Sometimes I come across a beautiful song and start searching online for a choral arrangement.
All too often, though, what I find is weighed down with so many bells and whistles that the original melody—the very thing that drew me to the song in the first place—ends up buried under the layers.
Many choir leaders demonstrate and teach songs by singing them. But can you lead a choir without being able to sing? Similarly, do you need to be able to read music to be a song arranger, or be a musician to write songs?
The simple answer to these questions (I believe) is “No.” Here’s why.
Last week I wrote about choosing suitable songs to arrange.
This week I want to get down to the nitty gritty of how to create an arrangement.
We’ve seen that songwriters, music publishers, recording artists, song arrangers, etc. all have copyright over the songs that they ‘own’. We’ve seen how the law works and what you can and can’t do with other people’s songs.
If you want to use a copyrighted song (to teach, record, arrange, copy, perform, broadcast, etc.), how do you go about it?
Before you can use any work that is in copyright, you must first get permission. Often that permission is not obtained directly from the creator, editor, recorder, performer or arranger of the song, but from an organisation that helps to deal with creative rights.
Also, as we saw last week, the original creator may have sold the rights to their work to another person or organisation. You will need to find out who that is so you can ask their permission.
Each country has its own organisations. The rest of this post refers to the situation in the UK.
The Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society (MCPS) – now part of the MCPS-PRS Alliance, PRS for Music (see below).
PRS for Music (formerly the Performing Right Society) is a royalty collection society that was founded in 1914. As the MCPS-PRS Alliance, it is an organisation which pays royalties to composers, songwriters and music publishers when the music they have created is sold. This includes sales of the music alone such as CDs and downloads, and also products which use the music as a part of their soundtrack, such as films and computer games.
PPL (formerly Phonographic Performance Ltd.) is the company which licenses recorded music and music videos for public performance, broadcast and new media use. The income generated is then allocated and paid as royalties to their record company and performer members.
Music Publishers Association (MPA) is a non-profit organisation representing music publishers in the UK. It exists to safeguard their interests, and those of the writers signed to them.
UK Music is an umbrella organisation which represents the collective interests of the production side of UK’s commercial music industry: artists, musicians, songwriters, composers, record labels, artist managers, music publishers, studio producers and music collecting societies.
For permission to:
Once you have obtained the right to record or perform a copyrighted song (see above), then you need to protect your rights as a choir in terms of any recordings that are made. Once you’ve legally produced your CD or download, then you will need to protect your rights over someone using that recording to sell, broadcast, copy, etc. PRS for music will be able to give you advice or ask the distributor you use.
There is no need to register a work in order to obtain copyright protection, but there are certain precautionary measures you can take. MPA has a useful guide: How do I protect my music?
You will need someone to administer the rights you have over your work.
PRS produce a very useful document covering all aspects of copyright law.
Sound Rights is a free online learning resource produced by UK Music, written by professionals in the music industry and music education expert Leonora Davies to answer the national curriculum's new requirement regarding the music industry and copyright.
British Copyright Council is a national consultative and advisory body representing those who create, hold interests in or manage rights in literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works, films, sound recordings, broadcasts and other material in which there are rights of copyright or related rights; and those who perform such works.
As a liaison committee and pressure group for change in copyright law at UK, European and international level, the BCC provides its members with a forum for the discussion of copyright matters.
The Copyright Licensing Agency is aimed at organisations which regularly photocopy and distribute documents (such as sheet music). They license organisations for copying extracts from print and digital publications on behalf of authors, publishers and visual creators.
In the final post in this series on songs and copyright I’ll be looking at alternatives to the familiar copyright law: copyleft, public domain, creative commons, etc.
This is the sixth in a series of seven posts about songs and copyright:
This is a guest post by Jocelyn Lavin whose blog is 2nd Altos like the bottom parts. She writes here about what makes a good choral arrangement. Contact me if you’d like to submit a guest post.
“The mood is right; the spirit’s up;
We’re here tonight, and that’s enough.
Simply having a wonderful Christmas time.”
I’ll never forget the rehearsal in which we first sang my a cappella arrangement of this song. (If you can’t remember how the song goes, you can listen to it here.)
My band doesn’t do many concerts - the main reason we rehearse regularly is because we love it! But we do get quite a few Christmas gigs, and over the years our repertoire has gradually added just about every Christmas song there is. And a couple of years ago, I had a moment of inspiration that resulted in the arrangement of Wonderful Christmas Time.
(In case you’re wondering, the moment of inspiration was this: previously, we’d only ever been able to do a cappella songs involving our guitarist if he was singing the tune – he’s great when he’s on the tune, but has trouble singing any other parts. But I had the song in my head, and it suddenly occurred to me that he should be able to sing not just the tune, but also the bass notes in the intro ... because they’re all the same note, and there are no other notes happening at the same time to put him off! The arrangement fell into place easily from there.)
I was delighted that we had a rehearsal planned for the next day, so I didn’t have to wait long to hear my arrangement. (I can hear very well in my head or on the computer, but it’s not the same as actual people performing!) I handed out the music, and we sight-read it, and at the end there was a brief moment of silence, after which we all looked at each other and literally laughed in delight. That’s happened a few times since then, but that night was the first. So, why were we so delighted?
Well, partly it was because we’d successfully sight-read the song with very few mistakes - it wasn’t perfect, but it was close enough that we didn’t need to stop at any point, and no-one got lost. This is quite a satisfying thing to be able to do, and we were all well aware that not many groups would be able to manage it as well as we could, so we felt very accomplished (and, yes, rather smug).
However, I think that even vocal groups who don’t use sheet music would enjoy this arrangement (we’ve loved it every time we’ve sung it, even though it’s not been sight-reading since that first time), and I want to try to identify a few of the reasons why.
I mentioned earlier that my guitarist can usually only cope with a cappella songs if he’s singing the tune, and indeed he does get the tune through most of this arrangement - but he doesn’t have it all the way through. We all get a bit of it too.
Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any enjoyable a cappella songs in which one part has the tune throughout - variety is important. (Personally I also tend to prefer arrangements in which the sopranos hardly get the tune at all, but that’s probably because I'm an alto and I’m subconsciously trying to redress the balance!)
Many a cappella arrangements of pop songs have the backing parts singing nonsense syllables, because they’re impersonating instruments. This can actually work very well if the arranger knows what they’re doing - these parts can be great fun to sing! But I think it’s even more fun if the nonsense syllables are occasionally replaced by actual lyrics.
You have to be careful, though - this only really works if either the music is homophonic at that point (i.e. the backing parts have the same words - at the same time - as the part that has the tune) or the tune is having a rest. Otherwise, the result tends to be that all the words get muddied together and none of them can be heard.
Of course, this is usually down to the composer rather than the arranger, but it can be very satisfying to sing a series of chords that aren’t just basic triads (i.e have only three notes in them). My band particularly likes major sevenths, and there are loads of them in this song! Interesting chords also tend to result in close harmonies, which are always fun if it's a good enough group of singers. (Close harmonies are hard!)
This is never an issue when I’m writing for my band, because we've sung together for many years and I know their voices quite well. But I’ve certainly sung arrangements that I haven’t enjoyed very much because the arranger seemed not to know about tessitura (see Chris’s post But I can’t sing that high! for more about tessitura).
The actual range of printed parts is usually fine - even if you’re a new arranger, it’s easy enough to find out (from books or the internet) about the appropriate vocal range for each part. (Sibelius, the most popular score-writing software, even colours the notes red automatically if you go outside the standard range.)
But range is only half of it - tessitura has to be considered as well. If you’ve never heard the word, it refers to the part of the range that's used most in a particular song. For example, a soprano part that includes a lot of middle Cs would be described as having a very low tessitura - sopranos can sing a middle C, but it’s towards the bottom of their range, and if they had to sing a whole song in which most of the notes were in that area, they’d be quite uncomfortable. Whereas I’m a 2nd alto, so I like to sing low notes... and any arrangement which involves my part being mostly an octave (or more) above middle C is not going to be one of my favourites.
Considerations of range and tessitura go hand in hand with the question of balance. By ‘balance’, I mean: can the tune be heard clearly, and are all the other parts audible - matching each other if necessary - without drowning the tune? In a choir, balance will usually need to be fixed by the conductor regardless of what the arranger does, because it’s very rare that a choir has exactly the right number of people in every section. But the arranger can make this an impossible task if he/she is incompetent.
Choral arrangements tend to be based on the assumption that there will be roughly the same number of people on each part - if an arrangement doesn’t assume that, it won’t work if anyone tries to sing it with one person on each part (and you never know when that might happen!)
So you might think that there would be all sorts of problems caused by the fact that most choirs have far fewer tenors and basses than they do sopranos and altos. But actually, unless the numbers are stupidly uneven, the balance should be OK, because in general men can sing louder than women.
There are further tessitura-related aspects that the arranger needs to take into account, too. If the sopranos or tenors are singing high notes, they’re likely to drown everyone else unless the dynamics are carefully indicated (and often even then!) Conversely, if the altos or basses have the tune, everyone else will need to shut up. There’s more to it than this, but you get the idea!
Lots of songs don’t have many different dynamics in them – they’re sort of “loudish” all the way through - but some dramatic variations in dynamics can make arrangements immediately much more interesting; Wonderful Christmas Time, for example, has lots of sudden (and slightly corny) diminuendos. Great fun!
Well, we don’t want it to be too easy (no sense of accomplishment!) but there are ways of avoiding unnecessary difficulty.
The main one involves making the leaps between consecutive notes in the harmony parts as small as possible, unless you have a good reason not to. It’s much easier for singers to work out the next note if it’s the same as the previous one, or only one step away. Inexperienced choral arrangers tend to be quite bad at remembering this!
For example, imagine that the backing parts are singing a C major chord: the bottom part is on C, the middle part is on E and the top part is on G. The next chord turns out to be A minor. That's not too hard - they could all move down, so that the bottom part is on A, the middle part is on C and the top part is on E. (They could move up to the A, C and E an octave higher, but that would be a much bigger leap and therefore much harder - and it would sound horrible as well!) But you’ll have noticed that two of the three notes are the same in both chords ... so why not keep the bottom part on the C and the middle part on the E, and just move the top part to A?
There might be reasons why you don’t want to do that - the most likely of these would be that the bottom part is the actual bass part and it has a surprisingly big effect on the music when the root of the chord (the A in this case) isn’t in the bass part - but your default strategy should always be to let the parts move to the nearest possible note wherever possible.
This probably isn’t such a big issue in choirs that don’t use sheet music, but I bet it’s still an issue! When I’m rehearsing with my band, if a song falls apart, nine times out of ten it’s a geography issue.
My score of Wonderful Christmas Time has no repeats - you start singing at the beginning, you keep turning the pages, you reach the end. I’m willing to bet that if it had had any repeats, we wouldn’t have successfully sight-read it without stopping at the first attempt.
It’s very easy to forget, in the heat of the moment, which page (or section on a page) you need to turn back to, and if there are alternative words for verse 2, that’s even worse! (And don't get me started on music in which the words are written under verse 1, and all the other words are in a block at the bottom of the page. Argh!)
So, there you go. Eight factors that contribute to good choral arrangements. They're not intended to be in order of priority – they’re all important. Mind you, that’s not to say that a good arrangement has to have all these features - but if it doesn’t, the arranger will have a good reason why not. What I am saying is that all these factors need to be considered.
Of course, the choir could then go on to ruin a brilliant arrangement by singing out of tune ... but that’s another story!
Jocelyn Lavin, Vamp Till Ready
I used to lead a women’s singing ensemble. We tried a Bob Marley song once. One of the singers used to say: “If it sounds like the Women’s Institute sing The Rolling Stones, then we shouldn’t perform it!”. We didn’t.
I often get asked by choir members why we don’t do more pop songs. After all, they’re in English, popular and easily recognisable.
Here’s why we don’t do them.
Most people remember pop songs because of the guitar riff, or the drum break, or the keyboard solo. Personally I’m allergic to voices impersonating instruments. Why not just use a guitar? I get bored with ‘dum dum’ bass riffs. Why not use a double bass?
When you strip away the instrumentation, you’re often left with a very simple, banal melody.
Pop songs are usually sung by a single lead voice. That lead voice usually has some pretty special qualities that we remember -- even if they can’t ‘sing’! If one person is singing the lead, then they can play with the timing to their hearts content, or they can sing really difficult rhythmic jazz lines.
Now you try and get 20 altos to sing that melody line precisely in time with each other – and with swing and syncopation.
Even British pop bands sing like Americans. And if they’re not doing that, they’re singing in strong regional accents.
Most choirs are made up of people from all over who have been trained to blend their vowels. Imagine a big choir with their posh voices trying to articulate, but singing a funky pop song. Doesn’t work, does it?
I’ve tried to ask the choir to sing a bit more ‘American’, but it always ends up sounding Cornish!
You’re trying to create a fantastic SATB arrangement of a rock song when you realise that there are no harmonies on the original. Yes, it may be The Supremes, or Girls Aloud, but often the singers take turns at singing the lead, or have separate melody lines that they sing over the top. They don’t tend to harmonise with each other.
After you’ve added all these gorgeous harmonies you realise that you’ve destroyed the delicate melody! In the original, the harmonies live in the instrumental production so don’t interfere with the vocals.
Of course, you could make sure you always only do Westlife songs with the choir, but that’s a bit limiting.
Forget the banal “boy meets girl, boy loses girl", girl falls in love with someone else” lyrics. Many pop songs tell stories or create fantastic wordscapes. We need to hear the lyrics clearly.
In the same way that trying to arrange ballads for choirs is a bad idea, lyric-based songs can easily fall flat.
There are too many words, they need to be clear but not over-enunciated, and the choir has to sing them in exact time for them to be heard properly. You can’t put too many harmonies in or the words will get lost. In short: why bother?
But there are some fantastic arrangements of pop songs out there. Although I must say that the majority stink!
The secret (I believe) is to not try to duplicate the original but to turn it into something different and special. Also, you need to choose your songs carefully. Most don’t work.
If you saw Wes Anderson’s movie The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, you will have heard Seu Jorge performing David Bowie songs in Portuguese on the acoustic guitar. It was like he’d written them himself because he made them uniquely his own. That’s the secret but it’s HARD! Make it sound like it was a choir song all along. Make people forget the original version.
OK, OK, I’m wrong and you have countless examples of fantastic pop songs being sung by choirs. So let me know about them. I don’t guarantee to like them because ultimately it’s down to personal taste, but I’d be interested to hear some fine examples.
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:
In what follows, I’m focusing on my own special interest: harmony singing from different cultures across the globe.
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).
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.
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.
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).
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.
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!
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!
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.
