Timothy:

You are embarking on a wonderful journey. The essence of contemporary chorale music is broad and strongly influenced jazz, especially from the 20th century composing folks like Ellington, Gershwin, Berlin, Arlen, Porter, and……..

Rhythms, chords and chord progressions, lyrics/text, melodic considerations have all been colored by the essence of jazz.

One potential way to include these influences is to offer a section dealing with Jazz Band and Jazz Choir arranging/composing. By doing this, you will introduce modern forms of composition in a productive and pertinent process.

Good luck with you endeavor.

Frank DeMiero

Sound Music Productions

I'm answering this from the perspective of a student, since I only recently (within the past 5 yrs) completed such a course myself.  I just finished my undergrad degree in 2006.  I can tell you what worked from one particular student's perspective in a class that was fairly small -- I think there were 10 or 12 or us.  I don't know how much of this is innovative or new, but it's what made the course incredibly useful to me.  It may be common practice for all I know.  That said ...

 

First and foremost, students need to PRACTICE writing for chorus, and the sooner they start writing, the better.  We started on the first day with an assignment to arrange a hymn tune for SATB a cappella, and had twice weekly assignments to write SOMETHING, maybe only 8 measures, illustrating a particular lecture point (reharmonization techniques, playing with meter, rhythm and/or tempo, extensions, modulations, etc.).  We also had mid-term and end of term projects to turn in.

 

Second, students need to SING what they and their classmates have written.  I truly believe that SOME choral composers/arrangers have no idea what it is like to sing a vocal line other than their own, and they write either incredibly boring or incredibly difficult vocal lines for the other parts.  We sang as many of the students' assignments as we had time for, and occasionally mixed it up: e.g., have the sopranos sing the bass line an octave up, have the tenors sing the soprano line, the basses sing the alto line, and the altos sing the tenor line.  And we critiqued each other (nicely):  How easy is the line to sing?  Does the overall piece or segment of a piece make sense? Is there something particularly creative about how the student handled the assignment?  Would you consider programming it?  Why or why not? etc.

 

I'd been singing in choral ensembles for about 15 years (I was a non-traditional student, so we're talking adult, mostly community or volunteer church choir experience), and having sung some incredibly BAD arrangements over the years, I thought I could probably write decent material.  Having the opportunity to have my compositions sung and critiqued was invaluable to me, and helped refine some of my pre-conceived ideas about choral writing. 
 

Just my $.02 ...

 

Lana Mountford

Bellingham, WA

Timothy Banks asked:

"I am interested in the fresh suggestions of the members of this international choral community.  What are your suggestions regarding the most important or innovative or inspiring points to include in such a course?"

 

Hi, Timothy!  The two replies posted so far give very valuable insights from two different points of view, and I'm sure you'll get several more.  I write as a very long-time arranger and as someone who has taught Vocal-Choral Arranging for about the last 30 years, and my comments won't necessarily agree with anyone else's.  That's what makes it a fascinating subject for discussion.

 

Your first decision (and you may already have made it, or even ASSUMED the answer without considering the question) is whether you intend to concentrate on traditional choral arranging, contemporary commercial arranging, or contemporary avant guarde arranging (although that's really more concerned with composition than with arranging).

 

I decided 30 years ago that in order to master good traditional choral arranging all you really have to do is to study the scores of Handel, Mozart, and Mendelssohn, figure out what they did, and do it!  The best textbook on the market when I originally researched this was by Hawley Aides, who was an arranger for Fred Waring but whose book is very traditional in its approach.

 

So I decided that what I wanted to teach was commercial arranging, which is so very applicable in such a wide variety of situations including educational ensembles, show, swing or jazz ensembles, or church situations ranging from semi-traditional to contemporary services.  I freely admit that part of my decision was the fact that I had been a professional entertainer and arranger for a good many years, but I truly did see these styles as the key to contemporary vocal group or choral writing.  There is, of course, no textbook for what I want to teach (and if anyone knows of one, PLEASE let me know!).

 

I also insist that vocal-choral writing is NOT at all the same as instrumental writing, that a jazz vocal group is NOT "just like" another section in the jazz band (although both the Four Freshmen and the Hi-Los used trombone and sax section voicings (respectively) in their vocal arrangements), and that a pianist or theorist who is not a singer or who has never sung commercial vocal styles is NOT a qualified vocal-choral arranger!  (Yes, I have strong opinions; when you're as old as I am, you're entitled!)

 

So your own background and your own experience with vocal-choral music is going to influence your decisions very strongly, and it should; you can best share with students what you best know yourself.

 

In my own course--which is an Introduction to Vocal-Choral Arranging and not necessarily a cookbook course--I concentrate on familiarizing students with different styles, because in my own experience a good arranger should be able to listen to an album and then duplicate the style or styles represented on that album.  With due defference to Frank DeMiero and his opinion, I consider jazz only one of the many styles a good vocal arranger must understand, and I even break that down into traditional jazz styles of the '30s and '40s and more contemporary styles of the '80s and '90s, which use entirely different chord vocabularies and entirely different stylistic elements.

 

To put this into perspective, the very first year I taught this course at Indiana, I had an unbelievably advanced class, many of them jazz majors and more than a few Masters students.  That spoiled me for years to follow!  When I started teaching the course here, I found that my students' ear-training had been largely non-functional, and their ability to transcribe from a recording (which is where many arrangers' projects START!) was very rudimentary.  Our theory teaching has now improved to the point that my students are able to self-select songs for transcription and do very good jobs on them, but I still don't ask them to transcribe the stylizations and flexibility of Sinatra or Toni Tenille, both of whom push our notational system past its natural limits!

 

And of course I have both vocalists and instrumentalists in my course, but hold them to the same standards and take advantage of the singers' experience when we are discussing vocal ranges and voice parts.

 

So, my first project is much as Lana described:  harmonize an original hymn tune, taking clues for the harmonization and part-writing from the melody itself.  (In other words, "remember Freshman Theory?  Well that's where we're starting.") 

 

Other projects include traditional country style (lead voice, high harmony, low harmony, and all triads in the voices), 1940s jazz style (every chord a 4-part chord with added 6th, minor 7th, or 9th with one note omitted, spelling down from the melody voice and paying close attention to passing chords that aren't represented in the chord symbols, and using close voicing throughout--then following up by adding open voicings where appropriate), a transcription project, and this past year adding a project in comtemporary jazz voicings with more complex chords and tight voicings.  After that I come up with individual projects for each student, reflecting their special interests (music ed and student teaching, church music, jazz, etc.).

 

The final project for everyone is a complete arrangement, written, singers (and instrumentalists if needed) recruited and rehearsed, and recorded.  Difficult to bring off at the end of the semester, unfortunately, but there's no point learning to put notes on paper if you never have to make it work in a rehearsal or a recording session!  I can't even BEGIN to tell you how much I've learned from my own mistakes over the years!!

 

We talk about copyright, we talk about voices, ranges and vocal health, we talk about chord symbols (and the differences between chord symbols and figured bass or theory analysis, as well as the differences between jazz usage and commercial usage), and lots of other things.  I very much like the approach that Lana describes, with tightly focused projects emphasizing specific skills or techniques.  The one thing I haven't been able to do is to sing through the arrangements, since my classes tend to be pretty small, maybe between 5 and 12 students.  Our Orchestration teacher DOES have student orchestrations played in class, but that limits students to the instruments that are available, and as a result they get good practice writing for winds but very little writing for strings.

 

John

 

 

 

 

Timothy,

 

I think it would be a great experience for students to have a week of literary analysis for analyzing the meanings of texts.  Then to have a discussion of how the music is realted to the text.

 

Allen Long

 I believe a practical approach should include methods of harmonizing canon and partner songs. 

 

Amalie Hinson

I'm sure you've thought of having students analyse existing arrangements. Be sure to include, not only great arrangements, and successful ones, but also bad and horrible ones as well. Let the students understand why this is terrible, why it doesn't work, and why this is a technique that should be avoided. Also, point out after the 20th Jay Althouse (for example) arrangement how they all tend to sound exactly the same. Try to brainstorm about alternatives to the same ol' same ol'

 

Easy, cheap way to do this. Get the $3 Pepper Editor's choice Pop editions as a textbook.

 

Oh, another though how to do, and how NOT to do a medley.

Tim,

I do workshops with my high schoolers when they want to do arrangements for their contemporary a cappella group.

Please include a discussion about the voices themselves. 
What is "range" as opposed to "effective range." 

Balance between voices, e.g., sopranos in their low range with tenors in their high range.
What vowels work where and why. 

Choice of keys.

Text and how the arrangements need to be sensitive to the text

Sharing the melody between the voices, when appropriate. Altos and basses like to sing melodies, too!

 

Alice Parker's arrangements are wonderful examples, because they are not merely homophonic harmonizations of a melody. 

Look at her "Folksong Transformations" (Hinshaw) for additional ideas.

 

Thank you for asking!