Appreciating Psalmody with UT OCF

Brothers in Christ, I was asked by the University of Texas OCF chapter to do some chant instruction with them. Doing that through a blog post seemed like a reasonable way to accommodate their pious request. If I'm on good behavior I'll update this 3 times a week, but I'm usually pretty bad about keeping up with stuff like that. Ναὶ, τοῦ Θεοῦ συνεργοῦντος! May this effort and you all blessed.

I'll start with a youtube video from the Antiochian tradition of Psalmody:

This is the apolytikion (a troparion -i.e. a hymn- sung at the end of vespers and at other times) of St. George in Arabic. By odd historical accident, although most of the Antiochian churches founded in the 20th century in North America are dedicated to St. George, almost none use this melody or even an English adaptation of this melody. 

• This apolytikion is in the Fourth Tone, and that means the melody cadences on Δι (a G, more or less) and βου (an E, more or less)
• Although it is Fourth Tone, and Fourth Tone is a diatonic tone, they're singing this with soft chromatic intervals (more on that later).
• The piece is being chanted in the Eirmologic style (i.e. roughly one beat per syllable). 
• The choir singing this is the Choir of St. Romanos of Beirut Lebanon; it is a solidly traditional Antiochian style of chanting (there are other styles, such as the Ecumenical Patriarchate style, the Bulgarian style, the Athonite style, etc.)