tig_b]

I emailed her with a link to this post.

Also this is her site:
http://www.mich-sampson.com/home.html

[kass]

This may be helpful: audio clips of High Holiday Prayers, from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. It's a pretty extensive list of mp3s.

[liv]

That is really super-helpful! I didn't quite expect there'd be something that comprehensive. It's particularly great because it's just one guy singing the basic tunes without showing off his amazing musical techniques, which is the thing I was really struggling to find when I went looking. That has loads of potential, really appreciated.

[siderea]

I thought Judaism had a solution to this problem and it's called a "cantor".

Free advice for future reference: try to panic about musical problems at least ten weeks in advance. Not always possible, of course, emergencies happen. But ten weeks is a good point to assess the musical resources one will need for a function and do something about it. Apparently non-obvious to non-musicians: the less skilled/professional the talent you intend to tap (e.g. "Let's just ask for a volunteer from the congregation!") the MORE lead time they'll need. (Being casual about a gig does NOT reduce necessary lead time.)

Anyway, you sound all set. If not let me know as soon as possible, and I'll hit up me resources. BTW, are you on Mi Yihoda(sp?) @stackexchange?

[liv]

Thanks for this. A cantor is totally a solution to this problem if you're the sort of community that can afford employees. My community has an annual turnover of a couple of thousand dollars; most of that goes on building insurance, heating and other unavoidable expenditure. We can't pay people to do stuff, not even one-off hires for special occasions, which is in fact how I, as a complete amateur, have ended up in charge of the entire HHD liturgy.

Ten weeks ago, I thought my best friend, who is both musical and knowledgeable, was going to come and lead the services with me. That's what we did last year, and it worked really well. This year her life-circumstances have changed at somewhat short notice, plus I've lost my one weak-but-competent singer, and my one native speaker of Hebrew, since then. And yeah, I could have done this five weeks ago, but I didn't, because I have a full time job (see under: complete amateur), and because I prioritized making the services happen at all which meant other things needed arranging before I had any spare capacity to look into music. If I gather resources now, I will have things in place for next year, and I do have some plans to do something a lot more systematic than this through 2013.

This isn't panic, this is: let me try and see if I can make something happen with minimal effort at the last minute. And if not, well, I've scoped things out a bit, and nothing bad will happen, we'll just have an unmusical set of services. If I'm lucky, someone will pick up an easy tune and we'll have three minutes of singing during the climactic bits of YK. And yes, it'll be amateurish, unconfident singing, I know that. If I'm not lucky, well, I've started a process.

The other thing I am working on here is convincing the congregants that they can get involved, they can help me out with bits of liturgy, without needing to be professional-level perfect or even as good as me. If I had ten weeks of serious rehearsals, that would help in some ways, but undermine the message I'm trying to send in others.

Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate your advice. Friday afternoon is too late for this with RH starting Sunday evening. And you're entirely right that casual volunteers need more prep than people with a lot of musical experience. It's not that I don't know this because I'm not a musician, it's that I'm juggling lots of plates here and I dropped that one.

I had heard rumours that there was a Jewish bit of Stackexchange! When I start implementing my more long-term plan that would definitely be a good place to look, thanks for the suggestion.

[hatam_soferet]

*hug*

I'm sorry. If I hadn't come to so many weddings in the UK this year I would have budget to come out for the HHD.

Next year there are no weddings. I could make my UK trip next year at HHD time?

[liv]

You haven't done anything wrong! And I wasn't depending on you, all that happened was that I didn't really want to give up hope that you might come and live here for a bit until you'd actually definitely said you had changed your plan. You have made it clear for months that things were in flux and you might end up living with your boy instead of coming back to England, and I should have paid attention instead of just blithely hoping for the outcome I wanted.

If you can afford time and money to come to England next year, that would be brilliant, but not so that I have an easier life over the festivals, come whenever suits your schedule. It'll be fine, it always is, I've managed without you in 2002 and 2003 and 2004 and 2009 and 2010. I want you to come and visit so I get to see you, that's the only thing I really care about, not because I want to make you do loads of work helping me lead services. (I am vaguely plotting coming to Montreal round about May next year, and even if that doesn't happen, we'll work something out to get over beastly geography.)

[liv]

I'm sorry, rereading my comment I sound really defensive. It's not in any possible way your fault that I have rather a lot of people asking the impossible from me and then criticizing me because I don't deliver to their satisfaction. You're being helpful and making my impossible task somewhat easier with wise advice, it was foolish of me to write a great rant about why I'm justified in going about all this the wrong way.

[siderea]

Hey, no offense at all was taken; if anything I apologize for being insufficiently sensitive and sympathetic. "AAAAHHH!! THE MUSICIANS EVAPORATED!!!!" is a totes legit musical emergency.

Are you all set? I have a direct analog in Jewish liturgical music, and while I don't know if she would be able to help, a report of a small earnest orthodox congregation that just lost its musical clue is likely to prompt a "TO THE CANTORMOBILE, ROBIN!" response.

ETA: er, my mistake: it's stackoverflow. And since it's almost shabbat, I took the liberty of msging her and pointing her at this post.

[cellio]

Howdy!

Aiieee, so sorry to hear about the musical emergency. I take it the friend is even too busy to sing into a recorder for you?

That RRC link looks like it has a lot of what you need, and the couple items I spot-checked sounded right. What gaps do you still have? I mostly know the Reform and Carlebach melodies you're not looking for, so I don't want to just start singing stuff into a mic for you, but if there's anything I can do before about 7PM EDT today, or on Sunday, for you, I'll be happy to try. (I'm not a cantor, but I'm a pretty competent layperson and I can sing. :-) )

You might also try Mi Yodeya (mi.yodeya.com, aka judaism.stackexchange.com), which is part of the StackExchange network (home of Stack Overflow). Yes Shabbat is soon here in the US, but if you can get the question posted before then it's still worth doing -- while most of our regulars are in the US, we've got users in Israel and I think even in Australia, and it won't be Shabbat on the US west coast for a few more hours yet, so it's possible there'd be an answer waiting for you when you check in Saturday night.

Edit: I just checked to see where you live and I see I may already be too late. Sorry, I got here as quickly as I could.

Edit 2: Y'know, there's no reason I couldn't just ask there on your behalf. So I did: http://judaism.stackexchange.com/q/19155/472

[liv]

Wow, thank you so so so much! Getting friends to make recordings for me is definitely in my plans for making sure this doesn't happen again next year.

But thank you for asking on Mi Yodeya, amazing what people can come up with in response to a last-minute cry for help. I'm really incredibly grateful.

[liv]

Thank you so much for finding me a contact, that's incredibly kind of you. And for not taking offence at my ranty reply to your comment. I didn't post asking for sympathy, I posted with a specific query, and you've gone above and beyond to find me resources; you couldn't have known I was tearing my hair out.

A properly musical service isn't possible at this stage (as you said, I should've started this process ten weeks ago). So it'll either be completely unmusical altogether, or if I'm really lucky, between cellio's resources and kass' and the congregation willing to have a bash, it'll be a tiny bit, not exactly musical but having some semblance of communal singing. So it doesn't make a whole lot of difference whether my last minute punt succeeds or not.

[sunflowerinrain]

An extra point is that people who can sing, can sing Hebrew from a transliteration (which is how non-liturgical non-Hebrew-speaking choirs usually do it) and therefore don't need to be able to read Hebrew. So all you need, for the words, is a transliteration. Dunno how easy that is!

[liv]

Good thought, I've been doing a bit of transliteration to make this somewhat more manageable. If I can find tunes and someone prepared to have a go at learning them, I've certainly reassured people that I can provide words if they need.

[sunflowerinrain]

Out of curiosity, do the singers have to be of the Jewish faith? Not that I'm near enough to be of use, but anyone who has sung Chichester Psalms and any of the other lovely Hebrew choral pieces and isn't a fundamentalist atheist would probably be keen to take part.

[liv]

That's a more complicated question than it might seem on the surface. Ideally what I want is actual members of the congregation being able to sing so that they feel part of the service. I don't have any problem at all with help from non-Jews, I really obviously need any help I can get at this point. But I think if I asked someone from outside to come and act as unofficial cantor, it might end up more like a kind of performance than a communal service. Which would be hard on the person / people who volunteered, and wouldn't quite achieve what I'm aiming for.

If I had a singer friend who wanted to help, what I might ask them to do was run a session a little ahead of time, so that the community could learn a few tunes from them. Again, something I can look into for next year when I'll be more organized.

The Chichester Psalms is a very lovely work, but it's also a decidedly a work in the Christian musical tradition that just happens to be in the Hebrew language. Also really technically hard! If I were to rope in non-Jewish musicians, there's a better chance they'd know Bruch's Kol Nidrei, which is a secular piece but is a bit more Jewish in feel and it's not unusual for the melody from that to find its way into Jewish services. (Yes, I know Bernstein was Jewish and Bruch wasn't, but that's not the point.)

got some!

[cellio]

Someone just posted the following on Mi Yodeya:

http://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3a%28nusach%20audio%29

I think he recorded these himself in response to the question. (The question is here: http://judaism.stackexchange.com/q/19155/472

If this helped you, please consider logging in there (any OpenID will do) and voting up his answer.

Good luck! I hope this helps.