A Cappella

In my recent post about the concept of ‘theme’ as it is used in barbershop culture, I neglected to point out its background. It is a relatively new term in the scheme of things, having been introduced into the vocabulary of the judging system in the 1993 category changes.

Maybe I should take a step back for those who aren’t familiar with the history of the barbershop judging system. Whilst there has been a relatively stable approach since the 1940s in that contests are judged by several people, each of whom has a set number of points to award in a specific category with its own particular focus, the number of categories, their names and their scoring methods have undergone periodic revisions over the years.*

I had an email over the weekend from Leah, who had been interested in my arrangement of Michael Bublé’s Everything, in which she pointed out:

It's kind of hard for us to try it without knowing what ranges the song will have in a women's key. Can you give me an idea of that? thanks!

And I thought – I bet she’s not the only person in the world who would look at ranges for an arrangement in the other gender's key and ask that question. So, rather than just sending her a quick email, I thought I’d take a bit longer and write a whole blog post in the hope it will be helpful for other people too.

‘The Things We Do for Love’, due to enter my catalogue next week, is the first of a smattering of arrangements I’ve been asked to do where the people who commissioned it were inspired by another a cappella group’s rendition of the song. In this case, it was the Vocal Six’s arrangement. Another example due to become available in the coming months is Sense of Sound’s performance of Justin Timberlake’s ‘Cry Me a River’ on the TV series Last Choir Standing.

On first sight, I found this a slightly intimidating task. When you’re transforming a well-known original to an a cappella ensemble, there are all sorts of ways you can worry about not living up to the original, but you know that at the heart of the game is the dual sense of recognisability and distance. The pleasures derive from both connecting with the original version and hearing it in a new guise.

But when someone has already leapt across that gap, what is the second arranger to do?

One of the main interpretive challenges to face classical musicians is the ambiguity of notation. The dots on the page are very informative about what to play, but mostly leave us guessing about how. What looks like the ‘same’ notation will carry different expectations for performance style at different points in history and in different places. Formal training teaches the typical answers to these questions, and advanced training provides the research skills to seek out mores specific answers for particular repertories.

Of course, even armed with all the available information – about historical instruments, and the techniques used to play them, about the treatises on performance or aesthetics – the musician still has the imaginative task of converting that into real sounds. An interpretation thus represents a statement of how the performer concludes the music should go.

Now, for people working with popular repertories of the last 50 years or so, the task is very different, since the definitive text is now no longer on paper, but a recording.

One of the minor peculiarities of barbershop culture (as opposed to its various major peculiarities) is the way it uses the word ‘theme’. Generally, if you ask someone what a song’s theme is, they’ll either give a poetic or literary response – love, loss, nostalgia, that kind of thing – or point to the primary identifying melodic idea as you would to identify themes in a Beethoven symphony. But what barbershop judges (well, specifically Music and Presentation judges) mean when they say ‘theme’ is the primary musical element in that particular arrangement.

Now, this can be quite a useful question to ask. The term is odd, but the concept is serviceable. One of the main differences between a performance that sounds like people just obediently singing the notes and words and one that carries musical meaning is a clear sense of what the song’s main musical strength is. What a song is primarily ‘about’ does not always lie in the lyrics: if the thing that stays with you days later is the shape of the melody or the groove of the rhythm, then that should be your starting-point for interpretive decisions.

The thing about a song’s theme, then, is that it can stand alone. The main test for if a song has a lyric theme is if it makes sense to print the words on a tea-towel.

I’ve just spent a happy weekend working with Heartbeat chorus at their retreat in rural Derbyshire. The chorus booked en masse into a small college about 40 minutes’ drive from their usual rehearsal venue to spend a full two days away from the distractions of everyday life focusing on their repertoire for the Sweet Adelines Region 31 Convention in May.

It was a wonderful luxury to have that much time available. It meant we could focus in on details and get them sorted out without feeling we were short-changing the rest of the song. We spent a lot of time exploring the arrangements by duetting, and as ever, the opportunity to hear and understand how the other parts interact with each other brought clarity and colour to the performance, as the singers intuitively let the detail of the arrangements through. Indeed, I felt that I came home a better arranger after having lived with the inner details of the work of David Wright and Ed Waesche for a weekend.

Chordmasters in actionI've just had a stimulating coaching weekend in Tadcaster, home of the John Smiths brewery. On Saturday I was working with Chordmasters, a subset of the Spirit of Harmony chorus based in the Vale of York, and on Sunday with the quartet Qube. Although all of Qube also sing with Chordmasters, it turned into two quite different coaching agendas, since Chordmasters were heading towards a major performance the following week, while Qube were working on material that’s very much work-in-progress for later in the year.

How to pick the correct key for an arrangement is a core part of our basic craft as arrangers, and there are standard ways of going about it. To begin with, there are the ‘typical’ ranges for each part, and you’d start off by seeing which key would leave the melody lying in the classic range for a lead.

There isn’t always a single obvious answer from this initial process, though. Very rarely, a tune sits well within the standard range, giving room to move it up or down; more often it is going to spill over at either top or bottom. The decision at this point is inflected by multiple considerations that may not all point to the same answer. Clearly there’s the question of who is going to sing it: preferred voice range is something I’ll always ask for a commission, and I prefer it if I know the sounds of the actual voices too. It’s always good to keep your lead happy, after all.