This Thursday, September 1, we talked about chanting and what chanting is, and how it sounds. As well as how pitch can play a role in chanting and determining what certain words can mean based on pitch. We started off class thinking about some old songs we personally knew and in some cases realizing some songs we know are actually quite old and trace back centuries and some common melodies we may have recognized that are used in many songs also are centuries old. Then we started to delve into chanting and how it sounds and the notes that were being used to create the sound.
One main point that caught my eye was chanting certain parts of the bible and how just a change in the pitch of your voice can take you from just reading something to chanting that same text. When you think about reading something generally when someone reads something the pitch of their voice doesn’t normally change all that much. That lack of change in pitch can lead to a monotone reading and boring reading, but when someone changes their pitch with the text, such as reading a story, it can become much more intriguing to the listener and reader as it adds more emotion and meaning to the text. That same concept applies to chanting, in that chanting, something in one pitch essentially becomes a boring reading, but with added pitch and rhythm it becomes something quite pleasant to listen to. One thing that comes to mind when thinking of chanting is cheerleader chants and how they are generally repetitive in nature and repeat themselves. Also looking at other religions such as Islam and the Quran, they will sometimes chant verses of the Quran and while we are not focusing on the Quran, it is interesting to see the similarities between how verses of the Bible are chanted as well as verses of the Quran.
As class came to an end we mentioned how pitch can be very important in language as certain pitches can change the meaning of words and also be entirely different words. We looked at how your pitch can help to convey emotion and meaning to what you are saying as well as your tone of voice can play an important role in communication. As you look at communication today, you see it is mostly happening through text, social media and email, which can make it harder to communicate because someone can misconstrue something you said and take it as something with a completely different meaning. So in today’s world you have to be careful in how you communicate through a line of text versus through your mouth, and that is something than can make interperting the Bible and other ancient text difficult because we can only look at parts through the text, where others we may have notes and sounds that can help guide us along the way.