orthodox.cafe is a website for listening to Byzantine music of the Eastern Orthodox Church. There is a respectful touch of audio processing to give it a 'lofi' sound, which can be turned off. There are also ambient options, like distant rain.
This is the core function of the site, although I hope to add many more hidden features.
Although there is very little in common between the two, orthodox.cafe was inspired by the popular YouTube stream lofi hip hop radio - beats to relax/study to.
If you have feedback for orthodox.cafe, please email me directly. Include in the subject line: [orthodox.cafe feedback] and it'll be moved to my highest priority mailbox. I love feedback, so don't hesitate to let me know your thoughts! Be mean if you have to!
orthodox.cafe has three principles that guide its design:
- Stillness
(ἡσυχία):
- stillness, rest, quiet, silence
- bodily rest combined with creative tension
- openness to the divine (mystical) presence and to prayer
- Mystery:
- having a spiritual meaning or reality that is neither apparent to the senses nor obvious to the intelligence
- Community:
- intimate fellowship or rapport
Building software often feels like sitting at a blank canvas where anything is possible. But just because you can build anything doesn't mean you should. The magical slabs of metal and glass we carry in our pockets can do anything, and as a result, we use them to do nothing.
Setting limits and guidelines for what the site does will help it do those things better.
Stillness (in the context of the Greek ἡσυχία, peacefulness) is facing the tension that comes with ignoring distractions. In a way, it's about being bored. Most modern technology is designed to relieve that tension, and we love it. But stillness is about facing that boredom like an old Western duel: standing in the middle of the road, taking ten steps away each, and turning around to look boredom in the eye as he reaches behind him for his revolver. The sun is setting, and the streets are empty, and all you see is boredom's silhouette standing down the road from you. And your hands are shaking, and your mind is racing, but you don't turn and run; you keep your hand on your revolver when finally he whips his hand out from behind his back and you still don't move because his hand is empty.
Anyways, stillness as a guiding principle for orthodox.cafe means it should be simple in function and transparent in its purpose.
Its purpose is to provide a consistent and respectful listening experience. Respectful means both respectful to the listener and the music itself.
Byzantine chanting is a "significant cultural tradition and comprehensive music system" surrounding and involving the many hymns and services of the Eastern Orthodox Church. It's been around in various forms for several thousand years.
From the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage site:
"...it is exclusively vocal music; it is essentially monophonic; the chants are codified into an eight-mode or eight-tone system; and the chant employs different styles of rhythm to accentuate the desired syllables of specific words."
There are other, more Americanized ways of singing hymns and services, and there's nothing wrong with them in the slightest. I just prefer to listen to Byzantine chant, so I didn't include any of the western music that is common among Greek churches here in New England. There are many Byzantine chant albums that were recorded as a performance instead of as prayer, and I tried to avoid those wherever possible. As a result, most of the audio on orthodox.cafe is performed by various groups of all-male monastics from Greece.
I am currently looking to add more music as performed by women, a mix of women and men, and also other languages, especially Arabic. If you know of any (that's public domain, or who I could reach out to the rights holders for permission to play on this site), please let me know!
Further reading: orthodoxwiki.org, wikipedia
The orthodox.cafe client (what you see when you visit the webpage) was built with the Deno Fresh web framework, which uses Preact as the frontend framework, Deno as the server runtime, and Typescript as the language tying it all together. Not too long ago, I assumed most websites were built with vanilla HTML and Javascript, so I'm proud of everything I've learned since then.
Most of the development features were completed in a week. The remaining month of development was spent trying to get audio processing effects to work on iOS. I still haven't gotten around to enabling background playback on iOS, either, although it is possible.
The music was sourced from archive.org and YouTube. The web app used to be hosted on a laptop in my closet, and is now hosted on an old gaming PC I got for $150 from Facebook Marketplace.
I'm currently looking for roles in product design or full-stack development — anything from contract work to full-time positions — and can be reached via email.