Start here — open Upload & SettingsUploadSettings above
Or drop a PDF anywhere on this page.
Notes are extracted automatically for practice (MCI Finale PDFs).
Metropolitan Cantor Institute
Byzantine Ruthenian Catholic Church
Sheet music available at:
These sets of exercises were designed by Timothy Kearns, PhD, created and maintained with the assistance of AI, and are extensively revised for clarity and precision.
Live from the Metropolitan Cantor Institute (mci.archpitt.org). Click a service link to open its PDF in a new tab — save it, then use Upload PDF here to practice.
Byzantine Voice
Ear and voice training for Ruthenian chant
For full functionality use on a desktop, laptop, or large tablet screen.
Open anytime for more detail. Press × or Escape to start.
Byzantine Liturgical Calendar — Opens a live panel of the MCI home-page calendar and Vigil Divine Liturgy propers (dates, service names, and sheet-music links). Links open PDFs on the MCI site in a new tab; save the file and upload it here to practice. Content is re-fetched each time you open the panel so new months stay current.
Upload & Settings — On a computer this menu is always named Upload & Settings. On phones it says Upload until a PDF is loaded, then Settings. Open it to upload a chant PDF first; sound, mic, and save/load options stay grayed out until a file is loaded so you are not asked to configure them first. When extraction finishes, a green ready box shows how many notes were found.
A phone screen is too small to show the full toolbar without crowding the music, so the phone layout is deliberately reduced to four things: the gear (upload and settings), Match Pitch, Play, and page navigation. Transpose and Tempo move inside the gear menu as plain sliders.
Assess Singing and Find your range are hidden on phones. They are not removed — both need room to show a section of the staff, pick start and end notes, and display a pitch report alongside the music, which a phone cannot do legibly. Open the app on a desktop, laptop, or large tablet and both features appear on the toolbar under Assess.
Tools (small tablets) — Match Pitch, Transpose, Tempo, Assess Singing, and Play All. Grayed out until a PDF is ready; then open the dropdown to use them. On a computer these controls stay on the main toolbar.
Match Pitch — Click Match Pitch (the button becomes Stop), then click a note to hear it and match with your voice. Click Stop or press Escape to turn it off and release the microphone.
Transpose shifts every played and matched pitch by half steps (not whole steps). Range is 1½ octaves down (−18) to half an octave up (+6). Bold marks on the slider are full octaves; short marks are half octaves. Default is written pitch (0). Slide left to lower the music for men’s range. Release the slider to hear the first three notes at the new pitch.
Open the Transpose ▾ menu for Reset to written pitch (sets the slider back to 0). If you used Find your range, that menu also shows your measured range with Re-measure / Clear.
Match Pitch, Assess Singing, and Play All all use this same transpose setting.
Tempo — Speed for Play All, Play Starting Here, and drag-select playback.
Assess Singing — Pick a start and end note, press Sing section. You get a 3–2–1 countdown, hear the first note, then sing freely through the section and press Finish for a pitch report. No audio is recorded.
Find your range — Under Assess: sing Happy Birthday; it sets transpose and tempo from your singing.
Play All / Play Starting Here — Computer plays the score at the Tempo setting. Play All starts at the top of the page you are viewing. Click a note first to start from there; click empty space to return to Play All.
Page navigation — Use Prev / Next at the bottom. It also advances to the next page automatically while notes play (because of how notes are read from the PDF, continuous scroll is tricky).
Click & drag on the score highlights a stretch and plays it. A single click plays that note.
This set of exercises was developed by Timothy Kearns. It is primarily intended for use with Byzantine Ruthenian Catholic sheet music produced by the Metropolitan Cantor Institute in Pittsburgh.