A little rant: don’t diss those who don’t read music

Somebody wrote to me recently about how other choir members look down on them because they don’t read music.



It made me very angry that this sort of thing is still happening.

How to work with a mixed group of music readers and non-readers

I always teach songs by ear. As a member of the Natural Voice Network, our ethos is to make singing accessible to as many people as possible. This means we never assume any prior musical experience or knowledge.



But, sometimes there are music-readers in my singing groups who ask for the sheet music. How can you accommodate these demands whilst keeping the work accessible to everyone?

How to cope with learning by ear if you usually read music notation

Many choirs use written notation to learn and perform songs. Over time singers can come to depend on having the dots in front of them.

These singers may then join a different choir or go to a singing workshop where songs are learnt by ear and sheet music is not available. How do they cope?

photo by Molly Germaine

Last week I wrote about how singers who usually learn by ear can cope when given sheet music. In this post I’ll show you how to cope if you read music and usually learn songs using sheet music, but are asked to learn a song by ear.

How to cope with sheet music if you don’t read and usually learn songs by ear

As promised in last week’s post (Singers who learn by ear vs. those who use sheet music – what happens when they swap?), this is the first of two posts helping you cope with an unfamiliar way of learning songs.

Many people love to sing, but don’t read music. That shouldn’t exclude them from joining choirs or attending singing workshops.

photo by Judy Baxter

In this post I’ll show you how to cope if you don’t read music and usually learn songs by ear, but are asked to learn a song by using sheet music.

Singers who learn by ear vs. those who use sheet music – what happens when they swap?

The Natural Voice Practitioners’ Network (NVPN) has done a great deal to dispel the myth that you have to be able to read music to be in a choir.

photo by Tichonov / Тихонов

There are now plenty of choirs around where people sing and perform to a high standard learning all the songs by ear.

But sometimes a singer who learns by ear might attend a singing workshop where sheet music is handed out. How will they cope?

Your music theory questions please

I’ve been planning for a long time to write a beginner’s guide to music theory and jargon for singers who learn by ear.

Photo by Cuito Cuanavale

I’m going to try very hard to write it this summer. Honest!

So ... I’m asking for your input.

What musical jargon or concepts would you like me to explain?

I’m just going to cover those bits of theory that a singer in a community choir who learns by ear might encounter. I’m not going to deal with written music (so nothing about repeat signs, key signatures, treble clefs, etc.).

Do leave a comment and let me know if there’s anything particular you’d like me to cover, whether it be ‘thirds’ or ‘semitone’ or ‘pitch’. Any questions welcome, no matter how elementary they might seem.

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

Asking for sheet music in a ‘learn by ear’ choir

This post is part of a series of occasional Questions and Answers. Just use the contact form if you want to submit a question.

Philippa writes:

“How do you respond when you get asked directly for sheet music? I’ve had this a few times now, usually by men interestingly! I’ve not had a woman ask me for dots yet, although when I first joined a community choir five years ago I was the person asking for music.

“I have managed to say no nicely until now, and explain my logic for not giving out music. I find it hard to refuse as I’m a people pleaser, but I totally agree that as a choir leader you can never please everyone and I’m not going to tie myself in knots trying to!”

I met a woman the other day who was interested in joining my choir, but it clashed with another choir she was in. She then said that if she had joined my choir she would have to have the music. Even if I didn't give it to her, she would write it down herself!

This woman is a control freak. She needs to be in control and hates that eggy place where you’re not quite sure what’s going on (see The importance of being confused). She has a method (sheet music) that she knows works and sticks to it. It’s her security blanket.

You need to point out to people that reading music is a learnt skill and is not necessary to be able to sing (see Music notation – do singers need it?). It’s an invention, an aide memoire originally developed to help those learning hundreds of chants (easy to get lost with them!). The vast majority of the world’s singers do not read music, neither is most of the world’s music written down.

People need to trust the learning process (it takes longer than they think) and not expect instant results. We have become a visual culture, so need to re-learn how to LISTEN. See Learning songs by ear.

So ... I don’t hand out written music to teach songs. I use it myself to remind me of parts because I have 600 songs in my repertoire and am not good at remembering all of them! Once we have learnt a song and sung it for a few months, I might hand out music if someone asks so they can play it at home on the piano or pass it onto someone else. But only if they know it perfectly by ear first.

I make it very clear that my groups do not use sheet music. There are plenty of choirs out there who do, so they can go and join one of those if they want.

Men often request sheet music because bass parts are usually very hard to remember as they often don’t have a recognisable tune. In fact, many of my basses invent their own music notation for just that purpose. But if you teach them to listen to the chord changes, then they will soon know when to go up and down.

You can’t please all the people all the time. Be assertive and clear about what you offer. There are plenty of other choirs that people can join.

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

 

Using sheet music to teach and learn songs: pros and cons

Last week I looked at what music notation is for and if you need it to sing.

Sight reading by discopalace

This week I’d like to lay out what I think are the benefits and shortfalls of using sheet music to teach and learn songs.

advantages of teaching by ear

• no looking at pieces of paper – singers can focus properly on their director (and it’s not a problem when they forget to bring their music with them!)
• no need to photocopy – or buy lots of copies of the music (cheaper and less hassle)
• complex rhythms will be learnt through the body – and not intellectually on the page
• emphasis on ears and not eyes – it is, after all, an aural and oral medium
• easier to add clapping, dance steps, etc. – without bits of paper getting lost or books being dropped
• no ‘perfect’ rendition to aim for – the singers won’t have the constant reminder of an ‘ideal’ version of the music staring at them
• no possibility of reading ahead – seeing the whole score at once can seem daunting, also if the song is taught and built up in segments, it can often be learnt better
• learning together creates a sense of community – people are able to look at and listen to each other and feel they are all part of one whole
• complex rhythms often look very difficult when written down – whereas if you just teach it by engaging the body and getting everyone moving together, it can be much easier

advantages of using sheet music

• can teach very complex songs – especially very long or structurally difficult ones
• helps visual learners – although it’s good to exercise ears more than eyes
• have a back up – the written music can remind us of our parts and/ or we can rehearse on our own at home
• egalitarian – musical director doesn’t have all the power or act as gatekeeper, everyone is in the same position with the music in front of them
• easy to disseminate music (but we now have recording devices, so not so relevant)
• creates ‘product’ – a composition or arrangement that can be sold

Is there anything I’ve left out? Do leave a comment. If you’re reading this by email or in an RSS reader, you should find a ‘comment’ link at the bottom that you can click on.

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

 

Music notation: what is it good for and do we need it to sing?

Do you have to be able to read music to sing? Lots of people believe so and are put off joining choirs as a result.

I don’t use written music when I teach, but does that mean I am limited in what I can teach? And am I making life difficult for those who can read music?

I want to make music as widely accessible as possible, so I don’t use unnecessary musical jargon or rely on sheet music. All the groups and workshops I run are open-access in the sense that everyone is welcome and no experience is necessary.

My argument is that the vast majority of the world’s folk or traditional music has never been written down and it is learnt by ear in the cultures that it originates from. And that is my repertoire.

I teach by ear

I don’t use written music when I teach. I teach by ear, singing each part in turn and getting people to sing back until they’ve got it. This is partly due to the fact that a lot of the repertoire I teach comes from cultures where songs are passed down orally from generation to generation.

Of course, what I do is artificial. If you came from the same culture as the song you would have heard it repeatedly since you were a baby. Gradually you would have become more familiar with it until you knew it off by heart. At no point would you have seen either the music or the lyrics written down. You would have learnt everything by listening.

Trying to replicate that in a choir or singing workshop is fairly ridiculous as we’re trying to short-circuit years and years of repetition. But we try, and after a few weeks it’s surprising how much has gone in. More importantly, people retain it for a long time. All without seeing anything written down. (OK, maybe I do put the lyrics on the wall from time to time, but it’s not our native language!)

So what do we need music notation for? (Liz Garnett has also written on this subject recently: On Musical Literacy)

what is musical notation for?

There are forms of music notation dating back to Ancient Greece and before. These simple ways of describing music visually consisted of symbols representing relative pitch and note duration. The original urge to notate music was probably for several reasons:

• to be able to pass songs and music over long distances as accurately as possible
• to remind the singer of how a newly learnt song goes
• to make sure that we’re all singing the same version of a song
• to help with the learning of a song which has a fairly monotonous melody

In 8th Century Europe, monks in monasteries regularly used symbols (known as neumes) to put plainchants down on paper. Because the notation couldn’t express exact timing or absolute pitch, the parchments served mainly as a reminder to those who already knew a tune. They were not that useful to people learning a new tune if they had never heard it before.

Gradually systems of music notation became more sophisticated until we arrive at the five-staff system that most people are familiar with today. This system originated in European classical music, but is not the only system around. There are other forms of notation in, for example, India, China and Indonesia, as well as alternative Western notation systems (such as Solfège) and graphic and pictorial forms invented for specific experimental compositions.

In many of the choirs that I have run, the basses often invent their own notation, a version of early neume-based notations. The length of a horizontal line reflects the length of a note, and the vertical distance between lines shows the relative pitch. Like early Western notation, this is just an aid to memory and can’t be used to learn a song from scratch. The basses tend to invent it because bass parts often don’t have a recognisable tune so they need to know where notes go up and down and how long they stay on it (rather like plainchant).

Since music notation has evolved and can now express complex rhythms, absolute pitch, and accurate note duration, it can be used as a tool for learning and not just an aid to memorising a song already learnt. It was also a useful means by which music could be disseminated over long distances before the advent of recording devices.

what music is notated?

It is important to remember that much of the world’s music is not written down. The vast majority of music in the world is traditional or folk music which is transmitted orally. When early song-collectors (usually Westerners trained in music theory and notation) arrived they would have to notate what they heard because they had no recording devices.

However, not only is it very difficult for Western notation to cope with complex rhythms, microtones, unusual scales or modes, but the song-collectors would often ‘edit’ what they were notating to fit in with preconceived notions of ‘proper’ musical structure. Sometimes a harmony would appear ‘wrong’ or each verse might have a different rhythmic structure which would get simplified when notated, or a tricky rhythm might be mis-heard. Also, since these songs came from living traditions, the song might be entirely different depending on which day of the week it was collected or who was singing it!

The vast majority of notated music is composed by a known individual (rather than being created by ‘Anon’ and handed down over generations) and of Western origin. This gives a very distorted picture of the world’s music if we only pay attention to written scores.

learning to read

Rather like when the bible was only available in Latin, the fact that you have to learn to read music means that it is easy for an elite to arise. Those who could read and write music became musical gate-keepers who decided what people could hear and what music got passed on. Inevitably it became a class issue.

The middle classes, who wanted to behave and sound different from the ‘rough’ working classes, promoted the idea that ‘proper music’ (i.e. notated) was ‘high art’ and anything folk or traditional was somehow less worthy. Because traditional music was passed on orally and not written down, it didn’t count.

Andrew Emmet has written in a comment on this blog:

“We have a lot in common, but I know one of our differences is that you choose not to have written music available. To me this is like reading a story to someone, but never teaching them to read.”

The implication in Andrew’s comment is that only music ‘literature’ counts. Only stories (or songs) written down in books are worth reading or singing. Stories and songs passed on through the oral tradition don’t count.

But the oral tradition is a living tradition. Books are fixed and set in time. Sheet music is like an insect in amber. There is no longer scope for change, embellishment, or additions.

Reading a book is one experience as is watching a movie. But seeing a live theatre production or hearing a great storyteller is something else. There is room for both, but one is not less than the other. It is, of course, possible to sing without being able to read music.

the notation is not the song

It is impossible to notate a song accurately whether it is a written version of a song heard ‘in the wild’ or the score created by a composer. If it were possible, then there would be just one, perfect, canonical performance of every song or piece of music in the world.

However, some people believe that the written score somehow represents a Platonic ideal that we strive to achieve. But we can never know exactly what the composer intended, or whether the piece of music we have in our hand is an accurate representation of the song it is notating.

next week

Next week I’ll consider the pros and cons of using sheet music, and in a later post I’ll consider what to do in a ‘learn by ear’ choir if someone insists on having the written score.

In the meantime, do let me know what your attitude is to sheet music. Do you use it? Do you find it useful or does it have its drawbacks? What kind of repertoire do you sing? Do you use an alternative system to the popular five-staff system? Do drop by and leave a comment.

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

 

Music jargon: questions, questions.

I’m planning to write a post soon which will be a complete beginner’s guide to the musical jargon that singers may encounter.

If there’s a particular concept, word, or bit of jargon that you’d like explained, then please leave a comment to let me know.

I’m not going to try and cover complete music theory, but just those bits that a singer in a community choir might encounter.

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

Learning songs by ear

This is a revised version of a post which first appeared in February 2007 as Papa’s got a brand new song.

Many people have no idea how a song is learnt by ear. They assume that written music is a must. But don’t forget that people have been singing (and learning) songs for thousands of years without music.

my listening ears by niclindh

But what is the best way to go about learning a song by ear? How long does it take? Are there any shortcuts? Why bother?

new season, new songs

The beginning of any new season with the choir is always shaky as I usually start three or four new songs at once. We never finish a song in a single session, but keep a few on the go for several weeks at various stages of completion. I personally believe that this variety is a better way of learning (but what do I know?!).

In the first few weeks singers often don’t have a clear grasp of where a song is going or what the final version will actually sound like. Some people have suggested that I play the choir the full song before I start to teach it, but often I don’t have a recording or perhaps it’s a new arrangement that I’ve not tried before. In any case, I want people to keep an open mind about how we might end up presenting the song, rather than slavishly trying to reproduce what they’ve heard on a recording.

it’s new for me too!

Another issue is that I might not be familiar enough with the song, despite the fact that I’ve spent ages on it at home!

I practice and practice and think I know it inside out, but then in front of the choir when everyone’s a bit tired and we’ve already begun two new songs that evening, I suddenly realise that I’ve not totally nailed a particular interval or part of the harmony and it all goes pear-shaped.

This can also happen when choir members are learning or revising songs on their own. You practice at home and think you know it perfectly, but once you’re at choir with a bit of pressure and all the other singers around you, it all goes out the window.

My advice is to practice the song in as many different contexts as possible: whilst doing the washing up or driving or cooking or gardening ... in fact anywhere other than just sitting quietly doing nothing. This will help to prepare you for the many distractions when you’re back with the choir.

repetition, repetition, repetition

Unlike most people in the choir, I get to learn all the parts of every song. This is mainly due to simple repetition. I now know all the parts to over 600 songs!

People often ask: “how do you manage it?”, “how do you remember them all?” Maybe I have some talent for it (I know I have a good ear) but the main thing is that I get to repeat each song or part at least four times when teaching a new song – that’s four times more than most people.

So here’s a hint when learning a new harmony song: listen to the other parts attentively while they’re being taught (resist the temptation to natter!), you then learn the words more easily and can also sing your part in your head at the same time and see how the harmony works. In short, you get to repeat the new song or part many more times.

we’re no longer an aural or oral culture

In many of the cultures that I source songs from, people start “learning” songs when they are children. They repeatedly hear others singing the same song, over and over again from a very early age. Even if there’s no conscious effort to learn it, a song will get into the brain of those who hear it despite themselves.

We see a similar effect with the children of choir members who hear their parents singing their part around the house. Before we know it, they know the song better than we do!

Basically, we are trying to short circuit years of repeatedly hearing a song in different contexts, so what we are doing is slightly artificial. To make things easier, musical notation was invented and people started using written scores instead of really listening and relying on their own memory. But then you never really get the song inside you.

it takes time

It turns out that some people believe that they can’t sing because they think that ‘proper’ singers only have to hear a song once before they’ve learnt it perfectly. It often comes as a surprise when I tell them that even professional singers take a few months before they really get to grips with a new song.

So be patient. It will take many weeks before a song is really under your belt. I teach a new song for several weeks, then have a little gap before revisiting it. I also try to revisit it after a break, and again at regular intervals thereafter. Finally, after several years (!) the song will have finally bedded in.

why bother?

Sometimes when I explain to people what it is that I do, they find it hard to understand that I don’t use written music (or a piano). It is beyond their comprehension that songs can be taught and learnt without these aids.

Occasionally somebody joins my choir with music-reading ability and finds it a real struggle at first to learn by ear. But music is an aural medium and not a visual one, so why do we insist that people look at bits of paper instead of really listening?

That’s one reason I don’t use written music: I want people to develop their listening skills. But the main reason is that I want singing and music-making to be accessible to as wide a range of people as possible, regardless of any musical training or experience they might have. Consequently I don’t assume any prior knowledge and thus teach by ear.

Being in a choir is about working as a team and paying attention to the hand-waver out front (or musical director if you prefer!). It’s much, much easier to do this when you’re not looking at a piece of paper.

I believe that singers who learn by ear develop a better sense of musicality and aural awareness. So just put that score down and listen!

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

Finding songs for your choir

This is a revised version of a post which first appeared in February 2007 as Where did you get that song, where did you get that song?

I’m often asked by concert-goers and choir leaders alike:

“Where do you get all your songs from?”

Well, here’s the short answer to this simple question:

“From everyone and everywhere.”

Now for the long answer!

When I started my first choir back in 1997 I reckoned I had enough songs to last me for one term (about 10 weeks) after which I was seriously thinking about panicking or retiring. But now, somehow, after teaching in excess of 500 songs over the last ten years, I have another 600 waiting to be taught!

Like most things, when you become seriously involved in something new, your radar begins to pick up signals from previously unnoticed sources. Here are some of the sources that I use:

• radio
• CDs
• workshops
• songbooks
• learning tapes
• internet
• arranging yourself

In what follows, I’m focusing on my own special interest: harmony singing from different cultures across the globe.

radio

I listen to a lot of music in the car (all that driving between Coventry and Stamford!). As well as CDs I listen to the radio a lot – both live, and MP3s of programmes I’ve recorded on my digital radio at home.

I often tune in to Late Junction on BBC Radio 3. I also used to listen to World Routes on a Saturday afternoon on my way over to Stamford, but now that they’ve moved it, I have to miss it. But these days, for those in the UK it’s possible to listen to programmes you’ve missed on the BBC iPlayer.

I might hear a wonderful track that might be suitable for the choir, so when I get home I use the internet (a wonderful tool!) to look at the playlist for the programme. Then I track down the CD on the web (using Google) and try to listen to a few more tracks before possibly buying the CD (again, usually over the internet).

CDs

I have ended up with loads of world music and roots CDs in my collection. If I want to teach one of the songs I can often work out the parts from the recording (if it’s already in a harmony arrangement) or I work out the tune and put my own harmonies on.

I usually do background research on the internet to try and find the lyrics (I will never teach a song phonetically from a recording unless I can find the proper lyrics in the original language, and preferably a translation or a rough meaning).

Sometime I might stumble across a written score or existing arrangement which I can buy or copy (anything for an easy life!).

You have to be very careful when searching for lyrics and song information on the internet. Never believe everything you read! Rather like finding a builder, I always look for at least three independent sources. I stress independent, because some sites just copy and paste information from other sites! I have sometimes found the background to a song which seems a bit suspicious and have ended up tracking down the individual who wrote it and asked them for their source. Often it’s just hearsay!

You can also try contacting the record label. I emailed Angelique Kidjo’s label and they kindly sent me written lyrics to some of her songs, together with a translation. Also permission to do an arrangement.

I’m going to write about this at some point, but do make sure that you have permission to arrange a song. Copyright is a tricky subject. Don’t always assume that because a song appears to be in the public domain that it isn’t in copyright.

workshops

I learn a lot of songs by attending workshops. Not only is it a great place to collect songs, but as a workshop leader I also think it’s important to be a participant sometimes. It also counts as professional development. We choir and workshop leaders are giving out so much that it’s nice to be on the receiving end for a change!

Sometimes I record the workshop whilst I’m there (although increasingly I just want to be a punter and enjoy the workshop), but sometimes I can get the written score or a recording from the workshop leader (or at least they might point me in the direction of a useful source). Do check with the workshop leader that it’s OK to record and also to use their arrangement. They will usually be very pleased, just make sure you credit them as arranger.

songbooks

I collect many written scores and songbooks. I buy books from a variety of sources (again the internet is a good place to start) as well as sheet music for individual songs.

A good place to start is the Natural Voice Practitioners’ Network (NVPN) website which has a resources section of members’ stuff divided into Songbooks, Teaching CDs, etc. The NVPN have recently published a fabulous book of short and easy song by its members: To Grace the Earth. Highly recommended!

Nickomo’s books are particularly useful and he also transcribes songs taught by a range of people at the Unicorn summer singing camps. Also Nick Prater (focus on gospel and New Zealand) and Ali Burns (focus on traditional songs from the British Isles), both prolific arrangers and song writers.

Northern Harmony books and recordings can be bought from their website (they take sterling cheques as payment). They have lots of songbooks and CDs of African, Balkan and Georgian songs.

Two women’s groups in the US also produce songbooks: Kitka and Libana.

There are various world music publishers out there (e.g. World Music Press), publishers of particular genres (e.g. Bulgarian: Voxbulgarica) and general acappella publishers (e.g. A-cappella.com).

learning tapes

Some people out there do wonderful acappella arrangements for choirs, but don’t write music or choose to make their work available for people who don’t read music. This ranges from the wonderful Dee Jarlett (of the Bristol Gasworks Choir) to Ysaye Barnwell of Sweet Honey in the Rock (‘Singing in the African American Tradition’). Some arrangers make both available, i.e. written score accompanied by a CD with all the parts on. This is the case with most of the books you will find on the Natural Voice Practitioners’ Network website.

internet

The internet is a wonderful resource if used properly. I’ve managed to stumble across lots of free harmony arrangements (e.g. Choral Public Domain library), beautiful songs collected by other choirs (I found the most amazing Russian orthodox song on the website of a male voice choir in the Netherlands), songbooks that you didn’t know existed (I was searching for ‘Mbube’ when I came across a German book of South African songs), and interesting people and choirs who I’ve ended up swapping songs with.

I also use Last.fm which is a free music streaming website with a huge catalogue of music from all over the world. I go to their Radio service and pick a group/ artist (e.g. Kitka, Ladysmith Black Mambazo) or genre of music that I’m interested in (e.g. Bulgarian, gypsy) and the service creates a temporary radio station playing just that kind of music. Often something strange and unexpected pops up and I’ve found a new song to teach!

arranging

Over the years I have started to write (and sell!) more of my own song arrangements. I might find a lovely tune in a old music book (I get lots from second hand shops) or hear an old folk song on a CD that I’ve borrowed from the local library. 

Fortunately I read music so can usually pick out the tune on my guitar, but some traditional music has fiendishly difficult rhythms or harmonies so I really need to hear a recording first and then use the score as an aide memoir and basis for teaching and harmonising.

Being a pretty poor musician, I often type the score into the notation programme I have on my computer (Finale PrintMusic about £70) simply so I can transpose it (lame, I know!). There is a free cut-down version that you can use called Finale NotePad, but it doesn’t do anything fancy like transposition.

Sometimes the transposition is not straightforward (the bass becomes too low, or the tenor part is no longer suitable for women, or the top part becomes too high for a community choir) and I need to tinker around and move parts about (which means sometimes the bass get the tune for a change!).

I’ve even been known to actually write the odd song for a particular occasion!

other sources

So there you have it. A mix of listening to CDs and the radio, going to workshops, buying songbooks and written scores, going to the local library, and also receiving suggestions from choir members.

I’m sure there must be loads of other useful resources for finding songs for choirs. Do let me know your favourites.

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

Why basses can’t remember their part

It always seems to be the basses who forget their part. I used to think it was a bloke thing, but now I realise that there is often a good reason why it’s so hard to remember.

droning on

The bass part often follows the root notes of the chords as they progress through the piece. If it’s a relatively straightforward song, then there will sometimes only be three chords. This means that the basses only  get to sing three notes!

Even worse, if the basses are singing a constant drone to a song, which often happens in Georgian singing for example, they may only get two notes!

dude, where’s my tune?

With just two or three notes, it’s very hard to create any kind of interesting, memorable memory. Most of the time the basses are wondering how long they have to stay on this note and when they have to move onto the next one. There are often no clues for when to change, and no easy way of remembering.

The tops and the altos usually have an interesting melody to remember (with lots of notes!). The tenors can too, but in any case usually have some sexy blues notes in there to signal where they are.

But the poor basses have no road map of where to go. No wonder they find it hard to remember a featureless landscape.

the invention of musical notation

In the majority of community choirs that I’ve run, most people can’t read music. Give them a written score and it’s like hieroglyphics to them.

But very often I notice that singers in the bass section all have scraps of paper in their hands covered in scribbles. On closer inspection, the scribbles are a series of horizontal lines of different lengths, some above others. Something like this:

“Blimey!”, I say, “musical notation.”

“Oh, no”, they reply, “just some scribbles to make it easier for me to remember. I can’t read music.”

I ask them to explain how their scribbles help them.

“Well, the higher the line, the higher the note. The longer the line is, the longer I have to stay on that note. When the line changes, that’s when I change note. And the size of the gaps between the lines tell me if it’s a big jump in pitch, or a little jump.”

As I said before: musical notation!

Of course, these scribbles need a little tweaking before they become accurate enough, but it suffices for most bass parts as an aide memoire. You can see a more advanced version of this pictorial representation in my post Complex songs and learning by ear: musical maps.

quality time

Since the bass part often doesn’t have that many notes, choir leaders sometimes leave the teaching of the bass part until last. They also maybe don’t spend that much time on it since they believe it’s an ‘easy’ part. Sure, it might be easy-ish to learn as it doesn’t have many notes, but that can mean it’s fiendishly difficult to remember!

I always make sure when teaching a harmony song that I don’t always start with the tune (whichever part it’s in). Especially if it’s a brand new song that nobody has heard before, it doesn’t really matter which part you start with. So sometimes we kick off with the bass part.

If it’s one of those simplistic bass parts with very few notes, it’s hard to teach in isolation as there is no melody to anchor it to. On the other hand, it’s a great opportunity to really nail the rhythm of a piece before all the other parts come in. And when they do, they will have the benefit of a solid bass part to work with.

If you leave the bass part until last, it means they will have heard the other parts repeatedly so will often end up with some kind of melody locked in their heads already. So when they come to learn their own, relatively monotonous part, they may well go up and down in all the wrong places!

Treat your basses well and they will return the compliment.

not enough voices to go round

Certainly here in the UK many choirs find it difficult to recruit enough men. Which means that the bass section can be quite sparse.

Now the other sections have no problems remembering their parts. Or do they? There are lots of them, so as long as, say, 75% of them can remember, you don’t really notice those who are struggling. If someone is not too sure of their part, they can hide a little and take their time without being noticed.

But if your bass section only has six singers, it can be quite exposing. And if 75% of them can’t get it right, it can easily put the others off.

So maybe it’s not fair to judge the bass section in the same way as those other burgeoning sections of the choir.

confound those singers!

If you have a choir who are up for it, and a relatively straightforward harmony song, you can teach all the parts to all the singers. This will often give other parts an appreciation of the difficulties faced by the basses.

Another option is to switch parts around and give the bass part to someone else. This isn’t always possible, but giving the basses the tune from time to time can boost their confidence.

I’ve just taught a three-part version of The Water of Tyne. It has a lovely bass part which meanders all over the place. Too good not to share! So on different verses I have the basses singing the tune, and the tops singing the bass part an octave higher.

good arrangers write good tunes

You may be a lucky bass who has never had any of the problems I’ve outlined. This probably means that you’ve only ever sung songs that have been arranged well.

Any really good choral arranger will make sure that every part is singable and memorable with a good, interesting self-contained melody. Every singer will have something meaty to learn, and every part will stand on its own.

I learnt an arrangement of The Copper Family’s Christmas Song arranged by Alison Burns some years ago (available in Raining Bliss and Benison). I was taught the bass part and for years – until I came to teach the song myself – I assumed that the melody was in the bass. It turns out that the melody is sung by the tops, but the arrangement is so good that the bass part feels like a melody of its own!

or it could be a man thing!

Of course, I could be completely wrong and maybe after all it's just thing about men and their bad memories.

What’s your experience? Are you a bass who has trouble remembering their part? Does your choir have to wait while the male basses get reminded of that they’re supposed to be singing?

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

Music notation – do singers need it?

I teach songs without using any kind of musical notation. Like other members of the Natural Voice Practitioners’ Network I believe that singing should be accessible to all.

You can learn songs by ear without ever having to know anything about music theory, notation, composition, harmonic structure, musical jargon, etc. But notation obviously has a role in singing. I’d like to look at what that role might be, and why many people are intimidated by musical knowledge (see Mind your language).

music notation — what is it?

Wikipedia defines musical notation as:

“any system which represents aurally perceived music, through the use of written symbols.”

It goes on to say that the earliest know examples of notation date back to Sumeria more than 4,000 years ago.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica says that musical notation is a

“visual record of heard or imagined musical sound, or a set of visual instructions for performance of music. It usually takes written or printed form.”

chasing shadows

Why do we need musical notation? One main reason is as an aid to memory (since I have a huge repertoire of songs to teach, and I have to know all the parts, I often find myself using sheet music when I’m teaching in case I forget how one of the harmonies goes!). It also allows us to preserve music over long periods of time. Our memories may be fallible, but the written score doesn’t change.

However, notation is not an exact science. As many composers have discovered, even though they try to describe their music as accurately as possible, it is always open to interpretation. Otherwise there would only ever be one perfect, canonical performance or recording of any piece of music!

When trying to notate an existing piece of music, there will always be errors. The annotator may not hear correctly; they may refuse to acknowledge unfamiliar harmonies or rhythms (many folk song collectors edited songs that they found because it didn’t fit in with their perception of how the music should sound!); the singers performing may make a mistake (which will be faithfully recorded).

music is a living thing

One of the biggest problems when trying to notate living music is that – even if we could notate it perfectly – it would only represent one particular performance at one specific time. If you came back and listened the next day, the song might sound different.

There are many apocryphal tales of people hearing wonderful South African singing during a church service and notating it. But when they came back the next week, they discovered that all the harmonies were different! People were making it up as they went along and improvising around well-known structures.

So many song collectors come back from their travels with a supposed definitive example of a particular song, whereas if they had collected it at a different time, or if they had travelled to the next village, they would have heard a different version.

We are trying in vain to capture a living thing. Bearing this in mind, we shouldn’t get too upset when, in rehearsal, there may be more than one harmony going on in the alto section for example!

not written in stone

Singing should be fun, creative and alive. But often we hear people say: “that’s not how it’s supposed to sound!” The danger here is that musical notation can often take on the role of dictator. It can imply that there is only one way – and certainly only one ‘right’ way – to sing a song.

However, throughout history songs have changed over time. The folk tradition is a living tradition. People have adapted words to fit their times, have changed (or stolen) tunes to suit them, have added new harmonies, have misheard or mis-remembered lyrics and melodies, have performed a song in the style of their own community. That is what makes music a living force.

Having a written score can represent an academic and tyrannical view which may well intimidate those new to music-making.

inventing new notations

Many people claim not to understand musical notation. They wouldn’t know what to do if presented with a musical score. Yet quietly in choir they are inventing a whole new notation system!

This especially applies to the basses who may often not have a particularly memorable or melodic part in a song. They find it hard to remember where the pitches go up and down so they begin to draw horizontal lines on a piece of paper to indicate this. The higher the line relative to the rest of the line, the higher the note. If they need to indicate a large pitch change, then the line will have a big gap from the previous line. If the pitch only changes very little (by a semitone for example, or by a note that is not in the scale of the song) then they may add a mark like a dot or small arrow to indicate this.

To show when the pitch changes, they make the length of the lines connect with how long the notes are to be sung. You can see examples of this in Northern Harmony’s song books where they notate some Corsican songs using this method (see Complex songs and learning by ear).

When you point out to the basses that they are, in fact, both reading and writing music, they usually strenuously deny it!

learning styles

Most teachers know that individuals have very different learning styles. They are usually divided into visual, auditory and tactile/ kinaesthetic. I am a very visual learner, and although I can learn songs by ear quite easily, I usually have to have at least one quick glance at the lyrics in order to be able to remember them more easily. I also like the song teacher to use their hands or some kind of diagram to indicate how the melody line works.

Auditory learners are perhaps the most suited to learning songs by ear. Most visual learners will need to see something, although not necessarily written notation. Most people respond well to the teacher indicating by hand where the melody goes up and down using, for example, a very simplified version of the Curwen Hand Signs developed by Kodály.

Tactile/ kinaesthetic learners learn by moving, doing and touching. Such learners often find it easier to mirror the hand movements of the person teaching the song. They also find it much easier when taking the song’s rhythm into their body.

notation as a security blanket

Some visual learners will prefer to have a written score. But many who insist on having written music, may actually be aural or tactile learners. They are just so used to having music that they need it as a security blanket! This also appeals to those people who don’t like making mistakes and believe that the written score will help them to get it perfectly right (forgetting that the notation itself is error-prone!).

Sometimes, taking the music away can free people up and introduce them to a new way of learning. Learning songs by ear is like exercising a muscle. Once you’ve done it for a while, it just gets easier. Many people who insist on written music are reluctant to spend time in that fuzzy, uncomfortable place where we don’t know exactly what we’re doing and we haven’t fully grasped the song yet.

learning by ear is a different experience

Being able to sight read gives immediate access to a vast range of songs from a huge range of cultures and time. If we want to have a good old sing song with a bunch of strangers, then just get the songbooks out and we’re off! But a couple of hours later, with no songbook available, we just have the memory of the good time we have. It’s very unlikely that we’ll remember any of the songs themselves.

If we learn a song by ear it will take us much longer, but it also gives us the chance to explore it in detail, discover all the subtle nuances within it, really listen to the harmonies, enjoy playing around with the words. Songs learnt like this will stay with us and become part of us. Once we have truly learnt a song like this we can start making it our own and putting something of ourselves into the singing of it. We will have made a much deeper connection with the music.

the advantages of not having sheet music

• the singers will actually look at the teacher/ conductor
• there are no papers to drop on the floor/ leave at home/ lose
• you can incorporate movement and gesture to aid song learning
• it looks better in performance – the audience will be able to see the singers!

when to use notation

I can’t think of that many times when having written notation is necessary, but here is what I’ve come up with:

• if you want to sing a whole bunch of songs quickly with a group of people who have no songs in common (e.g. Shape Note conventions)
• if a song is fiendishly difficult and has lots of sustained notes (I tried to teach Samuel Barber’s “Agnus Dei" by ear and it just didn’t work!)
• if a song is long and either complex or repetitive (although Ysaye Barnwell has apparently said that she would like to teach the Messiah by ear!)

I’m really interested in how complex a song can be and still be taught by ear. I’ve written a previous post about it: Complex songs and learning by ear, but am still not sure. I’ve tried using diagrams to help with the overall structure of a song. This helps some people, but not all!

 

 

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

Blind to the joys of singing in a choir?

I was listening to Radio 4 last Saturday morning and caught the end of Saturday Live. A listener, Annie Rimmer, was talking about her Inheritance Tracks: the music that she had inherited from another person, and the track that she would like to pass on. For the latter she chose part of Monteverdi’s vespers of 1610: Nisi Dominus.

Annie has a disease which means that she is slowly losing her sight. Despite this, she joined a local choral society three years ago. She said: “It thrills me to sing with that group of people. There are about 150 of us, all of us amateurs. You’re all equal. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve got the most beautiful voice or the most average voice, everybody’s got a part to play. It’s the totality, everything coming together, that’s such an amazing experience”.

What a brilliant way to sum up the joys of singing in a choir!

Annie had sung the Monteverdi at a concert which coincided with her 50^th birthday and said that she couldn’t keep the smile off her face. “It’s so joyful. It’s not about the words, it’s about the music”.

Because she is losing her sight, it takes Annie many, many hours to prepare the music so that she can see it. However, she knows that she’s not going to be able to do that forever. “I know that there’s going to come a time over the next few years when I’m going to have to stop. I know that’s going to feel like the most enormous loss”.

Having discovered the joys of singing and the obvious pleasure it gives her, this was the point in the programme that made me very sad (and angry!). WHY does Annie have to give up singing in a choir???!!! Once again someone has been led to believe that they have to have a written score (and be able to read it) in order to sing. Which makes me wonder how the many, many oral singing traditions throughout the world continue to exist and thrive. And did people simply not sing before the invention of musical notation?

Other than the most complex of pieces (see Complex songs and learning by ear), almost every song can be taught be ear. Even relatively complicated pieces and those in several harmony parts. In fact, when the rhythms of a piece are very difficult, it’s often easier to learn by ear!

Having heard the complexity of the Monteverdi piece mentioned above, I am convinced it would be possible to learn by ear. But if Annie finds the local choral society’s repertoire to be too difficult, then she could easily find a local Natural Voice choir to join.

There are many wholly blind choirs out there as a quick Google will show. They seem to manage OK!

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Where does the music reside?

I met a painter in a gallery today and he asked me if I was an artist or had any interest in fine art. I told him that I didn’t paint, but that I worked with music and that I was also fascinated by the creative process. He then asked me: “Where do you think the music resides? Is it in the written score?”. I was rather lost for words at that moment and didn’t really understand the question. Finally I answered: “I believe that music resides in the humanity of the people creating it”.

We went on to talk about how some people are attracted to the purity of the written score and the idea of the perfect realisation of it in practice. Of course, one can never perfectly realise a written piece of music (not least because music notation is not an exact system) because the people who create the music are error-prone and not perfect creatures. But even if we could do that, wouldn’t that be rather like machine-produced music? I for one don’t really enjoy choral concerts where the singing is so, so, ever so precise. The enunciation is perfect, as is the blend of voices – so much so that it can sometimes sound like a single voice singing. No! Give me some humanity! I love the different textures of all the individuals in the choir, I appreciate everyone’s unique contribution to the overall sound. I enjoy it when not everyone is singing exactly the same pitch – that is where the harmonics, overtones and fullness of the sound come from. I adore it when each person’s timing is slightly different, when small errors are made. In short, I love it when all the imperfections that we human beings are made up of are fully expressed through the singing.

I have heard singers who have ‘beautiful’ voices, who sing perfectly in tune, whose technique and talent are remarkable, and yet they leave me unmoved. However, I can hear some rusty old recording of a group of elderly villagers in the Balkans giving voice to an age-old traditional song, and I can be almost moved to tears. They are communicating with me, they are telling me the story, they are working as one to express their humanity and their joy, and I in turn am moved.

This weekend I was in the rare position of running three entirely different workshops in three different places with three different sets of participants. It reinforced for me what happens in workshops. All three were open access, no experience necessary, no musical scores in sight, no real expectations (except to have fun!), and yet they all produced the most wonderful, magical sounds. The whole experience was uplifting both for me and the participants. It reminded me how universal singing is, and how egalitarian and levelling singing harmony together can be. I had no idea who these people were, what they did for a living, or if they had had any singing training or experience. The only instruction was to sing a part that they felt was comfortably within their own range. People ended up standing next to strangers who they had only just met, and yet they worked as a team helping to create an overall sound. Nobody was really worried about whether they had a ‘beautiful’ voice or not as they were soon taken over by the music itself. And I just stood back and listened to the most beautiful harmony singing and was moved once more by the power of the music. And where did the music reside at that moment? In the hearts and souls of every single person who made up the group.

Yet still – unfortunately – people believe that they can’t ‘sing’ or that music-making is not meant for them. One of the workshop participants wrote to me: “I’m completely new to this kind of thing, having believed all my life that singing in choirs was something that ‘other people’ do.” Luckily he realised that singing is open to all of us and has now joined a local choir.

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Making a song and dance of it

From my experience with choirs and singing groups it appears on the face of it that we are a rhythmically challenged nation!

I often try to introduce a bit of clapping or steps or syncopation into our warm-ups and songs and am always amazed at the apparent lack of co-ordination and body-awareness amongst the group. As soon as I begin teaching some simple dance steps, or try to clap a simple rhythm that is not on the beat, several people just sit out and don’t even bother to try because they “know” they can’t do it. And some people sit out because “I’ve come here to sing, not dance!”

But of course, we do all have a good sense of rhythm, it’s just that we don’t practice it very often. Rather like people who think they can’t “sing” because they can’t immediately pick up a tune – they are simply out of practice with their listening skills.

It seems to me that this is a cultural phenomenon. Ours has become a very visual and rational/ mental culture. We use our eyes and thinking brains far more than our ears and bodies. Once people have sung in a choir for some time, they get in contact again with their innate listening abilities. They learn to trust their ears and not just their eyes. Similarly, given time and patience, I believe that people can re-discover their innate sense of rhythm and body-awareness.

In this culture we tend to compartmentalise different activities. So, for example, when we’re singing we’re singing, we’re not dancing, so we don’t need to pay any attention to our bodies. And when we’re dancing or clapping out a rhythm, we don’t need our voices. I came across this time and time again when I used to teach at drama school. The lessons themselves were compartmentalised: a movement class followed by a voice class followed by a tap class. When I arrived and tried to teach everything at the same time, there were a lot of confused students!

However, in many other cultures – notably many African cultures – there is very little if any separation between dance, vocal melody and rhythm. You only have to see a group of South Africans for instance singing a song and you cannot see where the dance ends and the song begins – it is all the same thing. So when teaching songs from these cultures, we often find it difficult. It is no good trying to count some complex off-beat rhythm in your head using your conscious brain, it’s just too hard. You have to let your body “dance” the rhythm and then the song’s timing will come automatically. Similarly with the complex 7/8 rhythms common in the Balkans – just learn the dance at the same time and it comes easy!

Often we have found ourselves carrying out a complex task such as patting our head whilst rubbing our tummy and find that sweet moment when it all falls into place. But then as soon as we begin to think (“great, it’s working” or “I hope I’m getting it right”) it all goes disastrously wrong! We need to trust our intuition, our body intelligence, our non-rational brain which is just getting on with the task quite nicely thank you.

The Natural Voice approach to singing which I follow places the relationship between breath, body and voice at its heart. We believe that you simply can’t separate these components to be fully in the song. And it’s no coincidence that much of our repertoire comes from cultures which don’t make these separations.

I once met an instrumentalist who wouldn’t even begin to learn tunes from another culture until she’d been to a few dance classes from that culture. She needed to embed the culture’s “dance” into her body before she even picked up her instrument.

A few years back I was taught an amazing Ysaye Barnwell gospel-like song called Lawd it’s midnight. This is an amazing song with some quite tricky rhythms. We learnt it by having the sheet music in our hands and it took a long time to get it right. Most of the difficulties were to do with the cross rhythms. It occurred to me afterwards that we probably would have learnt it a lot faster if we had put the music down and simply let the rhythms into our bodies!

So next time somebody asks you to move or dance at the same time as you're singing, they're not trying to make life difficult for you, they're actually making it easier for you to learn the song. Just go with it!

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Complex songs and learning by ear: musical maps

The choirs and workshops that I lead are run on the principle that music should be accessible to all. One of the outcomes of this is that I don’t use written music to teach since I can’t assume that everyone can read music. This also chimes in with the kind of material that I use which often comes from cultures and traditions where songs are passed down from generation to generation through the oral/ aural tradition. Many such songs are quite short and fairly repetitive without many words, so lend themselves to being taught by ear. This kind of material is particularly suitable for short workshops as the songs are quite easy to learn and I can offer a range of different styles in a relatively short period of time.

However, in a choir which meets regularly, singing such “easy” short songs soon becomes unsatisfying and we like to add something more challenging to our singing diet. One obvious development is to use songs which have several verses which we can then build up in performance by adding harmonies as the song progresses, thus adding interest for an audience. We can also tackle longer pieces that are basically several shorter songs tacked together, different “movements” if you like. Many South African songs fit into this category (e.g. Nkosi sikelel'i Afrika, Ladysmith Black Mambazo's version of Amazing Grace, Akanamandla). We can learn a new part each term and gradually extend the song as time goes by. We’ve also tackled longer church songs from Eastern Europe. In these, the melody lines go through a few subtle changes as the song progresses, but the individual units of melody are quite easy to learn and the overall effect is to add interest and texture to a song.

But then we come to more complex (usually modern) arrangements of songs, or songs which are fairly intricate and yet each part is frustratingly similar so very hard to learn. Recently I tried to teach Samuel Barber’s vocal version of his famous Adagio for Strings (Agnus Dei), but had to give up because there were so many long sustained notes and no easy way of knowing how long they should each be held. Then with a big choir I wanted to teach Ysaye Barnwell’s Lawd it’s midnight. I had originally been taught this using the written score, but the timing is complicated and I am convinced it will be much easier to teach the timing by ear and by allowing the rhythm into the body. The trouble is, the melody and parts are too complex to do this way!

Currently I am teaching a four-part arrangement of the Mexican song La Bamba. It is a fairly straightforward arrangement in that it follows the well-known tune and there are no weird chords, but there are lots of backing parts with short riffs that are repeated, then a short filler phrase, then the riff repeated again but with minor variations. It is very easy to lose track of how many times you’ve sung a particular riff, and exactly when you have to put the little filler parts in. We are progressing, but very slowly. The question in my mind now, is do I persist teaching it by ear or is there another (better?) way? Can I find a more effective way of teaching it by ear, or do I need something visual to help the singers know where they are?

One way to tackle complex songs would be to record all the parts on a CD and give it out to the singers to learn at home. But this removes the fun and community spirit of learning together in our weekly sessions. Also, some complex songs would still be hard to learn like this by just listening, even if singers can hear the other parts at the same time. I don’t want to end up in concert with singers counting on their fingers to know how many times to sing a particular riff!

In many cases it seems it would help to have some kind of map to help the singers learn the overall structure of the song. “Why not simply give them the music?”, you ask. Well, I suppose I could. Even if people can’t read music very well, they could at least use the scores to see where their part changed and how many times bits repeated. I’m reluctant to do this for several reasons. One is that it’s a slippery slope and there may be a demand to have the music for all the songs we sing (I know some individuals would be much more comfortable if this were the case!). This somehow goes against the spirit of the choir and the fun learning experience we have each session. But perhaps more worryingly, having given out the music which represents a complex song, how can I persuade people to put it down when it comes to performance? It’s hard enough getting people to learn the words to songs!

The other weekend I did a workshop with Northern Harmony. For some of the Georgian and Corsican songs in their repertoire, rather than produce a complete written score, they used a schematic technique to show a map of the melody lines of each part:

This was fairly easy to follow once a line had been sung to us a few times. (Strangely enough this is exactly the kind of notation that many bass partsin my choirs invent independently. It's usually the bass part because they don't often have an easily recognisable tune. When I point out that this is a music notation, they usually deny it, somehow believing that written music must be something far more difficult and clever!) This method is very effective for mapping out melody lines, especially when they vary just slightly throughout a piece, but not very useful when we're dealing with the overall structure of a complex song.

At the moment I am experimenting with a variety of visual maps that might help the singers navigate their way through a complex structure and help them to learn their part. I'm not quite sure what their final form will be, but at the moment I'm thinking of different shapes (boxes, ovals, etc.) and colours. My first experiment with this method will be to put them up on the wall in rehearsal rather than hand them out to individuals. I hope this will mean they won’t need pieces of paper in the concert! I’ll keep you posted on my progress. In the meantime, if anyone else has any ideas …!

My question to you is: what is the limit in complexity that can be taught by ear? Can we teach anything by ear given enough time? If we need to resort to some kind of map or written score, how do we then get it out of people’s hands for performances?

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