Arranging

Bournemouth at the end of October/start of November was astonishingly warm and balmy - you can see why it is a traditional British holiday town. Of course I wasted nearly all the great weather huddled inside the Bournemouth International Centre listening to people sing, but that’s how my sense of priorities works. Still, I was grateful not to find myself as windblown as you get sometimes at the Ladies Association of British Barbershop Singers conventions.

This was the second year I was attending without judging duties, and I can see that I’ll be saying, ‘No I’m not a judge any more,’ to people asking me about my weekend for years to come. (I mention this here in an attempt to hasten the process of people taking that on board.) I did have a new ‘official’ duty this year, though; in my role as LABBS Chorus Director Development Specialist I ran a Fringe session on ‘What Do You Want From Your Chorus Director, and What Do They Want From You?’ on the Friday afternoon.

On Sunday I visited my old chums from the LABBS Music Category at their September judging seminar. (Well, some of my old chums, plus a new addition since I moved on, which was fun.) They had invited me back to offer a session on arranging, following up on an exercise they had all undertaken as part of the process to recertify as judges back in the Spring. This was great, as it meant that not only did everyone have a common example we could work with as a central focus, but I could use their work as the basis for my preparation, as this told me exactly what they were already good at versus where help might be useful.

As I built up my list of useful things to discuss, I gradually realised that some things that - on the surface - look like different subjects are actually part of the same issue. And as we worked through the ideas together, it occurred to me that the way barbershop has traditionally theorised its harmonic language actually obscures this issue to an extent.

Further to my post a few weeks back about phrase-end swipes, I was recently looking at some arrangements to offer advice on, and noticed that the categories of swipe behaviour I discussed there could offer a useful framework for making decisions about voicing. In particular, the shape and internal energy of the embellishment can usefully inform which voice(s) move, and in what directions at the ends of phrases.

My last post in this subject was specifically about swipes, but I think the categories work for the harmonic content for echoes as well. Indeed, the question of who is doing what, to what effect is more immediately audible in an echo, since the use of extra word sounds draws attention to the embellishing activity.

But (and here is a nice new little guideline that I have only really articulated to myself as I type here), the expressive shape of a phrase-end embellishment should make sense in a purely harmonic sense as a swipe, whether or not we decide to add extra texture or rhythmicising effects through added word sounds. (You know, in much the same way that the delivery of a melody should make sense even to someone who doesn’t speak the language it’s sung in.)

I had an email recently introducing me to a 12-year-old who was expressing an ambition to study music in college and become a barbershop arranger. Some of her questions were unique to her circumstances, but the general issue of what kind of things should she be doing to position herself to be ready at age 18 to fulfil these ambitions are things I thought worth discussing here. After all, though I am mildly boggled at someone having such clearly formed ambitions at that age (I am sure I didn’t!), she is probably not the only person wanting to tread such a path.

So the first thing to point out is that studying music in higher education is moderately unlikely to include studying barbershop arranging per se; it is a genre that may occasionally appear briefly in college curricula, but you can generally expect your education as a barbershopper to be largely self-directed. Don’t let that stop you studying music; I’m just clarifying so as to set your expectations. Studying music will make you a much better barbershopper, and doing barbershop will be great for your musicianship. Just be aware that it is a niche specialism within a wider discipline.

So, this is a fairly niche post. Not only are barbershop arrangers a reasonably niche interest group at the best of times, but to talk about one particular type of embellishment, in one particular point of the musical structure, is getting pretty specialised. But this post actually grew out of a conversation with a performer about issues they were having with a particular piece of music, so it matters. If in a rather niche way.*

For those dropping in from other musical traditions: the swipe is what we call it in barbershop where the chord changes within a held syllable. This may entail the lead holding a melody note while the other three parts change notes, or it may involve all four parts changing at once. In the latter case, the lead is often switching role from melodic focus to part of the harmonic background in the process, so these ones require rather more sophistication to bring off.

Hmm, it was actually nicer walking along the seafront than this makes it look!

Like many of the UK’s barbershop population (and more than a few from overseas), I spent the bank holiday weekend in Llandudno for the British Association of Barbershop Singers Convention. It seems the convention is getting near to growing out of Venue Cymru - not only did they have to run the prime show twice there was so much demand for tickets, but the main arena is getting too small for the numbers who want to watch the contests. It was also significantly harder to get a table in a restaurant than in previous visits, which tells you something about the relationship between major venues and the surrounding businesses.

If my mother were writing this post, it would be tagged under my Soapbox category, and it would be a vehement denouncement of the use of the semitone key lift as a device for adding interest to repeated material. There would be particular attention to the work of John Rutter, in which she contends that it is a formulaic trick, so over-used that instead of perking up her attention it makes her heart sink with a feeling of ‘Oh no, not again’.

However, I have not yet entirely turned into my mother, so I am not going to be quite so doctrinaire. But neither am I resisting the inevitable process of family resemblance, so I’ll say she does have something of a point.

I spend rather more of my time in a cappella, as opposed to accompanied, choral worlds than she does, and so my reservations about semitone key lifts are more based around how badly they are often sung. The standard quip is that their main function is to allow a flatting ensemble to end in the same key that they started in.

Sunday afternoon saw hordes of barbershoppers thronging into my erstwhile place of work for the British Association of Barbershop Singers’ annual Quartet Prelims, at which quartets compete to qualify to sing at the annual convention in May. It feels most ungrateful of me, then, to have missed the entire occasion, with so many friends and so much interesting music coming right to my own home patch.

But I spent the day instead just three minutes’ walk away in the city’s glorious new library, leading a workshop with Magenta that involved choir and guests learning a brand new arrangement in a bit less than 3 hours, then performing in the Book Rotunda that lies at the heart of the building. Magenta has offered these workshops every so often over the years, previously as our contribution to Moseley Festival each summer, but this was the first time we’d done one in the city centre with city-wide publicity.