Tools for learning and using Shape Notes

[Marion Wood]

Hi All,

I'm a newcomer to the shape note scene, having really only discovered this notation whilst researching for a Masters dissertation in Psychology, which I undertook to study some of the processes involved in reading music. As an experienced choir trainer, both in and out of worship settings, I am astonished that the shape note system was not adopted more widely - notwithstanding the difficulties of typesetting (and general resistance to change!).

Following this research I have been developing computer programs and mobile apps to help musicians approach notation more successfully, and at least one of them would lend itself well to a Shape Note version. Since most of the development is done, it would not be an enormous task to adapt the graphics, but I would very much welcome input from the Fasola community about whether it would be useful. It would probably need a couple of hundred downloads across its lifetime to break even.

Play-my-note is an app that runs on iPhones, Android phones and Kindle Fire, and is designed to help any singer hear the note as it should sound, by pressing on a representation of the actual staff rather than needing to find it on the piano. The singer selects clef key signature by a straightforward picture-matching process. The staff is then displayed and touching any note plays the right pitch.  At the moment the displays only round notes, but could be adapted to both 4- and 7-shape versions without any trouble, since it already keeps track of the standard Solfa names as well as the note names.

If anyone from the Fasola community would like to see how the app works, I would happily send a free trial code for iPhone to anyone who emails me. (Unfortunately Android doesn't run a free trial system). My initial thoughts are that a shape note version would need an option for the raised 6th in minor, plus a simple transpose function, recognizing that tunes are often sung below their notated pitch

I envisage that it would be a really useful teaching tool for anyone wanting to learn more about the shape note tradition, as well as helping those wishing to learn new tunes or harmony parts to study them independently. However I would very much appreciate any feedback on how (or even if) you think this might be the case.

I attach a picture, and you can find more at the website www.play-my-note.com.

With thanks for your attention - it's been a pleasure to browse the discussions and see such a strong combination of historical interest and spiritual commitment to a live tradition.

Marion Wood

[Karen Willard]

Marion--

Welcome to our cult!  I hope to see you and sing with you at a singing soon.

My initial reaction to the description of your app is that it is not teaching what we teach. Hearing and learning that "C" on the staff (a note that is called Fa when the key signature is C major or La when the key signature is A major and so on) sounds like the tone the app delivers is not helpful to someone trying to learn to sight sing following the system taught in our Rudiments. The names Fa Sol La and Mi are note names that do not have a pitch reference until given one by the keyer at a singing.

We also don't know or care what the relationship of the key chosen by the pitcher/keyer at a singing is to a 440 Hz A. And when we sing with each other, we are not singing the modern every-interval-is-slightly-out-of-tune-so-a-piano-can-play-in-any-key  intervals. We strive for pure beatless intervals in our singing. I've been spending years trying to get the piano's intervals of a 3rd out of my head that being a choir alto drilled in at an early age, for example.

We do learn the musical staff, but only so we can be oriented to where the keynote of a given song is placed, for that song, in the clef we are singing (basses have it sooooo easy).

I hope this helped? I'm not sure I said what I wanted to say very well. In any event, I'd love to sit with you at your next singing!

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[David Olson]

On Thursday, February 27, 2014 9:45:09 AM UTC-8, Karen W wrote:

Marion--

Welcome to our cult!

It's only a cult for people who depend on others to lead their songs.

 

 I've been spending years trying to get the piano's intervals of a 3rd out of my head that being a choir alto drilled in at an early age, for example.

In Barbershop chorus, the director is always telling us to "brighten" our 3rds.

The remarkable persistence of the fake third in the minds of acapella singers is like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, of which Hannah Arendt says "the task of the historian is no longer to discover a forgery".

The task of the music teacher is no longer to demonstrate the difference between plunking on a piano and vocalizing from the larynx.

The fully competent sense of pitch that the average singer has, but is constantly ignored by researchers by tunnel-vision focus on perfect pitch needs a term of the art.

SAD BAP WEAPPON

(something assiduously denied by acoustic pundits who exclusively adulate perfect pitch odd nauseum) 

In other words, there are 2 things crying out for explanation.

(1) the average sense of pitch & how it functions

(2) the researchers denial of (1). 

 

 (basses have it sooooo easy).

Does the third sound muddy in the bass because it is sung on equitemperment?

Would it sound muddy even on a neutral third (between minor & major)?

 

 I'm not sure I said what I wanted to say very well. 

And singing with you is an experience I can't describe in words.

At Pacific NW Convention in Seattle I witnessed a lot of entrainment, which doesn't happen much in Los Angeles.

The tempo was really tight, and I will not rest until we develop those skills locally.

Maybe "The Protocols of the Elders of Temperament" could be a term of the art, along with the "Better Music Boys", to help us indentify the things we need to deprogram in our brains.

David Olson

[Marion Wood]

Dear Karen, David,

Thank you so much for such prompt and informative replies! Extraordinarily you have both mentioned another issue which is extremely important to me - just intonation. One of my original reasons for writing the app, (and its cousin Sight-Sing) was to provide a tool which would *not* be constrained to equal temperament, would not have to sound compromised in every key, and would help singers absorb just intonation right from their initial encounters with music, and not have to unlearn an unhelpful system later.

The math is not quite right in the current release, but the app defaults to *not* equal temperament, and an update in the next few weeks will offer advanced users the option to turn off just intonation, or restore only the major third to e.t. and leave the 5ths, 4ths, and Pythagorean 2nds (to satisfy those choir directors who call for brighter major thirds!)  The sixth and seventh are slightly more problematic - the 6th might be a low 3rd in a chord IV, a high 5th in a chord ii, or high to be closer to the major keynote in vi. My hope is that if each just interval is represented somewhere in the scale, singers will learn these sounds and be able to apply them naturally in different harmonic contexts. In general I prefer 7ths high, to show the yearning for the tonic, but there are others who would pitch it low in chord V so that the chord falls in tune with itself. Do either of you take a strong view on this one?

There's also no sense in which I am trying to encourage "perfect pitch" - I realise I was not clear in my description of what a "transpose" button might do. I intend it might move the keying note up or down by half steps, but leave the notation as it stands. So in that sense, the pitch of the notation stays, as you rightly say Karen, undefined until the keying note gives a starting point from which all other intervals are relative.

I am currently writing from Europe, (as the times of my postings might suggest), and so sitting with you at a Singing may not be an immediate prospect. Nevertheless it is a great pleasure to hear your views, in which I find more common ground than I could have imagined.

With many thanks for your time; any further discussion or advice most warmly welcomed,

Marion

[mickve...@aol.com]

Hi Marion,

Firstly, as I am sure a number of others will tell you, there is regular shape-note singing in a number of European countries, including Poland, Germany, Ireland and the UK, so getting to a singing day might be easier than you think. Visit ukshapenote.org.uk and you should find a calendar showing most, if not all, of what is going on.

Secondly, I think that you really do need to experience this music "for real", at a singing day, and probably more than once, in order to understand the feedback you are getting, and will get. 

Best wishes,

Mick Verrier,

Harwich, Essex, UK.

Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone on the EE network.

From: Marion Wood Sent: Friday, 28 February 2014 12:35 To: fasola-di...@googlegroups.com Reply To: barl...@googlemail.com Subject: [fasola-discussions] Re: Tools for learning and using Shape Notes