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Let Everybody Sing (2016)
- jdalgetty 3y agoI love the sites aesthetic
- cameron_b 3y agoTo go along with this, I looked up one of the songs recorded in the piece to find the words and found much more[^1]. What got my attention was the player on the right that seems to use some DECtalk-like composition to generate the tracks. [1]: https://sacredharpbremen.org/178-africa/ https://sacredharpbremen.org/178-africa/
- OkayPhysicist 3y agoThere's something peculiarly sublime about the intersection of a fundamentally low tech, folk form of music and the retro tech voice synthesizer. Everyone should experience listening to the "all parts" selection.
- edjw 3y agoFaSoLaMix is a paid iOS app that lets you listen to a small selection of well-recorded songs where you can listen to the individual parts but sung by real people. Might be interesting to people on here. From the FaSoLaMix site [1]: > "FaSoLaMix" is an iOS app designed to teach Sacred Harp singing to newer singers. When someone wants to learn to sing, our instinct is usually to recommend that the inquirer go to a good singing and sit next to a strong singer. But not everyone lives near many all-day singings. Our intent is to give the listener the virtual experience of sitting next to a couple of strong singers in whichever section suits their voice. The app features high-quality recordings of many Sacred Harp songs where the mix of the four parts can be controlled manually. For example, a singer wanting to learn the treble line of a particular song could leave the treble track at full volume, mute the other three parts, and sing along with the solo treble part for practice. While the most obvious benefit will be to new singers, longtime singers will also find it useful and fun. For example, experienced singers may wish to mute one part and fill in that missing part with their own voice. [1]: https://fasolamix.com https://fasolamix.com
- edjw 3y agoIf you're into this, you can sing it in places all round the world. It's a very welcoming community of people Couple of links to get going… US: https://home.olemiss.edu/~mudws/regular.html https://home.olemiss.edu/~mudws/regular.html UK and Europe: https://sacredharp.uk https://sacredharp.uk Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Harp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Harp
- 082349872349872 3y agoThe ecumenicalism reminded me of "we don't dance": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjLSo3cRh6g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjLSo3cRh6g
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- edjw 3y agoThis article is from 2016
- actionfromafar 3y ago[flagged]
- echelon 3y agoI did not expect a Bell Street Burritos reference in this article, but that's a staple food item for those in Atlanta. Kids that went to Georgia Tech will know it by heart. (I still prefer authentic Mission burritos. Bell Street Burritos are unfathomably greasy, but have a distinctive Southern charm to them.)
- karaterobot 3y agoI've read both the linked article (which was great) and the Wikipedia entry for Sacred Harp. But, I still don't quite understand how this works. That's probably because I have no understanding of musical theory and couldn't read any form of sheet music anyway. With that said, my question is: what is lost as a result of using this notation? I can see what's gained: simplicity and ease of learning. But why wouldn't you use this notation for every form of singing?
- swores 3y agoI'm not an expert, but I have been able to sight read sheet music (to play or to sing) since I was a young kid. From the article and wiki page, I see claims that the sacred harp system makes things easier, but I can't actually see if or why I might've found it any easier to learn than the standard western notation I did learn. So my guesses are that either it's not actually an improvement, or it's a small enough improvement on a good enough already internationally recognised system that there just hasn't been pressure for this niche form to take over in many places.
- aidenn0 3y agoBasing it off of [1], nothing is lost from traditional notation, inasmuch as it's extra notation on top of traditional notation. In this sense, it's a bit similar to furigana[2] for Japanese, as an aid to readers. Something that surprised me is that [1] is of a minor key, but the solfege marks are for the relative major. I'm not a singer, so I can't say as to how/why that makes sense. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Harp#/media/File:Windham.PNG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Harp#/media/File:Windha... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furigana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furigana
- arthurdenture 3y ago> Something that surprised me is that [1] is of a minor key, but the solfege marks are for the relative major Major and minor keys use the same shapes / solfege system. The major scale is "fa, so, la, fa, so, la, mi, fa", while the minor scale uses the same syllables but starts on la. This means that the shapes always represent the same intervals (i.e. pattern of whole and half steps) whether a song is in a major or minor. It's hard to describe but makes sense when singing.
- velcrovan 3y agoAs a no-longer Christian, I still find singing Sacred Harp extremely compelling. There is a group that gathers at an LGBTQIA+ affirming baptist church near the University of MN whose meetings I used to join irregularly until my kids were born. Communal singing is powerful by itself and pretty rare in America, but in addition this repertoire/tradition has something raw and real about it that transcends the dogmas of its authors.
- fieryskiff17 3y ago[dead]
- froh 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Harp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Harp thank you for this rabbit hole <3 edit: my habit of first skimming the comments and then reading the article led to attributing the appreciation to you instead of OP. I'll leave it here anyhow :-)
- rdtsc 3y agoYou can hear a few more examples https://www.youtube.com/@CorkSacredHarp/videos https://www.youtube.com/@CorkSacredHarp/videos I like some of the older ones from 10 years ago or so. You can see them by filtering by "popular".
- edjw 3y agoThe YouTube channel [1] of the Sacred Harp Museum [2] also has lots of good audio and video recordings 1: https://www.youtube.com/@sacredharpmuseum8890/videos https://www.youtube.com/@sacredharpmuseum8890/videos 2: https://originalsacredharp.com/museum https://originalsacredharp.com/museum
- senderista 3y agoA few years ago I purchased a few entire albums in FLAC from their site. They are amazing.
- pastureofplenty 3y agoAnother thing that makes Sacred Harp sound "weird" is that it eschews traditional voice-leading rules and therefore has no prohibitions on parallel fifths, fourths, or octaves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_leading#Common-practice_conventions_and_pedagogy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_leading#Common-practice_...
- senderista 3y agoI've noticed that some of the original 3-part harmony settings, by self-taught singing masters like Billings, have parallel/empty fourths and fifths, but that these were removed in later 19th-century 4-part settings by "properly educated" musicians. A good example is "Idumea": https://musescore.com/user/1108766/scores/9410239 https://musescore.com/user/1108766/scores/9410239 (BTW, there are several versions of this song on the Current 93 album _Black Ships Ate the Sky_, of which my favorite is Shirley Collins'.)
- satiric 3y agoVoice crossing is also very common, especially between the tenor and treble parts ("treble" is what shape note singers call the top part on the page, where the soprano part would usually be). Both men and women sing tenor and treble, so there's a lot of overlap leading to a pretty thick sound.
- swores 3y agoI don't know about Sacred Harp stuff specifically, but generally speaking in classical music "treble" means prepubescent boys and "soprano" means female singers, and since the vocal ranges are roughly the same the choice of word used on sheet music tends to be based on which type (boy vs. any age female) the composer expected to sing it. So my guess is that if shape note singers call it "treble" it's because historically it started as a male-only thing, with sopranos (women) and female altos joining later while keeping the tradition of calling the top part "treble".
- satiric 3y agoI think it's more likely the old composers took the old part names and adapted them to congregational music. It's not that Shape note singers (we're talking Americans in the late 1700s, early to mid 1800s) didn't accept women in the congregation, it's that folks like Tallis had called the top part the "treble", and the creators of new tunebooks didn't bother to change the name of the part. So IMO shape note music has probably always accepted women on the treble part. The alto part seems to be a different story though. In fact, in one of the old shape note tune books I've got (a reprint of The Southern Harmony, originally from 1854), the alto part is labeled "counter", suggesting it was adapted from the Reformation-era countertenor parts. It was occasionally sung by boys, or by women, but often left out entirely (most of the tunes in the Southern Harmony are three part, with no alto). Later on, this "second part from the top" reemerged as a standard alto part, labeled as such, and sung by only women and possibly boys (but by this time, certainly not men in falsetto).
- taway789aaa6 3y agoI know this type of music writing as "shape note singing" and I've never actually heard it referred to as "sacred harp". There is a tradition of shape note singing in some Quaker circles -- quite a bit different from the Southern Baptists, but probably similar repertoire.
- chris_st 3y agoThe older hymnals used in Church of Christ congregations use shape notes as well, but the hymnals have different names.
- JonathonW 3y agoChurches of Christ frequently use shape notes in hymnals as a sight-reading aid, and they almost all sing a capella, but the style and arrangements are usually very different than what you'll hear with Sacred Harp-- more melody-focused, like a conventional choral style. (I grew up in the Church of Christ and what I've heard of Sacred Harp sounds pretty chaotic to my ear, even arrangements of hymns I know well. But it's an interesting sound, and it's probably fun to participate in.)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- recursive 3y agoI had not heard of this, and I find it interesting and compelling. But I do not get the comparison to heavy metal. Heavy metal, as I understand it is defined by dissonance, instrumental virtuosity, and overdriven amps. Musically, it seems almost like the complete opposite of sacred harp. What's the connection?
- bossyTeacher 3y agoHeavy metal dissonant? I don't think that's the case. It might be loud or noisy but not dissonant
- recursive 3y agoFrom wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_metal_music#Typical_harmonic_structures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_metal_music#Typical_harm... > Heavy metal is usually based on riffs created with three main harmonic traits: modal scale progressions, tritone and chromatic progressions, and the use of pedal points. Tritones are notably present in heavy metal, as a genre, to my understanding. That's consistent with what wikipedia is saying. The tritone (6 half-steps) is generally regarded to be one of the most dissonant intervals in western music.
- engeljohnb 3y agoI think comparing it to metal is just a quick shorthand to say "it's heavy music." > dissonance, instrumental virtuosity, and overdriven amps I'm probably just splitting hairs here, but although those elements are common, metal is a really diverse genre (I think the only one more diverse is jazz). Really the only two things music needs to fall under the "metal" umbrella are 1) being heavy and 2) having double bass drum. Sacred Harp seems to meet the former.
- GardenLetter27 3y ago> having double bass drum Iron Maiden famously never use a double bass drum (except for Face In The Sand).
- doormatt 3y ago>These Southern singing conventions thrived because the untrained singers, who had to sing from written music, could learn how through a technique called “solfège,” to use the music-school word for it. Plainer folks called it shape notes. You know the system. You’ve heard it a thousand times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solf%C3%A8ge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solf%C3%A8ge Solfège has nothing to do with the shapes of the notes, just the naming. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_note https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_note This is shape note. You can use the two together obviously, but they are not the same thing.
- Aidevah 3y ago> “Almost all music is written with a strong melody line,” she said. “We call that the lead line. Then, the three parts that harmonize with that, usually they are written just to harmonize. And they do. With this dispersed music, each line is a tune unto itself. It is not written just to harmonize with the lead. It's a tune unto itself. That's why they call it dispersed harmony.” > The light came on. Four separate melodies, sung simultaneously. Four different songs, really, but each with the same words. Which makes it an even more welcoming tradition than the one I grew up with. If you don’t like the treble line of a song that much, then sing one of the other three. Nobody cares. This is of course more commonly known as "polyphony". Written sources of polyphony in western sacred music survive from at least the 12th century AD, and the unwritten practice must go back even further. Polyphony has been a inseparable, and some may even say distinguishing feature of western (literate) music ever since. It seems that the author and her interviewee are somewhat insulated from the mainstream of western music to be unaware of this.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- debok 3y agoIn my church we still use the Genevan Psalter in our worship. It is not the same as Sacred Harp, but many of the same principles apply, and it makes for excellent communal singing. I could definitely hear the similarities, but it is hard to explain exactly what they are. The principles used during composing the Genevan Psalter was: 1) It should be easy to sing for untrained singers 2) It should sound sacred 3) It should be of high artistic quality Also, the article meations the "deepest past." The Genevan Psalter comes from the 1540's, and many Reformed churches still uses it all over the world. That's some serious deep past. I wonder if the Genevan Psalter influenced Sacred Harp?
- nlnn 3y agoArticle content aside, I love the photography. The colours, composition and subjects seem like a perfect fit for both the article and its aesthetic. It's probably also the fact they all seem relevant, rather than being filler, stock photos, clip-art, or AI generated.