What are the Eight Tones?

I\'d like to add that there are several reasons why many Orthodox Churches don\'t use even the organ. Even though we chant Psalm 150 every Sunday at Matins, where it says to praise Him with various instruments, we generally don\'t like to use them. One of the reasons is historical, the other more of a spiritual one. We Orthodox use the Septuagint text of the Old Testament. You know those lines at the beginning of many Psalms that say something like, \"For stringed instruments. A Psalm of David.\" in the Hebrew Psalter? Well, in the LXX (Septuagint), those headings aren\'t there. Since many of the early Christians were Jews from the diaspora who used the Septuagint Greek text and not the Hebrew, their usage prevailed. The Jews in the diaspora did not use instruments but the Jews in Jerusalem did. The other reason why we don\'t use instruments is because the early Christians did not want to imitate in any way what the Romans did in the theater or in their worship. They felt that instruments took away from the business at hand (worship) and they also wanted to take the entertainment aspect of it out and not include it at all in Christian worship. Many Greek parishes use the organ, but that is because an organ was used at Hagia Sophia and the organ (or harmonium) was invented by the Byzantines, but it was only used as an ison-holder and not as a melodic instrument. Kassiani, I love Tone 7. You are right, you don\'t normally hear that tone in the Liturgy very often. Only in Matins or Vespers when it is the tone of the day. But some hymns you might hear in that tone besides the Apolytikion of the Resurrection \"Thou hast scattered death by Thy Cross\" (Katelysas ton Stavron Sou ton thanaton\") are the Doxology, and the hymn we sing at the Pentecost kneeling service \"Who is so great a God as our God? For you alone are the God that does wonders.\" (in Greek, \"Tis Theos Megas...etc.\") Also the Apolytikion of St. Demetrios and a few others. I loved your post, BTW. LOL!!! On a more serious note (no pun intended), I recall hearing old time chanters refer to tone 6 as the \"crying\" tone because of its mood.