Each weekend, music is recorded
at four services: the Saturday 5PM St. Elizabeth service, the Sunday
9:30AM St. Elizabeth service, the Sunday 11AM Mother Cabrini
Chapel service, and the Sunday 12:30 St. Elizabeth service. While the
organist is the same for all four services, one cantor leads song at
the 5PM and 12:30PM services, and the second cantor leads song at the
other two services.
The microphones are pointed
away from the organ pipes towards the front of the church to better
capture the amplified cantors' singing. Even so, the
reverberation can obscure the vocals or make the words difficult to
understand. Inclusion of the hymn text would be beneficial,
but often copyright protection prohibits this. Those texts in the
public domain will gradually be added to this site. The copyright of
the text of the psalm responses and gospel verses are held by the
Confraternity of Christian Doctrine Inc. The copyrights of the other
hymns are listed in alphabetical order on a separate page (see link
below).
The
distance from the cantor to the organ pipes and the sound reverberation
in St. Elizabeth both conspire to slow down the tempo of the music.
Both parameters are smaller in Cabrini Chapel, resulting in a clearer
(but harder) sound acoustic that allows for easier coordination between
the organist and singer as well as better pickup of the congregational
singing by the microphones.