[HN Gopher] Let Everybody Sing (2016)
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Let Everybody Sing (2016)
Author : Tomte
Score : 73 points
Date : 2024-02-28 13:31 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bittersoutherner.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (bittersoutherner.com)
| jdalgetty wrote:
| I love the sites aesthetic
| cameron_b wrote:
| To go along with this, I looked up one of the songs recorded in
| the piece to find the words and found much more[^1]. What got my
| attention was the player on the right that seems to use some
| DECtalk-like composition to generate the tracks.
|
| [1]: https://sacredharpbremen.org/178-africa/
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| There's something peculiarly sublime about the intersection of
| a fundamentally low tech, folk form of music and the retro tech
| voice synthesizer. Everyone should experience listening to the
| "all parts" selection.
| edjw wrote:
| FaSoLaMix is a paid iOS app that lets you listen to a small
| selection of well-recorded songs where you can listen to the
| individual parts but sung by real people. Might be
| interesting to people on here.
|
| From the FaSoLaMix site [1]:
|
| > "FaSoLaMix" is an iOS app designed to teach Sacred Harp
| singing to newer singers. When someone wants to learn to
| sing, our instinct is usually to recommend that the inquirer
| go to a good singing and sit next to a strong singer. But not
| everyone lives near many all-day singings. Our intent is to
| give the listener the virtual experience of sitting next to a
| couple of strong singers in whichever section suits their
| voice. The app features high-quality recordings of many
| Sacred Harp songs where the mix of the four parts can be
| controlled manually. For example, a singer wanting to learn
| the treble line of a particular song could leave the treble
| track at full volume, mute the other three parts, and sing
| along with the solo treble part for practice. While the most
| obvious benefit will be to new singers, longtime singers will
| also find it useful and fun. For example, experienced singers
| may wish to mute one part and fill in that missing part with
| their own voice.
|
| [1]: https://fasolamix.com
| edjw wrote:
| If you're into this, you can sing it in places all round the
| world. It's a very welcoming community of people
|
| Couple of links to get going...
|
| US: https://home.olemiss.edu/~mudws/regular.html
|
| UK and Europe: https://sacredharp.uk
|
| Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Harp
| edjw wrote:
| This article is from 2016
| actionfromafar wrote:
| This comment is from 2024
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| The ecumenicalism reminded me of "we don't dance":
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjLSo3cRh6g
| echelon wrote:
| I did not expect a Bell Street Burritos reference in this
| article, but that's a staple food item for those in Atlanta. Kids
| that went to Georgia Tech will know it by heart.
|
| (I still prefer authentic Mission burritos. Bell Street Burritos
| are unfathomably greasy, but have a distinctive Southern charm to
| them.)
| karaterobot wrote:
| I've read both the linked article (which was great) and the
| Wikipedia entry for Sacred Harp. But, I still don't quite
| understand how this works. That's probably because I have no
| understanding of musical theory and couldn't read any form of
| sheet music anyway. With that said, my question is: what is lost
| as a result of using this notation? I can see what's gained:
| simplicity and ease of learning. But why wouldn't you use this
| notation for every form of singing?
| swores wrote:
| I'm not an expert, but I have been able to sight read sheet
| music (to play or to sing) since I was a young kid.
|
| From the article and wiki page, I see claims that the sacred
| harp system makes things easier, but I can't actually see if or
| why I might've found it any easier to learn than the standard
| western notation I did learn.
|
| So my guesses are that either it's not actually an improvement,
| or it's a small enough improvement on a good enough already
| internationally recognised system that there just hasn't been
| pressure for this niche form to take over in many places.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Basing it off of [1], nothing is lost from traditional
| notation, inasmuch as it's extra notation on top of traditional
| notation. In this sense, it's a bit similar to furigana[2] for
| Japanese, as an aid to readers. Something that surprised me is
| that [1] is of a minor key, but the solfege marks are for the
| relative major. I'm not a singer, so I can't say as to how/why
| that makes sense.
|
| 1:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Harp#/media/File:Windha...
|
| 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furigana
| arthurdenture wrote:
| > Something that surprised me is that [1] is of a minor key,
| but the solfege marks are for the relative major
|
| Major and minor keys use the same shapes / solfege system.
| The major scale is "fa, so, la, fa, so, la, mi, fa", while
| the minor scale uses the same syllables but starts on la.
| This means that the shapes always represent the same
| intervals (i.e. pattern of whole and half steps) whether a
| song is in a major or minor. It's hard to describe but makes
| sense when singing.
| arthurdenture wrote:
| One limitation is that the shapes are really only useful for
| singing, not for instrumental music. They also would not be
| meaningful for music that switches keys or that isn't tonal
| (i.e. isn't in a particular key at all). So they are a very
| good fit for what you might think of as "church music" (at
| least written before the 20th century), but for other settings
| they would be either meaningless or a hindrance.
|
| That's one reason shape notation never caught on; another
| reason is that the notation was introduced by publishers of
| American sacred music and not by, say, music conservatories.
| taion wrote:
| It's not uncommon for vocal music to have different conventions
| like this, especially which the pitch isn't absolute so
| standard notation isn't quite correct anyway. Note the use of
| neums for chant - and those _are_ harder to learn!
| toast0 wrote:
| I just took a quick look, but as an instrumental musician (4th
| grade - freshman year in college), what I'm gathering is this
| notation lets you use the shape of the note's head to tell you
| where it is in position to the fundamental of the key the song
| is in.
|
| That's great if you process music in those terms... but as a
| mostly sight-reading instrumental musician, I'm thinking about
| what note is written, and what fingering that requires on my
| instrument. When playing from sheet music, it never really
| mattered much to me what key we were playing in, or if I was
| playing the fundamental or a third; maybe if I were better
| attuned, I might adjust my fingering ever so slightly, but if I
| did that, it was unconscious and by ear.
|
| Now, when I was playing in Jazz band, improvising bass lines,
| the key makes a real big difference, because I'm going to play
| like 1-3-5-3 and such, but then I'm just working from a chord
| chart, not sheet music, and note shapes still don't help me.
|
| I was never very good at choral music, and never thought in do-
| re-me, etc. But I can see it being useful for people trained in
| that; move the do to the new fundamental, and go from there.
| Not sure how (or if) they handle accidental sharps and flats
| that take you away from the key signature... maybe not, since
| the emphasis seems to be on simplification.
|
| The other thing that was touched on is arrangement --- rather
| than a melody and harmonies arrangement, it seems like each
| part is arranged to sound nice on its own as well as together.
| This makes it easier to practice the parts individually ---
| sometimes harmony parts sound really iffy by themselves, so you
| don't want to practice it.
|
| I don't think there's necessarily much lost by using these
| shapes more, but I don't think there's much gained. And of
| course, it adds more labor to typesetting or hand writing the
| scores --- until you get to computer based typesetting where
| you can probably convince the computer to do the shapes for
| you.
| edjw wrote:
| I've sung a lot of Sacred Harp and Christian Harmony that use
| four-shape and seven-shape shapenote notation respectively.
| I've never sung roundnote notation so a bit hard for me to
| compare but I know lots of people who've done a lot of both.
|
| A couple of things you gain with shapenote notation...
|
| You don't have to learn key signatures to sing from shapenote
| notation. So it's less work to pick it up.
|
| Sightsinging is easier with shapenote notation. After a
| while, you internalise the intervals between the shapes - you
| just know what a fa up to a sol feels and sounds like.
| toast0 wrote:
| > You don't have to learn key signatures to sing from
| shapenote notation. So it's less work to pick it up.
|
| You don't really need to learn them in roundnotes either?
| Like yeah, I know that C major is all natural, G major is
| one sharp, etc but I don't really _need_ to know that, the
| key signature is on the left side of the staff. I guess you
| need to learn to apply those sharps and flats though, of
| course.
|
| > Sightsinging is easier with shapenote notation. After a
| while, you internalise the intervals between the shapes -
| you just know what a fa up to a sol feels and sounds like.
|
| This makes a lot of sense. I never really internalized
| intervals with scored music (although maybe a bit with
| playing from chord charts); I internalized the position on
| the staff to the fingering for the note. If I learned to
| sing this way, I'd internalize position on the staff to
| pitch; like B flat sounds like [hmmm] or something. I guess
| you're saying singing by intervals is easier than singing
| by named notes? But you can really do both with shaped
| notes, so all the better. :)
| velcrovan wrote:
| As a no-longer Christian, I still find singing Sacred Harp
| extremely compelling. There is a group that gathers at an
| LGBTQIA+ affirming baptist church near the University of MN whose
| meetings I used to join irregularly until my kids were born.
| Communal singing is powerful by itself and pretty rare in
| America, but in addition this repertoire/tradition has something
| raw and real about it that transcends the dogmas of its authors.
| rdtsc wrote:
| You can hear a few more examples
| https://www.youtube.com/@CorkSacredHarp/videos
|
| I like some of the older ones from 10 years ago or so. You can
| see them by filtering by "popular".
| edjw wrote:
| The YouTube channel [1] of the Sacred Harp Museum [2] also has
| lots of good audio and video recordings
|
| 1: https://www.youtube.com/@sacredharpmuseum8890/videos
|
| 2: https://originalsacredharp.com/museum
| senderista wrote:
| A few years ago I purchased a few entire albums in FLAC from
| their site. They are amazing.
| pastureofplenty wrote:
| Another thing that makes Sacred Harp sound "weird" is that it
| eschews traditional voice-leading rules and therefore has no
| prohibitions on parallel fifths, fourths, or octaves.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_leading#Common-practice_...
| senderista wrote:
| I've noticed that some of the original 3-part harmony settings,
| by self-taught singing masters like Billings, have
| parallel/empty fourths and fifths, but that these were removed
| in later 19th-century 4-part settings by "properly educated"
| musicians. A good example is "Idumea":
|
| https://musescore.com/user/1108766/scores/9410239
|
| (BTW, there are several versions of this song on the Current 93
| album _Black Ships Ate the Sky_, of which my favorite is
| Shirley Collins'.)
| taway789aaa6 wrote:
| I know this type of music writing as "shape note singing" and
| I've never actually heard it referred to as "sacred harp". There
| is a tradition of shape note singing in some Quaker circles --
| quite a bit different from the Southern Baptists, but probably
| similar repertoire.
| recursive wrote:
| I had not heard of this, and I find it interesting and
| compelling.
|
| But I do not get the comparison to heavy metal. Heavy metal, as I
| understand it is defined by dissonance, instrumental virtuosity,
| and overdriven amps. Musically, it seems almost like the complete
| opposite of sacred harp. What's the connection?
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