Back in 1985 my brother Houston introduced me to Todd Rundgren’s innovative album, A Cappella [sic].  Rundgren used digital sampling to create an album made up only of the human voice.  He added distortion and manipulated the sounds to emulate drums and other instruments.  Back then this was really impressive, and I was amazed that one human voice could create such music.

Of course, now this is common place.  Beat-boxing came in with rap music about the time Rundgren’s album came out.  TV shows like Glee have renewed interest in a capella singing, specifically with Do Wop and other popular music that wasn’t originally arranged for voices only.  Combine that with technology that can turn just about any computer into a multi-track recording studio, and you have many people turning out their own a capella renditions. (more…)

In case your Cyrillic is rusty, the title of this post is from Psalm 104, “Praise the Lord, O My Soul”, and is one of the pieces that make up part of Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil.  This weekend we performed the piece with the Greenville Chorale on Sunday afternoon at First Baptist Church.

This was a real challenge.  The music itself wasn’t so hard, but there was so much of it.  We did in an hour what we normally stretch out over two, when you add in soloists and orchestra.  Throw in a layer of very difficult language, and you have a nearly impossible task.

I had done parts of the Vespers before, so I was somewhat familiar with the music.  The sixth movement is the “Hail Mary” section, and I had done it several times with both the Latin Ave Maria text and the Russian.  Even so, I found myself stumbling over music and text, even in the final performance. (more…)

Saturday I attended the William Walker Memorial Shape Note Singing at Wofford College in Spartanburg. This was a special occasion, marking the bicentennial of Walker’s birth. An entire weekend of events had been planned for the event. In addition to the singing, there would be an evening showing of the documentary Awake My Soul, and on Sunday a special service at Morningside Baptist Church celebrating the life of William Walker.

Despite the rain, a good crowd gathered for the singing. I showed up armed with all of my cameras and recording gear, and immediately fell into the “documentarian’s dilemma.” It’s very hard to both record and participate in an event. If I’m going to sing I have a hard time also taking photos. I set up the camcorder and portable field recorder in a corner and just let them run. I would take photos as I could during the singing.

The morning started with singing school. Jonathon (aka The Melodist on Flickr) did a great job explaining the four shape system of the Sacred Harp and the seven shapes of Walker’s The Southern Harmony. He also explained the mechanics of being a song leader, differentiating the “song leading” style with normal choral conducting.

At 10:00 am things really got under way. This event always begins with songs from The Sacred Harp in the morning, then after lunch singing from The Southern Harmony. The tradition is to begin with “Brethren, We Have Met to Worship” followed by an invocation.

This is a very participatory activity. People sign up to lead songs, and the chairman (chairwoman, in this case) calls out the next two leaders, giving the second person a head’s up so that they can get their song prepared. The songs are first sung through on Fa-sol-la or Do-re-mi syllables, depending on the book, then we sang two or three verses from each song.

As with most of these singings, I found myself stumbling over the syllables, or simply singing “la” just to learn the part. Often I would use the syllable verse to take a few pictures, then rejoin the singing when we got to the text.

The chairs are arranged in “four square” arrangement, with basses, altos, trebles, and leads (tenors) facing toward the center. Anyone can really sing any part with which they feel comfortable.

I had foolishly signed up to be a leader. I tried my hand at it at last spring’s singing at Furman, and thought I would be OK leading a song. For my song I picked a familiar one – “How Firm a Foundation.” Below is a video of me leading:

What I didn’t realize was that the names on the leaders list rotate. So the second time I was called out to lead, it really caught me off-guard. I had to scramble to find a song I knew passably well and that I could lead. I wound up leading four songs – two from The Sacred Harp in the morning and two from The Southern Harmony in the afternoon.  The best sound is where the leader stands in the four square arrangement, so everyone should try leading at some time.

There were several familiar faces, folks I recognized from the Owings and Furman singins. There were also a couple of Shape Note luminaries in attendance. Hugh McGraw is the editor of the 1991 edition of The Sacred Harp, and even has a couple of his songs published in it. Harry Eskew helped organize the William Walker singing at Wofford fifteen years ago, and is a regular participant.

The tradition at this singing is to head out to William Walker’s grave in Magnolia Cemetery and sing a final song. Since it was raining I decided to skip that portion and head on home.

I was able to get lots of good audio and video footage from the singing. I’ll try processing it and posting online when I get a chance.

Since I was hanging close to home over the Thanksgiving holidays I had some time to work on some overdue projects.  One of these projects was to process some of the audio from my mother’s 80th birthday party.  We sat around and sang hymns and even did our a capella rendition of Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus.  I edited all of the audio down to MP3 files and uploaded them to Houndbite.com.

So, here are the files of the hymns that we sang.  I included links to the files just in case you’re seeing this on Facebook and can’t view the embedded Flash player.

When We All Get to Heaven

To God Be the Glory

Standing on the Promises

My Hope is Built on Nothing Less

Marvelous Grace

How Marvelous

How Firm a Foundation

Great Is Thy Faithfulness

Hallelujah Chorus

Saturday morning I skipped out on a bunch of gardening chores that Laura had lined up for me and went to a shape note singing at Furman. When I arrived, there were about thirty singers already in their open square configuration, singing away.

Unlike the William Walker Memorial Singing at Wofford a couple of months ago, this event was held in a room designed for singing. The sound in Herring Hall (where the Greenville Chorale rehearses) was much more resonant, and the tunes sounded much better than they did in the dead room at Wofford.

The group started singing from the Southern Harmony, which has the more traditional do-re-mi scale. Even so, I struggled with the note names on the initial sing-through, and wound up singing “la” for most of the notes. For the second hour of the morning, they switched to the Sacred Harp, which uses the four-shape fa-so-la scale. It was much harder, and I never really got the hang of the note names. There was a break when we switched from one tune book to the other, and I had a chance to talk with several of the singers. I was told that Southern Harmony tends to be a bit more subdued, whereas Sacred Harp singing is always more raucous. Even though the notes were more difficult for me, I was up for high-energy raucous singing. (more…)