The Charfield BIG Sing!
A very rough guide to the score and
what all the inky dots mean…
First rule:
Don’t Panic!
You DO NOT need to know what follows to sing the Hallelujah Chorus,
but you MAY be interested.
Ignore it if you are not.
Frankly, you don’t have to worry about the notation detail – just listen to the BBC website practice
recordings, and follow your line on the pages of the score.
You’ll soon get the hang of it. If you want help, just ask.
Gareth Malone’s community choirs seem to manage, and so will you!
Interested? Read on!
1.
The score – what does all the ink mean?
Staves, Clefs, Key Signature, Time Signature, Lines and spaces, leger lines,
note values, etc
2.
Finding your voice
3.
The text and pronunciation
4.
Practise. Practise. Practise.
5.
He who Must Be Obeyed.
1.
THE SCORE
Download and print off the sheet music (score) from the BBC. Copy this link:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sing/hallelujah/downloads.shtml
It’s 12 pages long, best printed double sided so that you don’t have to turn pages so often. Have a good
read of it, working your way through the explanations below, and find your way around it.
CHADRA has some printed if you’ve a problem with this.
What on earth does it all mean?
What’s in a piece of sung music? Quite lot of information. The words, the basic pulse or rhythm (time
signature – is it a waltz? Or a march?), the tune or melody (the key, the pitch of each note – how high or
low is it, and the length of each note), plus how loud/soft/fast/slow/expressive the composer wishes you
to be. It’s a lot to take in. The composer uses the score notation to give you your instructions.
Dotted Crotchet
Quaver
Crotchet Rest
Soprano Stave
Treble Clefs
Alto Stave
System
Tenor Stave
Tenor Clef
Bass Clef
Bass Stave
Key Signature
D major
Bar line
Time Signature
Look at the opening bars of the chorus above (not identical to the BBC version).
The music is organised into 4 ‘staves’ (of five horizontal lines =) bracketed together into a ‘system’,
with the soprano stave at the top, then alto, then tenor, then bass. On the BBC copy, the bottom two
staves (the 5th and 6th) are for the piano accompaniment.
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Find the stave for your voice. You read your stave steadily from left to right; at the end of the line go to
the next system below, and follow your stave on that system. Example: if you are a tenor, you will follow
the third stave from the top in every system; basses the fourth stave.
Tenors – you are special cases. Your stave looks identical to the alto/soprano stave, but you have an ‘8’
under your clef, which means you sing an octave lower than the altos/sopranos. Ie, the altos sing middle
C and you sing the C below middle C. It sounds the same note, but is lower and in your register.
If you own the copy of the score, you can highlight your stave so that you can follow it easily. NEVER
deface a borrowed/library copy!
The music is divided into regular chunks – bars. The bars are shown by the regular vertical lines on the
stave. The HC has a time signature of 4/4 (shown above as “C” or common time) ie it has 4 crotchet
beats to the bar throughout. Nice and easy.
Let’s look at a sample of two bars of 4/4.
Count four hand claps, twice through; say the number as your hands close together, say ‘and’ as your
hands move apart:
Clap
clap
clap
clap
“ONE-and-Two-and-Three-and-Four-andONE-and-Two-and-Three-and-Four-and”,
with an accent on the ONE (as the first beat in any bar) and that’s the regular pulse of the chorus.
The key signature tells you in this case that the HC is in the key of D major. The key a piece is set in
changes the mood of the sound. D major is very bright, positive and joyous!
If you sang a major scale (doh, re, mi, fa, soh, la, ti, doh…) starting on the note of D, then you would
have to sing the following notes:
D, E, F sharp, G, A, B, C sharp, D. It’s just the way the pattern works out for a major scale.
#
In the key signature, you will see two skew-wiffy hatches centred on the F line and the C space. These
denote ‘sharps’, and increase the pitch of the note by a semitone, from F to F sharp, from C to C sharp.
In this case, from the white note on a piano to the black one above it.
So every time you see a note on any F or on any C of the stave, you sing the sharp.
PLEASE don’t worry about this. You won’t even know you’re doing it! It’ll just sound right.
You just may like to know what the hatches (sharps) mean.
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The tune you sing is represented by the position of the notes on the 5 lines and spaces of the stave.
If the notes go up, then you sing higher… and if the notes go down, then you sing lower. This is the
‘pitch’.
It will help you if you understand how the staves relate to the piano. Normally used for piano music, the
“Grand Staff” consists of two staves, the top one for notes above middle C, the one below for notes
below middle C. Note that any notes required above and below the staves are shown on what are
called ‘ledger’ or ‘leger’ lines (ie, bottom E, middle C, and so on).
Below, there are no sharps or flats next to the clef, so we are in the key of C major (which has no sharps
or flats), and the lines and spaces of the stave refer to all the white notes on a piano.
Starting on the bottom stave (with the bass clef, a backwards ‘C’ with two dots after it) at note E with the
basses, we climb up to middle C, which all voices should be able to sing, and which sits between the
staves on a leger line.
We then move to the top stave (marked with a fancy squiggle called the treble clef) and start on middle C
and continue up to the stratosphere of ‘high C’, which only some sopranos can reach and still sound
sweet! Look at the grand staff below and see how it relates to the keyboard:
bottom E
middle C
top C
Approximate choral voice ranges (note the overlaps):
------------------ basses-------------------------------------------------tenors-----------------------------------------------------altos---------------------------------------------------------sopranos-------------------Tenors: because your range lies across the two staves, for convenience your notes are shown on a
treble clef, but there is an ‘8’ under your clef, which means you sing a full octave lower than the sopranos
and altos, who also sing from the treble clef.
Bass clef lines: Great Big Dog Finds Apple (GBDFA)
spaces: All Cows Eat Grass (ACEG)
Treble clef lines: Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (EGBDF)
spaces: FACE
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The value or length of the note (how long you sing it for in the HC example) is shown by whether it is
a semibreve (= 4 crotchet beats long),
a minim (= 2 crotchet beats),
a crotchet (= 1 beat),
a quaver (= half a crotchet beat), or
a semi-quaver (= quarter of a crotchet beat).
A dot after the note increases its length by 50%. (eg, a dotted minim = 2 plus 1 crotchet beats)
Whatever combination of notes there are in a bar in 4/4 time, they will always add up to the four crotchet
beats.
In addition to the notes you DO sing, you are required sometimes to keep quiet, and this is indicated with
the appropriate ‘Rest’ symbol.
Look at the table below to familarise yourself.
This is what the notes and rests look like:
Name
Value
Semibreve
whole note
4 crotchets
Minim
half note
2 crotchets
Crotchet
quarter note
1 crotchet
Quaver
eighth note
1/2 of a
crotchet
Note
Rest
*
Semiquaver sixteenth 1/4 of a
note
crotchet
**
* quavers can be joined together (for neatness) with a single line, called a beam.
** semiquavers can be joined with a double beam.
The ‘tails’ on the above notes can go up or down, it makes no difference to you in the BBC Hallelujah
score. (For info, some scores put the alto and soprano notes on the same stave, in which case the taildown notes are the alto notes, and the tail-up notes are the soprano notes.)
Any notes can be ‘tied’ together with a curving line, joining them. You treat the tied notes as one
continuous note and hold the vowel you are singing through all the tied notes.
The words are underneath the appropriate note.
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So, in the example of the start of the Hallelujah Chorus above, we have in the first bar:
Count ONE
Clap
and
Clap
Two
Clap
Note
Dotted crotchet
Value
1.5 beats
Sing
and
Ha……………………..
Three
and
Clap
Four
and
Clap
Quaver Quaver Quaver Crotchet Rest
½ beat
le
½ beat
lu…
½ beat
1 beat
jah…..,
(silence)
That’s basically it! Just sing the opening bar to yourself and it will make sense!
Finding your way around the score (no satnavs required)…
o
The bars are numbered throughout. There is a little number at the top left of each
system of staves, giving the number of the first bar in that system. (Note that we have
only 94 bars to sing!)
o
There are also occasional letters (A, B, C…) – for example, look at the second system
of page 2, and you will see the letter A in a box.
Your conductor might wish to dodge around the score in rehearsal. To direct you to the right place, there
are various things he might say:
“page 8, second system, bar 57”
or perhaps
“Bass entry at letter D”
It’s up to you to listen carefully!
If you can’t find your way round the score, ask for help.
Fascinated? There is a lot of information free on the web about music notation and theory.
Go Google and have a look!
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2.
FINDING YOUR VOICE
The BBC commissioned new practice recordings for each voice part. Same link as for the score.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sing/hallelujah/downloads.shtml
If you don’t know where your voice lies, ie, are you
soprano
alto
tenor
bass
(Maria Callas/Kate Bush),
(Dame Janet Baker/Lady Gaga/Adele),
(Pavarotti/Ozzy Osborne), or
(Bryn Terfel/Barry White),
try out each of the voice parts – listen and sing with them, following the appropriate line of the score.
You’ll soon find out which one you can do in comfort! Do NOT strain yourself.
If you have always thought yourself a soprano and find out you sound like a strangled cat, don’t be
disappointed. Some think the altos have the sweetest most wonderful sound (not that I’m biased!).
If you thought yourself a tenor and find out you are more of a bass, then rest assured that you are the
most important voice of the chorus. Like the drums or bass player in a rock band, you are the foundation
for everything else.
Ladies – you don’t have to limit yourselves to soprano or alto… some like to sing tenor (and do it very
well).
Gentlemen – similarly, you are not limited to bass or tenor… go up to alto if you wish.
3.
THE TEXT AND PRONUNCIATION
Hallelujah!
For the Lord God omnipotent (all-powerful) reigneth, Hallelujah!
The kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ;
And he shall reign for ever and ever.
King of Kings, and Lord of Lords,
Hallelujah!
That’s all there is to it. No Latin. It’s pretty repetitive… the altos sing ‘Hallelujah’ 42 times!
When singing with others in a choir, in order to make a beautiful sound and to blend in with everyone
else, the pronunciation of vowels in particular is very different to our speaking voices. We have to
o curb our own accents and dialects
o make good round pure vowel sounds
o articulate clearly, moving the jaw rather more than we usually do – watch and listen to
Alfie Boe, Katherine Jenkins for an example. No mutterers they.
Another trap is singing
It is sung
not
‘for ever, and ever’.
‘for Ever, and Ever’,
‘fourevva, anndevva’.
You DO pronounce the H of Hallelujah. So it sounds like: “Hah-lay-loo-yah”
Please Roll your Rs (some find this impossible – but do trrrrrrry)
Sound out the consonants – LorD, Kingdom, GoD, ChRRisT
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4.
PRACTISE, PRACTISE, PRACTISE
Use the BBC practice files for the voice part you can sing comfortably, and practise, practise, practise.
Also listen to (and eventually sing along to) either a recording you may have, or to a performance on
youtube (there’s a link from the BBC website). In the car on the way to work, doing the ironing,
whenever you can.
The more familiar you are with your line/tune, be it soprano, alto, tenor, or bass, the more able you will
be to stick to your part when all around you are singing a different part (and doing their level best to put
you off!).
5.
HE WHO MUST BE OBEYED
No matter what anyone else tells you, no matter what the score says, your conductor’s word is law. It is
he who decides how the score is to be interpreted for your performance.
Bring a pencil to mark your scores with any instructions he might give you, such as, where to breathe.
Even when you are finding your way with the notes, you must keep an eye on the conductor. Hold your
score UP so that you can follow it comfortably and yet keep the conductor in your eyeline over the top of
the score. You just can’t sing without his guidance. You may as well drive with a blindfold on.
Choral Etiquette
If the conductor is talking, we must listen. You’ll find your ears work better if your lips are closed… in
other words, the conductor is in charge, and to make the most of our rehearsal time, we must not make
his job impossible by nattering to our neighbours.
There is nothing more frustrating than missing an instruction because of gossipy singers.
Dr Steven Kings can teach you a huge amount… but only if you pay attention.
pleasure, not an impossibility!
Please make his job a
THAT’S ALL THERE IS TO IT! (*)
With all that, you’ll be in gravy.
Don’t expect to get the hang of it quickly – it’ll take time and effort. That’s where the fun is.
And it is SO worth it!
(* not really, but it’s enough for now!)
Prepared by Julia O’Connor-Beach; who has been singing for 10 years and still knows nothing.
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