Pacing Myself Through Psalter Selection

It's 6:56 PM Eastern on Monday and I am slowly groping my way through the selection of my first psalter. It's too hot to turn off my air conditioner, so I won't try to do any recording tonight. While I am eager to dive into melodic chant, I am determined to first develop some proficiency with monotonal chant, following the instruction of Pastor Joshua Schooping. I am going to need a hardcopy psalter that I can use for this purpose.

Now it's 9:12 PM and after a couple hours of research I may have found a good starting point. It's The Ancient Faith Psalter with an accompanying audiobook. Here you can listen to Psalm 103 as it is read and chanted in the audiobook. The chanting is monotone. The translation was prepared by monastics but Father John Oliver, who performs the chanting, is a married priest within the Orthodox tradition. Father Oliver's chanting tempo is quite a bit faster than Pastor Schooping's. By coincidence, or the Holy Spirit, it was my search on Amazon for a large-print psalter that led me to The Ancient Faith Psalter. I wasn't looking for a psalter with an accompanying monotone audiobook!

The temporal structure of this psalter is very appealing to me. See Psalms and the Psalter for more information on the kathismata table reproduced here:

"Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts." Colossians 3:16 (NIV)