Portamental » By Skill or Technique

Interval exercises

Dan Newman — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 13:31:17 +0000

If I asked you to measure the distance between two objects, you could reply with a variety of valid responses-

Feet and inches
Meters
Paces
Cubits
Smoots (Anyone from MIT?)

Well, the same can go for the aural distance between two notes-

A number of pitches
Several notches
Steps and skips

These musical units of measurement are called intervals. An interval as a unit of aural distance between two notes, basically. A crucial skill in ear training is to recognize interval distances, which is the aim of this section. Yes, you’ll have to practice. I’ve set up goals for you. Don’t worry, I care.

First-time arrangements, Third Installment

Dan Newman — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:13:17 +0000

~I wholeheartedly support all kinds of research that you can do before putting notes to a page. Steal ideas! Save yourself time! Don’t reinvent the wheel with every new arrangement, especially if you’re cutting your teeth for the first time.

~Ostinatos, or repeated bits of music, make teaching and retaining a lot easier…so you should do it! Do a single measure motif, then repeat it for a section. Every part can have a different ostinato (which makes it sound flashy), but it drastically cuts down on the amount of material you need to devise.

~What may seem less important than notes- the dynamics, shaping, and syllables- are just as important as the notes. Don’t forget them.

~Be enthusiastic about yoru arrangement, even if it’s your first. Attitude changes a lot, even if it’s a crummy arrangement. If you come in tentative, your singers will be tentative, and your performance will be tentative. Tentative performances suck.

~Try to avoid putting the highest notes of the arrangement near the beginning or middle. Let them be a literal high-point near the end of the arrangement.

~Arrangements take time. It’s ok if you’re spending hours and hours on it. That’s normal! Just keep working until you believe that it is ready- don’t try to finish it in an hour.

First-Time Arranging Suggestions, Part Deux

Chip Broze — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:39:44 +0000

As far as first-time arranging tips, I’d advise against taking the basses too low. Even if they have a solid low E, the chords will ring better with the basses up the octave, and they’ll sing better, too! The same goes for the low F and frequently the low G as well.

If you’re stuck for ideas (esp. in the verse), you could always add some sort of lyrical echo. There are these long pauses between each short phrase the solo has, so I would probably experiment with little counter-melodies repeating the lyrics the soloist just sang. (I would probably wait to use this kind of effect until the 2nd or 3rd verse)

I also second Yuri’s suggestion of singing first. If you write it first and then try to add vocal syllables, it will tend to sound sort of unnatural — Instead, try to sing something that feels/sounds natural to you, then write it down.

Don’t be afraid to shorten the introduction.

Consider cutting the instrumental interlude(s). Guitar solos almost always come off as corny, which could ruin the mood of the song. If you have someone who can do a mellow, authentic scat, that could work well.

Other than that, I’d suggest searching YouTube for any and all versions of the song that could give you ideas. Live performances, acoustic versions, or a cappella arrangements.

First-Time Arranging Advice

Yuri Broze — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:37:30 +0000

Your first arrangement won't be ambitious as this one.

A reader wrote in requesting some pointers on arranging for his high school a cappella group, and I thought I’d post a few here: advice for writing your FIRST arrangement. These tips do not necessarily apply to ALL arrangements and are not general rules, but are good ways to make sure nothing goes too haywire from the start. Enjoy!

The best advice for somebody who hasn’t tried it before would be 1) to map out the structure of the piece, 2) to figure out the chords and make the arrangement conform, and 3) don’t write women’s parts — even the sopranos — higher than an an A or B. Things can get very messy very fast. Exceptions exist, of course.

Make sure vowels match between parts. Have at most two different vowels happening at once, but really writing a homophonic texture is good.

The way I arrange is by singing first. So, sing along to the original song, improvising a line that you think might belong in the arrangement. Then, I go back and expand it through harmonization, and/or fill in the chord with other parts.

More specific to the song you’re working on, try to find a midi of it with a decent piano transcription, or find piano sheet music. This can help take a LOT of work out of the project.

Your first arrangement will probably have lots of repeats in it, and that’s okay. You can repeat a section COMPLETELY and just instruct the choir to sing different vowels, and it’s a good quick way to make the piece sound like it’s growing. Sustained oos can turn into sustained ohs or ahs.

The most important part about writing a good arrangement is making it FUN for everybody to sing, since that makes all the difference in how well they do it. So, make sure you sing every single part of your written arrangement on your own, and see if you enjoy it. If you don’t, fix it.

Beethoven Played on Period Instruments

Yuri Broze — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 03:15:06 +0000

More up to speed, perhaps.

One of the biggest issues of this ossified study of hundred-some year old music is that our university students are being taught that Beethoven, for instance, is forever… or at least his music is. We play them wonderful excerpts recorded on Steinway 9-footers of his Sonatae, and it never occurs to the young initiates that this music invites a more curatorial perspective. Jan Swafford at Slate has a wonderful article with sound examples of the difference a period instrument can make. After all, Beethoven had only 5 and a half octaves, and timbres that varied widely! No wonder he treated each hand as a different instrument — the timbral differences in the high and low ranges made them sound quite constrasting indeed.

Fusioncappella

Dan Newman — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 05:01:04 +0000

It’s just been stuck in my head lately. Nota, the winners of NBC’s The Sing Off, did an amazing fusion that’s been lodged in my brain of Jay Sean’s “Down”. Watch this:
If you can see this, then you might need a Flash Player upgrade or you need to install Flash Player if it's missing. Get Flash Player from Adobe.

What I think is fascinating is how the lyrical vocal line is accentuated by the latin rhythms and the light backups. Oh yeah, the faux-trumpet break is pretty sweet and serves as the homerun gimmick, but the reason why Nota won was not because of nailing gimmick after gimmick (which they did, btw), but the musical choices that set up those homeruns. Each one of their performances features some ethnic flavor that makes each one stand out, but the underlying musicality is why they walked off as champs.

To use a cake metaphor…they had really good cake. Yeah, the frosting and decorations made Nota distinctive and gave them that necessary push to top the Bubs and Voices of Lee, but they developed something good and did it right, then added the buttercream to eke out the top slot.

Listen closely to the arrangement and see how the ensemble works: you can easily hear the soloist, the backup hits are light, there is smart use of silence and noise, and the percussion sets up a groove and establishes a mood without overshadowing the solo. The interplay between the singers links the musical phrases (watch how one hits the splash cymbals on the VP) and the choreography has direction: “We are here. We are now moving here. We are spreading out…to do something wicked cool. We come back together.” The choreography underlines the music, rather than the other way around.

A take-away from their arrangement is the use of sustained bass notes. When the bass activates and starts jumping around, there’s a rise in the energy level, but when it’s sustained it sets up a smooth groove. Also, the root of the chord provides a strong tension with the vocal line, which sits on the dissonant 4th and 2nd scale degree a lot. Milking that tension makes it delicious when it resolves…down (b’dum, crash).

And yeah, the trumpet break is pretty ballers too.

Pitch! It exists!

Dan Newman — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 03:08:37 +0000

RIP Porkins.

Not only does pitch exist, it’s part of the trifecta of all music (the other brothers Timbre and Rhythm will have their day).

Sound is a giant pitch. Not just one, but lots of pitches. Big pitches, small pitches, pitches you can pick out in a crowd, and pitches that don’t sound like a pitch but actually are pitchy, if you look closely enough.
Double entendre’s aside, every sound you hear is a note: music just organizes all those sounds into something kind of pretty, sometimes. Identifying these discrete things we call pitch and manipulating them allows us to make what most people call music.

Staff, clefs, notes, and rests

Dan Newman — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 05:32:06 +0000

To start off the Music Theory section of SmarterMusic, I’ve written the first article in the Fundamentals land: Staffs, Clefs, Notes, and Rests. It is a brief introduction to the most basic music symbols and how they tell us neat things. If you have no music training or you chose to drift into a coma while in General Music class, this article is for you! It is, as usual, full of puns, bad jokes, and occasional sarcasm. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be a SmarterMusic article, no?

Arranging Walk-Through: Happy Birthday

Dan Newman — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 04:50:15 +0000

Blowing out candles helps build strong lungs.

In this article, we’ll be going through the motions of arranging a song. Instead of looking at a completed arrangement, we’ll walk through every step of the process to show how an a cappella arrangement evolves and is finally completed. Today, the tune is Happy Birthday, that old standby of yore.

Non-Traditional Notation

Dan Newman — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:19:29 +0000

Back in the day we wrote our music for 5 miles, in the snow, uphill, both ways!

If you went back in time with only your computer, it’s saved internet cache, and a love for a cappella, how would you teach an arrangement if music notation hadn’t been invented? Well, if you’re Guido of Arezzo, you’ll just invent notation and that will be that…or you could utilize some non-traditional notation techniques. Fortunately, this article (hence the saved cache…get it?) will help timetravelers or acamembers who don’t read sheet music.