SuttaCentral
Maybe you could team up with Ajahn Sona! Also a former musician.
I discovered this beautiful chanting on an old Bhavana podcast
http://bhavana.us/mp3/92609Nonself.mp3
He make a similar comment about Thai va Burmese vs Sri Lankan chanting as Bhante Sujato, except he thinks the Sri Lankans chant at different speeds. In my experience that’s a much more Burmese affliction
Thanks a lot for the file! 
I have chanted in all three countries and I think it really is a matter of personal preference which sounds better. The Sri Lankans are obviously exemplary in Pali pronunciation, unlike Burmese. And you’re right, Burmese is super fast!
@sujato and others- what advice would you give to folks interested in chanting, who are new to it?
With metta
That is the worst chanting I ever heard.
This one is pretty good candidate for being a type of chanting style that is pleasant to listen to, but does not strike me as being musical, keeping in mind that sutta that prohibits reciting in a musical way AN 5.something?
sounds like a simplified sri lankan style to me.
One of the important audio aspects about chanting is it helps aid the memory of the sutta. Every kind of sensory association with the dhamma word acts like a memory tag. So if you can see it, hear it, smell it, it all acts like a neural search key. Especially when the sutta hasn’t been recited a long time, as we’re trying to stumble through and remember it, the tonal differences between lines helps the memory detect errors and omissions. In the style from the sample above, every alternating line has a different starting and ending tone. If a chanting style is too simple and monotone, then you get none of the benefit for error detection from the extra memory tags on alternating lines.
The Dhammaruwan chanting from when he is 2 or 3 years old is really interesting. In a different dhamma talk, I heard him say he was recollecting it from his past life, he was one of the sutta reciters accompanying Buddhaghosa traveling to Sri Lanka to translate the commentaries, so this must be around 500 CE, 1500 years ago. Does anyone know if there are recordings of his from 2 years old chanting more obscure things? That would be really cool if he was for example a MN reciter and he still remembered the MN suttas assigned to him. The recordings on record are all popular parittas.
One of the most amazing chants I ever heard was the Abhihamma patthana done by a theravada nun, who used to be a music professor and obviously an accomplished vocalist. I was at a monastery doing walking meditation, and the nun was chanting in her kuti for her mom who was ill. Now normally, when I hear the patthana, my reaction is either to fall asleep or revulsion from hearing abhidhamma (no offense intended, but just the truth), but she chanted it in a way that sounded so good I stood there for 20 minutes listening to her. It crossed the line in being ever so slightly musical, but mostly it was just the purity of the sound and pronunciation that had me hooked, kind of like the way an accomplished theatre actor sound good saying anything, even reading the instructions for setting up your computer. In this case, if I voluntarily listen for 20 minutes to abhidhamma, you have to know it was pretty amazing sound.
Is there a collection of Santi forest chantings somewhere online?
This is fantastic. Pali chanting with proper pronunciation and not too musical.
Yes, this is exactly my thoughts in this case.
Buddha said that the Dhamma should be taught in the local language.
In the same way, chanting should be done in the local accent.
Sutta recitation by FrankK is a good example.
http://audtip.dx.am/tipitaka/mn/mn-eng.html
It is not possible to unify the chanting style.
I do the “chanting karaoke” app from Abhayagiri-- great learning tool. It is a mixture of Pali and English. At first the Pali was very hard but now actually I prefer the Pali only chanting. Chanting in English sounds odd.
Surprisingly, I have really gotten into chanting. I do it in the morning and evening and has been a huge assistance to my practice-- helps bolster my meditation!
THank you for this wonderful version of Ratana Sutta. I’m currently memorising this and appreciate the clarity, tone and rhythm of this recording
One example of a holy chanting style in the West, in an an old Western language (latin) is Gregorian chanting. It is an example of monophony (one musical voice (pitch & rhythm), although it can consist of many individual human voices singing the same musical voice) as opposed to polyphony which has multiple musical voices to create harmonies etc., so it is a simple style and not really music as we usually think of it but can be quite beautiful imo.
Wow, thank you very much! I didn’t knew him. I’m trying to start learning some pali and this will help me a lot. Besides that,I wanted to comment that as I was listening to it, after 10 min, I started to cry in a way that never suspected that could be possible by just listening to a record… many things flying in my heart! Again, thanks! /I\
A dear friend who I’ve stayed with on and off used to walk around with this playing on her iPod all the time.
I had to remind myself; it was me disturbing the sound 
it reminds me of hold music
The commitment shown by all of you to the Dhamma is…humbling. I have never chanted anything, ever. The only time I have even heard chanting (apart from a few audio tracks) was in Bodh Gaya - I think it was some Thai that was played over a speaker near the main temple, every morning. It was nice and soothing to wake up to…
A Sri Lankan monk I knew in Darwin years ago chanted the metta sutta beautifully before the start of our meditation each Friday evening, but I wonder if we westerners (laypeople, anyway) can realistically get close to the tonal qualities he and other monks and nuns from traditional Buddhist countries have been able to develop over time, or even if we need to. Just the other day I was happily present at the chanting of the metta sutta and taking pf precepts with a groups of monks from Lao, Thai and Burmese monasteries and realised how far distant my own chanting was from theirs. However, as always, I am not discouraged. I’ll press on like we all do. I often think we live in an exciting time to be a Buddhist in Australia (here I’m paraphrasing Malcolm Turnbull). The Dhamma is taking root here and it will be nurtured by the eucalypts, burnt deep red beneath the sun and gazed upon disinterestedly by a mob of grey kangaroos. Then we will know it has found its place.
Hey Trevor, are you still in Darwin? One of my best friends lives in Darwin or nearby (she is mobile!) and I’ve often wanted to visit.
For anyone interested, this book, coming out in the spring, has a case study of Dhammaruwan:
You’re the person who does the audiotip site, correct? I’ve downloaded many recordings from it–thank-you!! Perhaps you could post the link for people here (I can’t seem to locate the website at the moment)? Ven Jiv (?) has some beautiful sutta chanting recordings on it. It’s my favorite chanting I’ve ever heard (along with Dhammaruwan). It’s Sri Lankan style, correct?