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Techniques on how to detect wrong notes in a piece with multiple voice parts?Date: April 3, 2013 by Christina Hamel  Views: 1965
Hi! I am in the beginning stages of learning to conduct music composed of multiple voice parts. So far, I am finding it difficult to detect wrong notes when all of the voice parts are singing together. Aside from being very familiar with each voice part, can you suggest any other techniques that might help me to detect wrong notes when all of the voice parts are singing together?
Replies (26): Threaded | Chronological
Austen Wilson on April 3, 2013 3:34pm
Hi Christina,
IMHO, the best way is to not only be familiar with each voice part, but be able to sing each voice part memorized with all of the nuances you would expect from your choir. Something else that works that I need to do more often is simply stop conducting and just listen to your choir sing. When I do that with any choir, I hear so much more. Another tool might be to identify which voice part is toughest for you to hear and practice listening to recordings of pieces and training yourself to listen for that one voice part. You may also consider just rehearsing two voice parts at a time for short parts of the rehearsal so you can really focus on those two parts.
Hope this helps,
Austen
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Christina Hamel on April 4, 2013 8:28am
I like your suggestion about not conducting sometimes to listen! I think right now I am just so new to conducting that I am focusing more on my beat pattern than the notes being sung, which could be most of my problem. I know this will just become more natural with time and practice. Assuming my choir can carry on without me conducting, I would love to give this a try. Or if I am lucky enough to occassionally have someone else conduct, I will be better able to listen.
Austen Wilson on April 4, 2013 11:53am
As a suggestion, you might try conducting beat patterns in different articulations while you're walking around the house, talking on the phone, etc. Mine are pretty comfortable now and my ideal is to enbody the music and the character of each piece through my gesture.
on April 3, 2013 7:28pm
Christina,
First, listen to each part separately and make sure the individual parts are clean. Multiple parts will never lock in until you clean up the unisons. Then, add one part at a time until all parts are singing. This is a great technique when beginning to learn a piece and helps your singers hear how their part "fits" with the others. It will also build your own critical listening skills.
Mary Jane
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on April 4, 2013 8:24am
Thanks for the advice Mary Jane! Would you suggest I start with the individual part that is most challenging for me to hear?
on April 4, 2013 9:58am
Christina,
I'd start with the with different parts each time to build your listening ability. If you feel the most difficult is where you want to start, go for it! In mixed choirs, I often start with bass, then add tenor, then alto and last soprano. Since the melody is often int eh soprano part (and is easier to hear), it have the harmony parts sing first. Works for me...
Mary Jane
on April 3, 2013 7:44pm
Often, especially if we are singers, we look at things linearly---a single vocal LINE--and not the harmonic structure of all vocal lines stacked together. If you look (and analyse before hand) at the parts as chords, you should be able to tell the wrong note in the chord. As an example, if an SATB chord is a 6/4 chord with the octave doubled and the third does not sound not correct (and you know it's in the alto), you should be able to correct the alto. After you've had much more experience, you won't have to analyse every chord or progression, you'll know and your ears will tell you what to do. Yep. it's time consuming for you now....but why do you think we all had to take music theory!?!?!
Marie
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on April 4, 2013 8:22am
This is something my conducting teacher has had us do in the past, and I think it would be a great thing for me to get in the habit of doing with all of the pieces I choose to conduct. Not only will it keep my Theory skills sharp, but it will be helpful in seeing what part of the chord each voice part is singing at any given time. Thanks for the help, Marie!
on April 4, 2013 12:21pm
Granted, the vertical listening/analyzing approach works for some types of music and not as well for others. It would be less well suited to exclusively polyphonic music. For many centuries music was indeed composed in a linear fashion (i.e. the Renaissance and earlier). And this music necessarily would require a more linear style of listening. That being said, the vertical/harmonic approach is certainly helpful in many situations and should be a part of anyone's listening practice.
on April 4, 2013 1:21pm
While I would agree with you, David, about Renaissance music being linear, most young budding choral conducters begin conducting more homophonic music. I happen to conduct quite a bit of Renaissance music now, myself, but as a young conductor, I didn't. My score preparations have certainly changed but looking for cadenzes--no matter the era of the piece in question--has always been part of my rehearsal preparations. I also determine the form of the piece---ABA? Sonata? etc.--and that also helps hearing things. Even the simplest choral piece has a form, if only strophic!
I would advise having your friends sing Bach Chorales for you and.........tell your favorite tenor or bass or alto to make a mistake on purpose. It's a little daunting to suddenly step in front of a group of singers when you've only heard your own part for so many years.
Marie
on April 4, 2013 4:46am
Christina,
I was "in your shoes" at the beginning of my career, my first choral teaching job, right out of college. I was very insecure about being able to detect inaccurate pitches in choirs. I decided that when choirs sang in parts, I would select a different single choral part to listen to and follow each time they sang and I got better and better at that. While in that teaching job, I started a community 'choral society' to prepare a performance of portions of Messiah, and used the same listening strategy. In one of the rehearsals, a tenor who was a leader in the community, jokingly referred to me as "old eagle ear." Eventually, my skill at detecting inaccurate pitches developed quite well.
Now, I know that our human auditory systems have the capability to suppress some sounds that we hear while allowing others to "amplify." When we convert this capability into an increasingly refined ability to hear choral parts and detect pitch inaccuracies, it requires us to pay close auditory attention to various parts over time, or to detect 'unexpected' harmonic inaccuracies as Marie suggests, so that relevant auditory neural networks in both hemispheres of the brain can recruit more and more neurons into them, and grow, strengthen, and refine their synaptic interconnections, so that those auditory networks can process more and more details of the pitches that they process.
Be courageous, Christina! Or as the slave spiritual sings, "Keep yo' hands on the plow, an' hold on!"
Be well,
Leon
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on April 4, 2013 8:19am
This information about the auditory system is new to me and very intriguing! I will have to read up on it some more! As I mentioned to Karen below, I am a soprano, so I find myself easily learning a melody line, but then the harmony lines come as more of a challenge for me. The same goes for listening for the correct pitches in a harmonic line and I think this is because my ear is automatically drawn to that melodic line. I think it would be very helpful for me to decide which line I am going to listen for before each run through of the piece! Thanks for the advice!
on April 4, 2013 5:30am
In addition to these excellent suggestions (I add P5ths to the unisons in Mary Jane's note above), in order to check on a section, you can have the section stand and the others sit or have the section(s) sing text and the others sing 'oo'. I often have the sopranos sing oo or bmm so my ear focusses on the other parts more readily, or S=bmm, A=oo, T=text, B=oo — you see what I mean. Sometimes they all sing a cappella but I play one part along on the piano softly for myself to help check on the suspect part. As well, wrong notes or specifics of poor tuning (e.g. vowels, approach, etc) pop right out when I record the rehearsal and listen back, which is probably related to Austen's suggestion of stopping conducting for a bit.
Have fun!
Karen
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on April 4, 2013 8:15am
This seems like it would be a GREAT strategy for me to use when I am not sure if the correct pitches are being sung. I am a soprano, so I find myself easily learning a melody line, but then the harmony lines come as more of a challenge for me. The same goes for listening for the correct pitches in a harmonic line and I think this is because my ear is automatically drawn to the melodic line. I will keep recording in mind as well. That way I can always fix mistakes in the next rehearsal if I don't catch them during rehearsal that day!
on April 4, 2013 7:44am
The American Boy Choir used to teach the kids to briefly raise their hand whenever they made a mistake in rehearsal. This has two benefits: first, the boy took responsibility for the mistake; and second, the director can quickly see when a cluster of singers is having trouble on the part. Singers usually know when they are not on the right note--why not enlist their help?
Tom
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on April 4, 2013 8:08am
This is a great point, Thomas! If I think back to when I was in grade school I can certainly recall knowing when I was confident about a note or not, and I was more than willing to admit that I was unsure so that I could fix the problem. It wouldn't hurt to ask THEM to tell YOU when they are not sure!
on April 5, 2013 9:37am
After reading this, I tried this strategy with a group of seventh graders yesterday. This particular group tends to be vocally tentative, and I wasn't sure how it was going to go. No one was embarrassed, though, and the results in learning, attention, and a positive sense of community were noticable. I don't know who was more excited about it - them or me! In addition to the points above, they also added these benefits:
Thanks for the thread and for this beautifully simple - and powerful! - idea.
on April 4, 2013 9:57am
I sing through each part and draw a circle around any difficult leaps. I draw a line between all dissonances in a chord. Often I will play two parts against one another, or sing one part and play another. That's a great way to identify dissonances or difficult rhythms. My music can look like a mess, I suppose, but it's amazing how it helps your ear hear problem spots when you've marked them ahead of time and know what to expect. The other side of the problem is how to help your choir rehearse and learn those difficulties, but that's a whole 'nother discussion.
Linda Gingrich
on April 4, 2013 11:35am
Also, not everybody in the section will miss a note, and by listening for the 'cleannes' (or 'unity') of pitch in the parts, you can tell what sections need work on their part. Once you're used to the sound of your choir, a section not sure of their parts will not sing as strongly as when they DO know their parts, and you can zero in on that basis, also. One needs to know all the voice parts, from so many angles, melodically, harmonically, but in the heat of the rehearsal, hearing a 'blurred' pitch from a section indicates some wrong pitch singing, and can be immediately dealt with.
on April 8, 2013 11:08am
This reminds me of the many choir rehearsals I have had in the past where a section sings hesitantly and the director needs to ask them to sing out, even if they are unsure. If your choir is not sure of their notes, there is a good chance that some wrong notes are being sung and something needs to be reviewed.
on April 4, 2013 7:30pm
Score preparation is the key. Linda Gingrich has excellent suggestions. Try also recording your rehearsals and listening to them afterwards. Gradually your ears will sharpen. As Daniel Lewis, orchestra conductor said: "Prepare, and then conduct 800 rehearsals. You should be set!"
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on April 5, 2013 3:51am
One thing I hadn't seen mentioned yet is the importance of vowel matching in this note perception process, for both conductor and singers. If a section's vowels aren't unified, the pitch doesn't project clearly -- even if the note happens to be correct, it will sound muddy.
Clayton Parr, Albion College
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on April 5, 2013 6:37am
Christina,
Yes, this is a very common difficulty for new choral directors. My first task when preparing new conductors is to teach them to have very clear aural image of the music which they are conducting. Just as one may view two cartoon panes and be asked to identify the differences or errors in the second one, so too must we have this aural image clear in our minds that it may not be blurred and we can correctly identify errors. That is to say, no matter what your choir sings, you are able to identify that something is different from your aural image. You had mentioned that you are familiar with each voice part. As was suggested before, work to have familiarity (indeed clarity would be best) of the harmonies implicit in the vocal parts. Listening for mistakes in 4 discreet (or even 3) parts may be difficult, but hearing quality (major, minor, dim, aug) may not be as difficult a task. If you hear errors in a specific measure, but have not identified the source of the error, have your students perform only the measure in which your heard the conflict between their product and your aural image. If you are still not sure where the problem occurs have them sing each chord of the measure on a half note. it may become more apparent. I enjoyed the discussion of conducting less and listening more (smaller hands, larger ears). There is a finite amount of focus one has. We don’t focus on breathing, yet it occurs. Keep working on improving your conducting to a point where it takes less mental focus to perform. More of your focus will be able to be reassigned to your ears. This is a skill and it may take time, but you and your craft are worth it Christina! Good luck and let us know how you're doing!
Dean
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