As some of you know, I sing in a gospel quartet, along with my wife and a couple who are long-time friends of ours. We don’t make any claim to great talent, but they like us at the local churches and nursing homes.
Anyway, we do a few pieces a capella, and usually do OK, but there is one (In That Great Gettin’ Up Morning) that is giving us some trouble. We seem to do alright through most of the song, and we usually make the key change OK, but somehow by the end of the song we frequently have gone slightly sharp of where we should be.
This puzzles me. Since I am the lead on this one, and it gets a little bit high for me at the end, I could understand if we were going flat, but when we’re off we are usually sharp.
Does anyone with actual, you know, training and talent have any suggestions for how to approach this? Is it just a matter of practicing a gazillion times? Should we cheat and get in-ear monitors and sing along with a real group or some such? Should we imagine carrying a heavy load something?
As many a bartend has said, tips will be appreciated.
TIA,
RR
Best advice I can give is what my church choir director has often told us. If you’re going sharp on a note deliberately pitch it under by just a hair. Make sure you keep your breath support strong, though, or you’ll end up going flat.
Whether I have “talent” or not is definitely a subjective thing; however, since I have spent a decent amount of time in a capella groups, I figured I would weigh in here.
Firstly, going sharp isn’t as uncommon as one might think. The natural tendency of singers is generally to go flat, but since singers generally know this, they can be prone to overcompensating and drawing everything up in an attempt to stay even. Here are some suggestions that might help:
Beat the crap out of the key change - I’m sure its no surprise that key changes are by far the most likely spot for tuning oddities. What you want is to convert your crew from making the key change “OK” to making the key change “spot-on”. Rehearse this section until your group passes out from exhaustion, and then rehearse it 2-3 more times.
Sloooooooooow it down - especially if your arrangement has a lot of block chords, work your way through the song, stopping at each and every chord to check tuning. This can reveal some problem areas you may not have known were there, and also gets everyone in the habit of properly tuning to one another.
“Bopping” - One of my college friends introduced me to this strategy. Work through the arrangement with everyone singing their notes briefly (i.e. no sustain). This again helps to get everyone mentally in tune with one another, which will help them by sonically in tune with one another. Also, if you’ve got complex rhythmic things going on, this exercise can be a godsend.
Mix and match - Have your basses and altos sing through the music together. Then have the tenors and sopranos do the same. Follow up with the basses and tenors together and… well, you probably get the point. Same goal as the other exercises, to attenuate your singers to one another.
If you find that none of these work, my only other suggestion is to blame the basses. Not because its their fault, but because I envy them for their rich low end notes and will always blame them for any mistakes if given the opportunity
When I’ve sung in small a capella ensembles (anywhere from three to six people), the way we stand can make a huge difference as far as how well we stay on pitch. Standing in a straight line makes it a challenge to hear and tune to one another. You might find that switching around who stands next to whom helps as well, and the order can change from piece to piece. You might find that for a particular arrangement, the alto and the tenor singers especially need to be able to hear one another, and for another arrangement, the soprano and bass need to hear each other. Move people around until you find an order that works well.
I’m another proponent of **unstrung’**s “bopping” technique. In the one ensemble I sang in that used this, we called is “bah staccato,” as in you sing a staccato syllable “bah” on every note.
All of the above are good suggestions. (Welcome aboard, Unstrung!) One more to chuck into the mix - check in on one note only as you go through. If everybody has a tuning fork with an ‘A’, and everytime one of you sings an ‘A’ you check it against the fork, that will help you pin down the exact moment that you (collectively) are going sharp.
For what it’s worth, going sharp usually means you’re too excited or energetic, so part of the cure is channeling that energy more effectively. It’s often easier to cure going flat, as performance energy can give you a bit of a surge. Consistently singing sharp means someone or some of you may be ‘pushing’ the energy, which is not a good thing. Good luck!
I sing in a choir which sings a capella fairly often. unstrung’s tip 4, mixing and matching is a technique our director uses fairly often, especially if one sections having trouble. Try having the other three people run through the piece, making sure they’re not going sharp, and then joining in.
I’ve also found it helps me a lot if I think of things in intervals. There are some notes I’m confident hitting dead on, notably D and A since I sing alto. From there, if I can’t get something right or if something’s in a key I’m not familiar with, I’ll think of it as going up a step, down a third, etc.
There’s one other technique our director uses if we’re having trouble with an interval. He’ll relate it to a piece of music we’re all familiar with. For example, going up a fourth would be the opening to Also Sprach Zarathustra, aka the music to 2001, A Space Odyssey.
Another thing you can do is record yourself and listen and check with a piano or pitchpipe.
I also find that I sometimes go sharp when I’m not warmed up, as I’m still tight, and I end up pushing a little. In ensemble singing, overly bright vowels can sometimes also push the pitch up.
An amusing little anecdote: my first public high B was supposed to be a B-flat. Unfortunately, the choir went a half step sharp almost immediately (so I had to sing the entire damn song a half step too high).
These are all very good suggestions so far. I particularly agree with the idea that pitch issues might be arising due to vowel problems. That’s usually the case in my choir.
This is a great idea. I actually have a list somewhere (hidden deep within a mountain of other musical oddities) that has a familiar example covering everything from a minor 2nd to a full octave. Anyway, I agree with Siege and his/her director - being able to think of the notes in terms of intervals can greatly help a singer see in their mind where their voice is going to go next.
<begin slight nitpick>but isn’t the opening interval of “2001” a perfect fifth?<end slight nitpick>
My wife knows several intervals that way. She’ll say something like, “Think of the first two notes of My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.” It can be a great help.
The last time we tried this particular song, I was having trouble getting proper breath support, so I wonder now if I was overcompensating.
Now I can’t wait until our next practice so I can try it again and keep some of these things in mind.
You’re right! I checked the sheet music and it is a fifth, not a fourth. As for my gender, I did say I was an alto and, while I’m unusualy in several ways, that isn’t one of them. I’m female.
