You know the song. You suffer through it every year.
You would think that with all the practice we get, we would have it down, by now.
How hard is it to sing it right? I really don’t know the terminology of music, so bear with me here (and reply in simpe terms). Is it a problem of tonal range? too many long notes?
What makes, in general a song easy or hard to sing? Where does Happy Birthday fall in that range?
Lack of talent? If you have a tin ear, there are no easy songs; you will always be off key.
I suspect some people sing it badly on purpose.
You’ve got to start out much lower than seems right. There’s an octave jump near the end that gets butchered at every restaurant I’ve been to.
Well, that and when singing in a group nobody starts at the same place. So of course it sounds like crap - nine or ten different keys, even assuming those people are even on key, which is not a smart assumption.
This is what I was suspecting. IANA singer but I at least I don’t make dogs howl. I noticed that I had to start really low so I wouldn’t run out of voice at the end. But then people look at me funny when I start so low like I am trying to sabotage the song (ok, maybe I have tried to, a time or two).
You would think that they would pick an easier song if it is going to be sung by millions of untrained singers, every day, around the world.
When did it become a standard? Was it helped by some sort of mass media event? Are there other older bday songs that fell out of vogue?
Happy Birthday is not a difficult song to sing. It is often song poorly because it is sung by people who do not sing regularly, without accompianment, does have one tricky jump at the end, and without a director to ensure that everyone sings at the same tempo and starting on the same pitch.
What makes something hard to sing? The following items are in no particular order.
Range. If something is too high or too low for your range, it is difficult to sing.
Intervals. It is easy to sing a note and then sing one up a third, fourths are harder, fifths are easy, octaves are the easiest of what’s left. (in my opinion and experience). Sometimes a jump is easier going up than going down (or vice versa).
Rhythm. Syncopation is hard. Notes sung off the beat are hard. Notes held onto forever are hard–although that’s not a rhythm thing, so much as a tone thing.
Pitch. It is easier to sing a song if there is something to tell you whether you are in the right key, on the right pitch, etc. A piano is good for this. A guitar is ok for this. Other instruments can be used. A person singing the note you are supposed to can be used. If one is a good enough singer, with good enough ears, one can use a note being played or sung in a different octave or off by an interval such as a third. This is a major problem spot for most renditions of Happy Birthday that I participate in–sung spontaneously and a capella (means without accompianment) it is hard to know what pitch one is supposed to be singing.
Harmony. If you and I are singing something, and we are singing different notes and they sound good together, that’s called harmony. (If they sound bad, it’s called dissonance. Sometimes dissonance is used on purpose. Often if a dissonant harmony is used, it will “resolve” to a major chord. It can be tricky to hold your pitch if someone next to you is singing something that is dissonant. )
Melody. I hate songs that don’t have tunes. Happy birthday has a fine tune. Many songs are arranged so that one person has the melody, and everyone else sings harmony. It hasn’t always been that way. There are many Classical or Baroque pieces which ared polyphonic. This means the sopranos sing one thing, the altos sing something entirely different, and the tenors and basses each get their own melodies. This can be tricky to learn.
I could go on. And maybe, if you are lucky, someone else will come in and expound on some of these, or other reasons why one song is harder to sing than another. But if Happy Birthday is frequently sung poorly, it has very little to do with how hard the song is to sing.
The worst bit of Happy Birthday is generally not knowing what to call the person being sung at. Everything gets all mushy and weird when we get to:
Happy Birthday [worried looks] deeeeaaarrr [hesitate]GrandCathmaLovMomeyerine [embarrassed laughter] HappyBirthday To Yooooooooouuuu!
My family was at a hibachi over the Christmas/New Year time period, and there were an inordinate amount of birthdays being celebrated. Every 10 minutes or so (seriously), the servers would come out and bang a gong and sing Happy Birthday. Very badly.
My brother is a classically trained professional singer, and was deeply pained. After a couple of excruciating renditions, he resorted to hauling me over to each table with him (I’m not a professional, but am a fairly decent singer) when the gong came out and leading the song. No one seemed to mind, even though we sang, " … dear Whoeveryouare" at the crucial moment, and he was much happier.
So I don’t know why people can’t sing that song, but it seems a pervasive problem.
The birthday contagion syndrome has been extensively studied by a group of friends of mine. Basically, if one table has a birthday, many other tables will follow suit because they are either encouraged to make public what was a private celebration, or just feeling up to it and have one celebrated even if there is no real bday boy at the table. We could sit at a place for a long time without any celebrations and once there was one, boom, it was one after the other.
If you are embarrassed by having a birthday, don’t coach a bunch of kids on a travel team.
My son was on such a team and for every restaurant we went in to it happened to be the coach’s birthday. At least the kids thought it was funny.
P.S. The singing was always off key.
The singing is always off-key because several people start at the same time and manage to sing in more keys than there are people.
I always try to sing it in the key of M flat, just to be sure.
Don’t forget that Happy Birthday is still under copyright until 2011 in the US!
Are blue jays not really blue? Plus: has the copyright on “Happy Birthday” expired yet?
What did people sing for birthdays before “Happy Birthday” was composed? Did they look at the candle in silence for a minute?
So, if no one can sing “Happy Birthday” in the same key, why does everyone shout “air ball!” with the same notes.
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Happy Birthday can be sung comfortably in the key of G - starting note is D (above middle C), and the highest note is D an octave over that (that big jump that so many people stuff up). You could go lower by up to about 4 semitones.
For congregational singing, A below middle C is probably the lowest note most people can comfortably sing, and D above top C (one and a half Octaves) is probably the top. But don’t sit on either of those two extremes for too long. I have heard poeple say that E above top C is fine, but I can’t always do that, and I sing a fair amount.
Far too many modern worship songs are written/recorded by people who have better range than that, and are published in wildly inappropriate keys for congregations. Sometimes, it’s impossible to shift it somewhere that makes it work for most people (or you modify the song, and fall foul of those who learnt it from the cd).
Add to that a general trend that has reduced the practice of people singing together anyhow, and it can be hard work being a worship leader.
Si
oh yeah, church singing is an entirely new level of disaster.
Is there a cheap whistle one could buy with the note to start the song? Key chain form preferrable
added: probably a cell phone ring would be better, come to think of it.
And why can’t anyone write beautiful simple melodies anymore, with which I could harmonize? It seems like all the worship music nowadays has funny shifts and odd curlicues and if you try to harmonize, you end up striking horribly wrong notes.
I love to sing alto. I really miss hymns. sigh
Ugh! Nasty! We hates it, we do! Prescioussssss!
The melody is awkward and not the most simple. I play this a lot, as I do musical theatre about 7 months out of the year, and every time a cast member has a birthday I have to play that song (I play it in F, by the way).
C C D C F E
C7 F C7
With the first of the downbeat of the first measure being a non-chord tone, and then immediately after a jump of a 4th, it’s kind of tough from the get-go, and that’s just the first measure. Compared to other simple, universally known songs, this is one of the harder ones.