I'm still looking for the correct ending for:

"A lady and a hat rack walk into a bar ... "

C, E flat, and G walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Sorry, we don't serve minors here." So E flat leaves, and C and G have a fifth between them.

I'm hoping someone remembers the one with "penguin soup" because I remember feeling alternately horrified and amused at it, but don't remember the particulars of that joke.

Does anybody else know people who say, "Tune your beer" at gatherings?

I mean, sometimes it's too sharp...

In filkish circles, it is a truism that filkers contribute to the delinquency of A minor.

"Penguin soup" is probably the same as "seagull soup."

xeger, #1: And, reader, she married him.

(Explanation: My partner and I met in a Usenet group. His nom-de-posting was Werehatrack. We have been known to walk into establishments that serve alcohol upon occasion. Haven't quite managed the "married" part, but we're working on it.)

Also, it is true that many filkers sing in the key of R-flat.

R-flat minor if you please. Diminished 7th, with a falling minor second.

...I resemble that remark.

After having an MRI today I thought of this one:

What's the difference between bad Electronica in a club and an MRI?

You can walk out of the club.

Via the NYT's "The Lede" blog about Egypt:

Sultan Al Qassemi, a columnist for The National, an Abu Dhabi newspaper, passes on a joke circulating by SMS: "Joke I got on my mobile phone: 'After "Victory Friday" in Tunisia and "Liberation Friday" in Egypt, Gaddafi has decided to abolish all Fridays."

What do you get when you drop a piano down a mine shaft? A♭ minor.

xeger, #1: Unable to plot the contortions that would result in "hat rack'd Eve knew sense," but I'm sure someone can supply them.

Which chord is most useful to a musician when he goes home at night?

The key of A♭.

Musician joke: What's the difference between a baritone sax and an outboard motor?

You can tune an outboard motor.

What's the difference between a [preferred scapegoat instrument] and an onion?

Nobody cries when you chop up a [preferred scapegoat instrument].

Paul A. @ 15 ...
What's the difference between a [preferred scapegoat instrument] and an onion?
Nobody cries when you chop up a [preferred scapegoat instrument].

... and here I was expected "You can tune an onion..."

Isn't it funny how nobody prefers their own scapegoat instrument.

#7: One imagines that a werehatrack suffers the periodic curse of turning into Orson Scott Card's website.

What do you get when you drop a piano down a mineshaft?

A-flat minor.

Why do bagpipers march when they play?

A moving target is harder to hit.

(Disclaimer: I actually like bagpipe music. I blame this on my father's genes. The adoration for Welsh hymn tunes, and possibly the habit of bursting into song on random occasions, would come from my mother's side.)

...and the chord says "I've been thrown out of better bars."

Dave Luckett @ 14

The difference between a seamstress and a counter-tenor?

@Lila: I've heard "to get away from the terrible noise."

@Helen S: yoink!

I DO like the various "particle/ element walks into a bar" jokes...

20
I got the same combination, from the other directions. Plus not having much of a singing voice, so I tend to sing inside my head, where no one else hears it (and it's always in tune).

And then there are the Higgs boson "yo mama" jokes ...

(I thought for sure the full version had been posted here before, but google fails me. alors, le voila:)

C, E-flat, and G go into a bar.

The bartender says, "Sorry, but we don't serve minors." So, the E-flat leaves, and the C and the G have an open fifth between them.

After a few drinks, the fifth is diminished; the G is out flat. An F comes in and tries to augment the situation, but is not sharp enough.

A D comes into the bar and heads straight for the bathroom saying, "Excuse me. I'll just be a second."

An A comes into the bar, but the bartender is not convinced that this relative of C is not a minor. Then the bartender notices a B-flat hiding at the end of the bar and exclaims, "Get out now! You're the seventh minor I've found in this bar tonight."

The E-flat, not easily deflated, comes back to the bar the next night in a 3-piece suit with nicely shined shoes. The bartender says: "You're looking sharp tonight, come on in! This could be a major development." This proves to be the case, as the E-flat takes off the suit, and everything else, and is now au naturel.

Eventually, the C sobers up, and realizes in horror that he's under a rest. The C is brought to trial, is found guilty of contributing to the diminution of a minor, and is sentenced to 10 years of DS without Coda at an upscale correctional facility. On appeal, however, the C is found innocent of any wrongdoing, even accidental, and that all accusations to the contrary are bassless.

The bartender decides he needs a rest - and closes the bar.

A piece of string walks into a bar.
The bartender says, "sorry, we don't serve pieces of string. Get out."

So the piece of string decides to try again. He ties a knot in one end of himself to look like a head, and unravels the end a little to look like hair, so perhaps he can fool the bartender into thinking he's really a person.

The piece of string walks in again. The bartender says, "aren't you the piece of string I asked to leave earlier?"

The piece of string says, "I'm a frayed knot."

Some non-generic-scapegoat instrument jokes:

Q: What's the difference between an dead armadillo in the middle of the road and a dead trombonist in the middle of the road?
A: The armadillo was on his way to a gig.

Q: How many bass players does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. The keyboard player does it with his left hand.

Q: What's the difference between a violin and a viola?
A: The viola burns longer.

Q: What's the difference between an oboe and a trampoline?
A: You take off your shoes when you jump on a trampoline.

Q: Why are violas bigger than violins?
A: They aren't. Violinists' heads are just bigger.

Q: How do you know when an alto is at your door?
A: She can't find her key and doesn't know when to come in.

And one especially for Teresa:
Q: How did the orchestra director fit the rest of the string section in a bus that was already full?
A: There's always room for cellos.

barebones @ 20: this one probably works better if you remember to type the punchline.

The difference between a seamstress and a counter-tenor?

A seamstress tucks up frills.

bryan @ 17 ...
Isn't it funny how nobody prefers their own scapegoat instrument.

Whadda ya mean?!? I'm all about sax and violins...

Two linguists walk into a bar and it takes the rest of the joke to disambiguate.

Paul A. @ 15:

A good scapegoat instrument in this case is the accordion.

(It's scored for easy slicing.)

√2 and 3 walk into a bar and see φ at a table. 3 sits down next to φ and starts chatting her up. Eventually they leave together and √2 takes a cab home.

The next morning √2 sees 3 at work and asks how his evening with φ went. 3 gets a big grin on his face and says, "It was a transcendental experience!"

As a harpist, I'm constantly confronting the stereotype of harps (and harpists) being gentle and mellow. However, harps have more in common with motorcycles than most people think. For instance, you put a leg on each side. They're both associated with angels. But the big difference between a harp and a Harley is ... you can tune a Harley.

(I told this when playing at a biker wedding once. They loved it. They were also really impressed that I could keep up with them in the beer-drinking department. )

Re Harleys: You can't tune them well.

The bad thing about the internet is that when you're about to repeat a joke on a forum, you can CHECK AND FIND OUT YOU'VE TOLD IT BEFORE.

... or in this case, other people have. Better.

[ how can you tell if an oboist has perfect pitch? he gets it in the Dumpster without hitting the sides.]

Bruce CSTM @34 -- oh come on not! 3's far too rational to act like that!

Lee, was that rec.bicycles.tech ? I remember werehatrack on there, can't believe there could be two of those.. but find it equally hard to conceive that romance would blossom on bicycles.tech..

The glass armonica was invented by Ben Franklin so that the orchestra would have an instrument that would go to pieces faster than the soprano.

The only difference between an onion and a banjo? People cry when they cut up an onion.

(Posted from BYO con in Hutchinson, KS)

The only difference between an onion and a banjo? People cry when they cut up an onion.

(Posted from BYO con in Hutchinson, KS)

The punchline to this one depends on which of the two kinds of pop music in the world you are referencing (Bluegrass or Not Bluegrass):

What do you call a person who knows all the members of the band, knows all their songs, and follows them around to all their gigs?

a) the drummer
b) the banjo player

AAARG

What does it say about me that I screw up TYPING a joke????

What do you call a person who knows musicians' names, knows all their songs, and follows musicians around to all their gigs?

See, it would have been funny if I had told it right. Wait, wait, lemme back up, it wasn't band members, it was musicians . . .

So hey, I'm an alto, and really, there are very few parts out there written for altos that are actually a) alto lines (not mezzo or soprano II, thank you Sir Arthur Sullivan) and b) more interesting than hanging out on F.

I'm really good at hanging out on F. Sometimes I get to hang out on Aª.

Anyway, I was very excited to see not one, but two contralto (fancy opera term for lead alto) parts in this year's production. Awesome! Except... the traditional lead for this company decided she wanted one of them, the true contralto part, and she can actually reach it, so there it went*.

Don't the sopranos have enough of the principle roles? Do they really have to bogart the contralto lines as well?

ªThere has got to be a joke in there somewhere.

*This is not the first time this has happened with this company. It's annoying rather than criminal because the people taking the roles can actually do them reasonably well, but... the last time I had a principle role, it was written with me in mind. That was over a decade ago, and I'd really like to play a principle...

the drummer

When you join a brass band, they try you out on various instruments to see which one you have the most aptitude for.
If you turn out to have no sense of pitch, they give you two sticks and make you sit at the back.

...and if you have no sense of rhythm either, they take one stick away and make you stand at the front.

Doug, #39: Same person, different newsgroup. We met in alt.callahans.

How many folk singers does it take to change a light bulb?

Twelve -- one to change the bulb, 4 to write songs about how much better the old bulb was, and 7 to complain because it's electric.

How many filk singers does it take to change a light bulb?

Six -- one to change the bulb and 5 to write songs about the process in the style of every Trek series.

B. Durbin, thank God for Brahms. I have a theory that he must have been in love with an alto.

How many principal sopranos does take to change a lightbulb?

One -- and she doesn't have exert any effort to unscrew it, just hold on while the world revolves around her.

A man without talent persists in teaching himself to play an instrument.
Then one day, he gives up.
And looks happy.
When asked why he is, after all this time and persistence, he says:

"No Muse is good news."

What's the difference between a bull and a symphony orchestra?

On a bull, the horns are at the front and the arsehole's at the back.

Here's a long but good one:
A few years ago, the Seattle Symphony was doing Beethoven's Ninth under the baton of Milton Batter. At this point, you must understand two things:
1. Bass players hate playing Beethoven's Ninth. There's a long segment in this symphony where the bass violins don't have a thing to do... not a single note for page after page!
2. There's a tavern called Dez's 400 right across the street from the Seattle Opera House, rather favored by local musicians.
It had been decided that during this performance, after the bass players had played their parts in the opening of the Ninth, they were to quietly lay down their instruments and leave the stage rather than sit on their stools looking and feeling dumb for twenty minutes.
Well, once they got backstage, someone suggested that they trot across the street and have a few brews.
They had quickly downed the first couple of rounds when one said, "Shouldn't we be getting back? It'd be awfully embarrasing if we were late."
Another (presumably the one who suggested this excursion in the first place) replied, "Oh, I anticipated we could use a little more time, so I tied a string around the last pages of the conductor's score. When he gets down to there, Batter's going to have to slow the tempo way down while he waves the baton with one hand and fumbles with the string with the other."
So they had another round and finally returned to the Opera House, a little tipsy by now. However, as they came back on stage, one look at their conductor's face told them they were in serious trouble.
And if you thought things couldn't get worse, both first stand players soon passed out right in their chairs! Batter was furious and on the verge of completely losing it, as he began making gestures at the basses while trying to flip tied pages and finish the piece. But the absolute *worst* part of it was:
*
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*
*
*
*
*
*
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[Brace yourself]
*
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*

Batter was up at the bottom of the Ninth, with the score tied, the basses loaded, and two men out!

For the purposes of this joke, I am choosing the accordion as the Preferred Scapegoat Instrument.

An accordion player stopped at a friend’s house on the way back from a gig. The friend lived in a bad neighbourhood, and the accordion player only stopped for a few minutes.

But the visit wasn’t short enough. He left his accordion in the back seat of the car, and by the time he got back, the damage was done . . . someone had broken into the car and left a second accordion in the back seat.

So these two ducks are taking a bath, and one of them says to the other: "Honey, would you pass the soap?".
The other one replies, "What do I look like, a radio?"

Robert, #52: *applause* I was familiar with the joke, but in rather less detail and a slightly more abbreviated form. I like this version better.

B. Durbin So hey, I'm an alto, and really, there are very few parts out there written for altos that are actually a) alto lines (not mezzo or soprano II, thank you Sir Arthur Sullivan) and b) more interesting than hanging out on F.

Q: How many altos does it take to change a light bulb?

A: None, it's Too High.

The Monash University Choral Society once, quite a long time ago, sang a 40-part Mass setting. This was perhaps half an hour of music. One of the alto parts had several F sharps, a few As, and a B flat. And Gs. Lots of Gs. Lots and lots and lots of Gs.

There have been some talented altos in hip hop over the years.

Two elegant people in formal clothing, sipping white wine in a posh lounge. One says to the other, "So, what brand of rosin do you favor?"

Two guys in a bar having a beer. One says to the other, "So, what kind of valve oil do you like?"

Two bums in the gutter. One says to the other "S'what kinda sticks ya use?"

Also, it is true that many filkers sing in the key of R-flat.

Around here we refer to the Filker's Key as X blunt demolished.

...and if you have no sense of rhythm either, they take one stick away and make you stand at the front.

What's the difference between a bull and a symphony orchestra?

A bull has its horns at the front and its asshole at the back.

*

What's the range of a viola?

Depends on how hard you throw it.

*

How many basses does it take to change a lightbulb?

Only one, but it has to be in the basement before he'll try.

*

What do you call a drummer without a girlfriend?

Homeless.

Bruce Cohen STM @34 — That would work better with pi or e instead of phi, because phi is algebraic.

So I heard this single entendre, but it wasn't very funny. So I made up another one. Then I put the two together, if you know what I mean.

What do trumpet players use for birth control?

Their personalities.

*

How do musicians tell when the stage is level?

The banjo player is drooling out of both sides of his mouth.

*

How can you tell when a percussionist is at your door?

The knocking gets slower and slower.

*

What's the difference between a drummer and a drum machine?

With the drum machine, you only have to punch the rhythm in once.

*

Did you hear about the drummer who locked his keys in the car? It took him nearly two hours to get the bass player out.

*

What's Zenophobia?

The irrational fear of convergent sequences.

A woman walks into a bar, asks the bartender for a "double entendre"...so he gives her one.

I've told this one a million times, but at least here, more than one person will get it:

How do you get an oboeist to play a sustained A♭?
Take away her batteries.

Define: string quartet.
A good violinist, a bad violinist, a wannabe violinist, and someone who hates violins, all getting together to whine about conductors.

Define: minor second.
Two basses singing in unison.

B. Durbin - there's a reason "trumpet disease" (can't get them to play quietly, because they're *always* the melody, even when they aren't) is called "soprano disease" in SATB choir. Definitely in "Did you hear the one about the humble soprano? Me neither" territory. Unfortunately, unless you get a *good* alto (and there's always at least one good soprano), they only bring in music with soprano solos/descants; which of course does wonders for the sopranos' and altos' egos, which leads to lack of good altos (see beginning of loop) and sopranos assigned to even the tenor solos, even if they have to sing them in the tenor octave.

(What, bitter, me? Never)

@20 Lila: I, too, heard that one as "even they prefer to get away from the noise."
Being a curler, I (sort of have to) like bagpipes (doesn't hurt that I dated a piper for a couple of years). Even indoors (if you can call a 10-sheet curling rink "indoors"). But when I was in the Police Chorus, we sang for an internal ceremony where the dignitaries were piped in. Everything was fine (if a bit loud), until the piper went by the lectern - which was live. If you never have to hear directionally-miked bagpipes, be grateful.

Dan Hoey @ 61:

Rats, you're right. I confused that with the fact that φ has the continued fraction expansion with the slowest convergence of any irrational number.

"Unfortunately, unless you get a *good* alto (and there's always at least one good soprano)"

Actual comment from rehearsal: "It's so nice to be able to hear the altos." "Hey, I've been here for years!" "Yes, but it takes more than one good alto to cut through these notes!"

Also, "Hey, we've got a tenor section, and it's not named Robert!"*

For context, you have to understand that this is the largest cast we've had in years. Last year's Mikado actually saw the cast outnumbered by the orchestra, 18 to 21. There was *one* lady in the chorus. (I was on "big belly" tech.)

*Robert is a very good, and very powerful, tenor. We are a community theater group, so dropping a classically-trained professional-grade tenor into the chorus is, shall we say, rather amusing.

An orchestra's rehearsing and suddenly a scuffle breaks out between a flautist and a viola player.

"What the hell's going on?" asks the conductor.

"When I wasn't looking," says the viola player, "she reached over and detuned one of my strings!"

"So? Tune it back."

"She won't tell me which one it was!"

A viola player with an amateur orchestra in Duluth, Minnesota finds an old lamp lying in the snow, rubs it and a genie appears.
"Make me," he says, "a ten times better musician."
"At your command," the genie says, and suddenly the viola player finds himself playing in the viola section of the Minneapolis Orchestra.
"Now make me ten times better than that".
"As you wish," the genie says, and in a flash he's playing the viola in the Chicago Philharmonic.
"Now make me ten times better than that."
"Yes, master", the genie says, and he finds himself playing the solo part in Bartok's viola concerto with the London Phil, conducted by Kurt Masur.
"Now make me ten times better than that."
There's a final flash of light, and he finds himself back in Duluth, playing second violin.

@B Durbin #66

Heh - our tenor section is named Jim. We have much the same issue with a 12-20 person church choir with two professionally trained singers (1 tenor, Jim, and one soprano, me) in it.

I'm getting annoyed at our choir director over solos though. Our altos do get to sing solo, but for some reason he keeps handing them solos that really challenge their top range, while the last two times I sang solo I never got above C5 - seems to me like he should be reversing those.

What's the difference between a soubrette and a terrorist?

You can negotiate with a terrorist.

The difference between a folk musician and a life insurance policy?

Some day the insurance policy will mature and be worth something.

Actual comment from rehearsal: "It's so nice to be able to hear the altos." "Hey, I've been here for years!" "Yes, but it takes more than one good alto to cut through these notes!"

No, it doesn't (well, it does, but one good alto and a couple of voices works); it requires "all those sopranos notes" to back off a bit and listen for the altos.

If you can't hear the parts, you're too loud. If you're told to sing over them, fine - but back off after "your moment", please! Please note: I'm as bad as many for pushing my line and not backing off enough and contributing to the "all Handel is shouted" problem, so I'm literally preaching to the choir here.

66. B. Durbin - I second Mycroft. You don't need good altos, you need a director willing to tell the sopranos to back off, and sopranos willing to listen.

In our church choir, we have two good altos, and three medoicre altos, when everyone's present. (Our professional or almost soloists are: One soprano, one tenor, and a baritone). I'm one of the mediocre altos. But when I knew the song, I've been the ONLY alto present and had my part audible to with three sopranos going.

I used to think our choir director didn't direct much; and he doesn't, for things we sing with the congregation, since anything with too much finesse is lost then anyhow (although I know I tend to apply some of his commentary from the anthems and other choir-only moments into the rest, too).

But I've grown more impressed with his skills as time goes on, (and also realised how much the times he's not saying much have to do with *previous* training having sunk in, because now I've been through some of his more intense drilling).

Thanks to him, and to a generally cooperative attitude from all sections when he does, we've been praised by visiting musicians for something they've said choirs are not often noted for; being able to sing the quiet bits as well as the big booming explosions.

When we started the year, my church choir had A Soprano, and the other sopranos; A Bass, and the other bass; A Tenor, and the other tenor; and the other alto.

I've got the range, unlike The Soprano, to sing the alto part comfortably and well, so I end up moving down a lot. But The Soprano is married to The Bass, and they're both semi-professional Musical Theater People and unable to do mezzo-piano on down or skip the vibrato. This seems to unbalance the choir, esp. as The Tenor moved out of town in October. Our director was good - he pushed us further than we thought we could go, and so we're asked for at all the local ecumenical events because we're pretty good, but he moved last week. Now we get to search for someone new...

So yes, I'm one of *those* sopranos. I'm sorry. But I also feel your pain - if you want a solo in my choir, pro is the way to be.

Q: What's the difference between a violin and a viola?

A: The viola holds more beer!
(As told by a violist, right after the fiddler told the third joke @28)

***

I consider myself fortunate that the few professional quality (I don't know what kind of training they have) singers in our church choir are also good ensemble members, and very kind and gracious people in general. (Also, we do very little music that calls for a soloist - and most of us don't want those solo parts!)

Am I crazy for wanting to join a second choir when I finish my degree?

The joys of choir (also known as, "Yes, the altos do have a range of more than three notes, thank you very much...")...

We are another 12-20 member church choir. Our bass section consists of one basso profundo, one new guy, one genuine baritone who's kind of quiet, and one "baritenor" (who used to sing tenor but started singing bass when we didn't have any basses at all.) Our choir director is a professional-grade tenor; there are two guys who sing second tenor, and the first tenors are all women who don't sing high enough for alto. We have an abundance of altos, a couple of whom get promoted to second soprano when there's a shortage. The soprano section consists of one semi-pro (who is both talented and an awesome all-round down-to-earth person) who jumps sections (tenor, alto, soprano), another first soprano (the accompanist's wife), and in the second-soprano division are the basso-profundo's wife, the church treasurer, and a couple of other ladies, of whom two may be available on any given Sunday.

I wish there were more interesting things for the altos to do.

sisuile 72: unable to do mezzo-piano on down or skip the vibrato.

O gods I hate those people! I try not to hate them, but I can't help it. Nobody's voice but theirs needs to be heard, because they're the real SINGERS.

Fuck them and the horse they rode in on.

And as for vibrato: if you can't sing Palestrina without vibrato, you can't sing Palestrina. Sit down, shut the fuck up, and let the competent singers take over. (I told my choir director just today that he should have his 8-year-old son come in and teach our soprano section how Palestrina is supposed to sound.)

And no, I won't try to sing Verdi for anyone's amusement but my own. My voice isn't that big. Why can't people with Verdi voices shut up when I'm singing Palestrina?

Hmm - I'm afraid I may be one of those sopranos now and again. I don't use too much vibrato though - actually my voice doesn't do vibrato at all, which can lead to the unfortunate problem of cutting right over all the other voices like a flute in the string section, even if I'm not singing all that loudly. Also, our regular choir director is out currently, the substitute doesn't seem to realize just how much rehearsal time the choir needs on a new piece, and as the only soprano who can read music, sometimes I'm singing loudly because if I back off, the entire section goes to pot because they're all following me. It causes an unfortunate "Cindy and the back-up singers" effect, but it's better than "a bunch of people who don't know what they're singing". When we're well rehearsed it's easy to back off because everyone else knows the notes too.

Why can you fit an entire symphony orchestra in a school bus?

Because there's always room for cellos.

I seem to recall that at the church I attended as kid, the only professional musician was the organist. (There were good amateurs in the handbell choir, at least two of whom later went pro.)

Xopher, #75: They're even more annoying when they're SCA Authenticity N***s who berate everyone else for things that aren't period, even when sometimes they're wrong about that too. I was so proud of myself for managing to refrain from giving her my Music History prof's lecture about vibrato not belonging in early music...

I agree with everything every chorister has said here. I'm in the alto section - I'm the trained amateur volunteer who's filling the role of Alto Soloist until our church can find enough money to hire a Real Professional (oddly enough, they have enough money to pay three sopranos). I have a contralto range and hate, hate, hate when all these beautiful late 19th century/early 20th century anthems thing ladies singing in unison = soprano. We have three other solid altos, and at this point if you can't hear us, everyone else needs to STFU.

I too am mightily tired of F, F# and G.

As far as singing goes - Elizabeth Dennehy, who played Lt. Cmdr Shelby in "The Best of Both Worlds" on ST:TNG has the most beautiful boy treble sound. Very useful for a High Anglo-Catholic parish.

So this musical chord walks into a bar, and the bartender says, “Hey, I can’t serve you.” And the musical chord says, “Why not?” And the bartender says, “Because you’re A Minor.”

And the chord says, "You'll serve me if you don't want your bar burned to the ground. See those friends of mine coming in now? They're Triads."

Katie@26: Wow, that was horribly hilarious.

So naturally (ahem) I couldn't help but rewrite it.

“If You Hum a Few Bars...”

C, E♭, and G go into a bar.
The bartender says, “Sorry, bub, but we don’t serve minors.” So the E♭ leaves, and the C and the G have an open fifth between them. After a few drinks, the fifth is diminished, and the G is out flat. A newly-arrived F tries to augment the situation, but he’s just not sharp enough. The F was accompanied by a D but she headed straight for the bathroom saying, “Excuse me. I'll just be a second.”
A few minutes later an A comes into the bar, but the bartender is not convinced that this relative of C is not a minor. Then the bartender spots a B♭ hiding at the end of the bar and exclaims, “Hey, you, get outa here! You’re the seventh minor I’ve found in this bar tonight.”

The next night, the E♭ comes back to the bar in a well-tailored suit with nicely shined shoes. The bartender says “Hey, you’re looking sharp tonight; come on in! This could be a major development.” This proves to be the case, as the E♭ is only there a short time before he’s slurring his phrases. The bartender tries to intervene, but the E♭ is out of his clothes in cut time, and is now au natural.
Our friend C eventually sobers up, only to discover that he's under a rest. At the trial, he’s found guilty of contributing to the diminution of a minor, and is sentenced to ten years of d.s. without Coda at an upscale correctional facility. Happily, on appeal the C is found innocent of any wrongdoing, even accidental, and that all the charges were bassless.

As for the bartender, well, he decided he needed a nice long rest, and closed the bar of his own a-chord, which was just Fine.

And thank you all for reminding me how much I love singing with BlueStreet Jazz Voices here in Seattle. I was commiserating with one of our sopranos just last weekend. I bemoaned the fact that I do pretty much the entire concert at mezzo-piano or less, and she admitted that there are some songs that she just flat-out lip synchs. Otherwise we wouldn't balance with the altos. I really wish we had a diva or two in the alto section, but until then, all the vocalists in the choir with 8-cylinder voices are throttling back. The result, of course, is well worth it. At least, the Triple Door jazz club seems to think so. Our annual gig (June 18th this year) is, as usual, on a weekend night (Saturday!). I love being in a choir that gets paid to perform!

{oo. Critical miss for saving roll against bragging.}

What's the difference between country & jazz?

In country, you play three chords to a thousand people...

Oh, if we're doing genres now...

What's the difference between rock and disco?

To play rock, you only have to know three chords. To play disco, you only have to know one.

Heh. Back in high school, I was the soprano soloist in a choir where the director had me singing alto in the chorus, and it was for two reasons: 1) I always came in at the right time, in the right pitch, and 2) I could do it quietly.

My range is currently a modern soprano (none of those crazy high B's) down to high tenor (same range as alto, but I can change my timbre to sound male. Party trick!) I'm more solid in the alto range unless I can get a good month* of training in, and Sir Arthur Sullivan's soprano lines trend awfully high anyway.

*This is not a good month. Sacramento has three seasons: Summer, Fog, and Allergy, and we're in the last right now.

rm@44 - My boss is mainly a guitarist, but he's been learning banjo the past year. He had some brain surgery last fall (benign tumor, fortunately no damage, caught after he had a seizure), and for the first week or two of recovery they wouldn't let him do anything requiring intellectual effort, even reading or watching TV. But practicing banjo? That was ok.

B.Durbin - I was usually a bass back in high school, so G&S chorus parts were easy; we'd usually have two notes for most of a song, backing up the lead singer with I V I V I V I V or whatever while having fun playing Third Ancestor On The Left or A Gentleman of Japan.

But I love the high B's! I never get them, because I'm the only high soprano this choir has got, but I do love them.

I have the range for alto (all the way down to mid-baritone ranges actually), but due to the flute in the strings section effect I'll only get moved down if the need is dire. In bigger choirs where the sheer number of people makes my voice stand out less, I get moved around a lot more. I love my voice, but sometimes having such a distinctive sound (think boy soprano with really good carrying qualities) can be a pain in the butt. I have to be pretty much whispering to blend with the altos at all.

nerdycellist@ 79:

I would swear that the notes we're always stuck on in the choir books are Ds and Es (Bottom and just below the staff).

Fortunately, we get, usually, a bit more interesting dynamic in the things the director chooses - or arranges. The Requiem we're working on for Good Friday seems to expect the altos to run from upper-staff E to the F three lines *below* the staff. Sometimes within a page, and sometimes with the sort of jump that's more usual for a Bass. Wow, that's fun. It's mostly in my comfort zone, never mind my range -- and yet it seems like a treat to be *asked* to do it.

I just checked and a triple French Horn w/stopping valve can cost more than USD$11k. Prices sure have gone up.

Another Flanders and Swann gem about the French Horn.

Note to self, if ever composing music, make sure the altos get the good part. Including at least one solo.

(And if possible, just for the hell of it, stick the soprano section on a treble C-sharp and leave them there for most of the piece, on "Ah", with occasional movement to D-natural and possibly an E during the Really Exciting Part.)

(Not that I'm bored with the piece we're currently working or anything.)

(Laugh at us altos, but we're not only /good/ at keeping the same pitch for several measures in a row, but also at figuring out where we are when we don't get lyrics either.)

(All right, I'm cranky, it's probably time to go have supper and stop reading politics on the internet.)

Lenore #88, nerdycellist #79.

Some of the C/D vs F/G difference is whether the soprano line is written for sopranos or for The People. Congregational music has to be moved down a third or so.

Sometimes the chords get rearranged so the tenors get the Cs and Ds, but that often leaves the basses grovelling around at the bottom of the bass clef, ie, "Should I sing this F an octave higher or just mime it?"

A lot of the four-part arrangements of congregational hymns seem to have been written by a keyboard player with no singing experience.

Thena @91: As a high soprano (with good low range), and an arranger, with friends who are altos and female tenors* and all other vocal parts, it amuses me to play against type a lot.

Sometimes I give the melody to the altos, and let the tenors and sopranos have fun harmony parts. Sometimes the sopranos get a high floaty 3-4 note descant, and the tenors and BASSES get to play with fun harmony parts. And some pieces just desperately want their melody in the bass, utterly startling the singers but sounding really cool. :->

My surpassing choir annoyance (aside from wishing my voice sounded more like Tracy Chapman's, which is a whole other issue) is when the sopranos get unrelenting melody, all the time, every single verse. BOH-RING. Sigh. That's what comes of being both a harmony slut and a high soprano. :->

* My friend the female tenor tends to judge the quality of choir directors largely by whether they believe she exists, or whether they instead force her to sing with the altos. She does NOT have an alto range; about half of the top of alto is utterly impossible for her.

thomas @ #92: A lot of the four-part arrangements of congregational hymns seem to have been written by a keyboard player with no singing experience.

... leading to the phenomenon my choir-director father called "editing for stupid piano players", wherein a note altered in one part is "restored" by a natural in a different part. (This was not intended to imply that piano players are stupid, but rather that only a stupid piano player would expect a g-sharp in the tenor to require a g-natural in the alto.)

Elliot Mason @93 - Sometimes I give the melody to the altos, and let the tenors and sopranos have fun harmony parts.

Bless you!! I started as a soprano, but with age, my range has gotten deeper; I'm now definitely an alto. After many years singing (BOH-RING) melody, it was/is hard to hear and sing harmony. It would have been both useful and fun to have had more harmony parts as a soprano.

Lila #94.

editing for stupid piano players

It helps a lot if the editor puts parentheses around the unnecessary accidentals.

A somewhat similar phenomenon in choral music written by jazz keyboard players is enharmonic equivalents used in close proximity. I understand that it can make sense for the keyboard part to have a D flat and a C sharp in the same phrase, because that's the natural way to write the chords. It's still a pain for the singer if the vocal parts are written that way, especially in close harmony where someone else may well be singing a C natural (or B sharp, in extreme cases).

94
wait, what???
Do they think that accidentals are tokens that get passed around?

P J Evans @ 97, Lila @ 94: It's correct to have cross-part cancelling naturals in the score, because it's common for pianists (and of course the conductor) to have to read from a full score, and it's quite helpful for them. Ideally one's music notation software would automatically insert them where needed, and automatically remove them when extracting parts, but I don't think most software is that smart. Probably the editor or composer is inserting them manually and forgetting to remove them from the parts, or even having to choose it as the lesser of two evils.

thomas @ 96: Even though I play (mostly) monophonic instruments, I'd much rather see enharmonics spelled correctly, even if it means a C♯ shows up near a D♭. Maybe if I were a better sight-reader I wouldn't care, but as it is misspelled notes mess me up. I'm not a singer, but I would expect singers to care even more, since choral music is not bound by equal temperament, and in a first-rate performance the third of a C-minor chord will be a noticeably different pitch from the third of a B-major chord.

choral music is not bound by equal temperament

Well, it depends. If it's unaccompanied choral music then yes, but the problem usually arises in music with keyboard (piano, organ) accompaniment, so it is equal temperament and there genuinely is no difference between C♯ and D♭. The fact that they would be different notes under a less constrained tuning makes the matter worse.

For a cappella music I would agree, but I haven't noticed it as a problem there -- either it doesn't happen, or it does happen and for the reasons you give, I'm happy with it.

Tim @ #98, and why is the pianist playing from the vocal score?

Never mind. Don't get me started on a music education system that insists that vocalists, unlike instrumentalists, aren't supposed to be able to read music. My father's career was centered on teaching vocal sight-reading (he wrote a textbook and method for it). I'll spare the fluorosphere my tired old rants.

Lila, it never occurred to me that vocalists might not know how to read music. I've met so few people involved with performing music who couldn't read it that ... I'm boggled.

P J Evans: It's distressingly common for vocalists (especially in amateur choirs) to either not read music, or only have a minimal knowledge of how to read music (ie, higher notes are written higher on the staff. You mean they have names, too?).

I'm an oddity in my church choir, in that not only can I read music, but I can read both treble and bass clefs.

My sight-singing's still not very good, though. I follow the advice of my high school band director: "If you're going to be wrong, be wrong with confidence!" I can be very confident :)

P J Evans #101:
it never occurred to me that vocalists might not know how to read music.

It is harder for vocalists -- you need to know what a note sounds like to sing it. In my experience it's not at all uncommon to be sight-reading on piano or clarinet and to be surprised by the sound of a correct note. That can't happen to a vocalist -- you get what you expect, right or wrong. On most instruments it's easy for a mediocre sight-reader to play a piece, get an approximate idea of how it sounds, play it better, and iterate. When singing, this need not work.

It's because of this difference that it's possible to be a vocalist with much less music-reading skill than would be unavoidable for an instrumentalist. Singers can usually read rhythms, and they know what note name corresponds to what line on the clef, but they often can't sight-read at all. Even many highly competent singers can only sight-read in musical styles they are familiar with, and can't read random note sequences at all.

As Lila says, this is due to structurally bad training -- anyone who can sing in tune can learn sight-reading. In my experience with fairly good community choirs, though, the lack of any training in phonetics is harder to work around. My former choir in Seattle had a very frustrating experience with a concert that involved three different versions of Spanish.

Which brings me back to a joke:

Q: How do you get a guitarist to stop playing?
A: Put sheet music in front of him.

A lot of rock musicians, maybe most, don't read music. But lest we scoff, some classical musicians would have trouble learning a part quickly by ear, and even more would have trouble improvising a lead.

Lila, #100: Count me boggled along with P.J. How in the world are you supposed to learn the part if you can't read the music??? (And yes, I can pick up songs by ear, but when I was in chorus we were expected to read from the score. My sight-singing was quite good back then, but has deteriorated from lack of use in the interim.)

Lee #105
when I was in chorus we were expected to read from the score

Yes, but what sort of score, and how accurately? I can sight-sing Wesley or Mozart or Bruckner pretty well, but it tends to break down a bit with Poulenc or Penderecki, especially if there isn't any accompaniment to tie down the harmony. And I listen to Poulenc and Penderecki for fun. For me, and as far as I can tell for the majority of singers, there is a level of difficulty at which you need to hear the music first. That threshold varies over time and between people, but it exists for most singers and doesn't exist for many other instrumentalists.

I'm a reasonable singer and a hopeless, completely-untrained pianist, but I still find it useful to play tricky vocal lines on the piano to work out how they should sound. I've never found bashing it out on the piano at all helpful with difficult clarinet music.

All this is not to deny the boggling lack of training (or interest in training) displayed by some choristers.

Lee @105: By hearing it. Supposedly they were teaching us sight-reading in grade-school choir, but my ear was quick enough that I never learned it. By the time the teacher had walked us through it twice, I had it well enough to sing it the next couple of practice-run-throughs, at which point I have it memorized for sure.

Through dint of years of experience, I have what another chorus teacher called 'good orientation' -- if I've heard a piece once, the sheet music reminds me what we were doing in the complicated parts.

But having learned to sight-read on piano, with great difficulty, I have NOT THE FOGGIEST IDEA how one would learn to sight-sing. I know people who can do it, but I swear it's some abstruse superpower. It is easily as hard as learning another spoken language, and involves major brain rewiring. For me, singing is all right-brain timey-wimey balls; my throat knows how to hold itself to do things my brain hears before I sing them. Piano sight-reading I learned to do by memorizing what those weird lines are supposed to mean for my finger positions on the keyboard, and it always shocked me when -- releasing my will and worries to trust in the Strange Lines -- my fingers would hit just the right keys to actually make the melody I intended appear, like magic. I can't imagine being able to sing, accurately, something I hadn't heard enough times to be able to pre-hear it in my brain and throat.

I hope any of that made sense to someone but me; it's 3AM and I'm underslept, so I babble.

Thomas @103: "anyone who can sing in tune can learn sight-reading." I beg to differ - see below.

Elliott Mason @ 107: Can I kiss you? Or at least hug you? (*Internet hug*). I have the same ability to pick up a song by ear, and did so in choir in Junior school (7-10 years). High school (11-18), I never tried out for the choir because we were told we had to be able to sight-sing, and I couldn't do that, and I was pretty sure my "but I'll be singing with everyone else the second time through the song" wouldn't be accepted.

I never did learn to read music properly. I started learning the piano at age 6, quit before I hit 8, when the teacher gave the ultimatum that I had to practice more between lessons* or he wouldn't teach me. It was only a few years ago, coming across my old piano book and trying to play it, that I realised I'd basically played by ear and by "up one note, now up two, now down three" - which was fine until I lost my place, at which point I had to count rapidly up/down from middle C on the stave and then on the keyboard. My mother didn't believe it when I told her. "Of course you can read music," she said. Nope. I never learned, and neither she nor my piano teacher realised that I couldn't**, nor that that, more than lack of practice, was why my playing was so patchy.

Learning to read music is like learning a foreign language - and unfortunately I'm bad at that (I wish I was better).

* Time could be spent practicing the piano, or reading - guess which I prefered.
** So they never spent any time teaching me to do so...

dcb @108: Sure! **internet hug**

Scott The Piano Guy (a PBS piano-teacher) repeats in his live classes over and over that most people don't give up the piano because they can't PLAY well enough, they give up because they can't READ MUSIC well enough.

Which tells me the teachers aren't teaching what they thought they were ... or that the formal-teaching system prizes learning advanced sightreading skills far above being able to take a chord progression and a melody and build a creditable accompaniment (which is what StPG teaches). Prizing erudition over musicality, perhaps?

I still remember the day I actually sight-played something in piano class, just recently (after two years of lessons as a little kid, over twenty years of singing, and then two semesters of formal instruction as an adult after I learned to study and also how to motivate myself to practice): it was the strangest damn sensation I've ever had since the day I first learned to read English. A Magic Day.

It was also a crapton of work. I haven't stayed in practice, and I know for a fact it would take probably six to eight weeks of concentrated effort to even attempt it again. For one thing, I've totally forgotten the patterns of scales (i.e. what notes are in which key).

I have an ex who is an operatic soprano. Ignoring, if one can, her significant talent; and the years she spent singing with her sister as a child (in semi-professional status) her ability (trained, long and hard) to know what a note is, and sight sing it... boggles my mind.

She sees it on the page, and she hears it. If she needs to, she can sequence to another key. Ask her for a note, (say an Eb), and she will provide it.

I have no idea how she does it.

thomas @ 106: it tends to break down a bit with ... Penderecki

A friend of mine was in the Polish Requiem, long ago, and showed me her choral score. It was the first contemporary score I'd ever seen, and I was properly swoggled. It sounded amazing, though.

Singing Wren @ #102:

I got taught that too.

"A wrong note sung hesitantly is an error. A wrong note sung with confidence is an interpretation."

My sight-singing is getting better, although I don't have perfect pitch and don't expect ever to develop it. I've got "good enough" relative pitch, which is to say that if you give me the starting pitch, and what's written is fairly traditional, I will likely end up in the same key I started in, and produce a first- or second-order approximation of what's on the page.

Music literacy (ie, ability to read and write music, either in standard western musical notation or some other organized system) is a different skill set from being able to make music - in the same way that language literacy is related to but distinct from language composition (oral tradition storytelling, etc.)

The former helps facilitate the latter, but isn't necessary to it; it's damn useful for appreciating prior art, however.

(I also wish more kids got taught the basics of reading music while they're still young enough not to believe they can't sing, but I'm musically biased.)

Terry Karney @110: That sounds like she has perfect absolute pitch. I always thought you were born with it, or not, but it appears it may be influenced by e.g. early childhood experiences. And of course, assisted by training and practice.

Elliott Mason @107

But having learned to sight-read on piano, with great difficulty, I have NOT THE FOGGIEST IDEA how one would learn to sight-sing. I know people who can do it, but I swear it's some abstruse superpower.

Intervals.. Memorize intervals. My current choir director drilled us on intervals. "This is what a 4th (say, from middle-C up to F) looks like, this is what it sounds like. You already know what it sounds like - it's the first two notes of Amazing Grace. This is what a major 3rd looks like (F up to A), it's the second and third notes of Amazing Grace." And so on.

I still have trouble sight-singing an augmented fourth/diminished fifth (the interval from C-natural up or down to F-sharp). It just sounds wrong. Same for a major seventh (C up to B-natural). And being an alto, I rarely get to jump more than an octave, so I don't know those intervals very well. But the intervals you find in conventional music I've learned to be good enough at to mumble and fumble my way through.

Chord progressions help too, with traditional western music: if you can guess what chord is coming next, and you sing a note in the chord, chances are nobody will notice that it really belongs to another part.

dcb@114,

or through speaking a tonal language:
'"Perfect pitch for years seemed like a beautiful gift – given only to a few genetically endowed people. But our research suggests that it might be available to virtually everybody," Deutsch said... students who spoke an East Asian tone language very fluently scored nearly 100 percent on the test, and that students who were only fairly fluent in a tone language scored lower overall. Those students – either Caucasian or East Asian – who were not at all fluent in speaking a tone language scored the worst on average.

Deutsch acknowledges that it still remains to be discovered why and how it is that some speakers of non-tone languages – Mozart, Sinatra et al., as well as Deutsch herself – have perfect pitch. She expects it to be related to either an exceptionally long "critical window" for language (and tone) acquisition, a very early musical upbringing, or both.'

Kathryn from Sunnyvale @116: "or through speaking a tonal language" Yes, speaking/hearing a tonal language is part of what I included in "early childhood experiences" (I should have unpacked that some more).

Kathryn from Sunnyvale @ 116... What is a tone language again? And is French one of them?

Serge, 118: Chinese is the one most Americans have heard spoken. "Tonal" means that the intonation (rising, falling, steady, etc) of a syllable changes the meaning.

Elliott, #107: My experience seems to be almost the opposite of yours. I can't sight-read piano music to save my life; I have to laboriously go over it again and again until I get the piece into my muscle-memory. Sight-singing, for me, was developing a sense of where in my voice any particular note on the staff fell. I can still sight-read a melody line in relative pitch, but I've lost that sense of what pitch I should be singing for a given note on the staff.

Thena, #113: Yeah, that's about my experience as well. With accompaniment, I don't even need the starting pitch -- see again "sense of where in my voice that note falls".

and @115: if you can guess what chord is coming next, and you sing a note in the chord, chances are nobody will notice that it really belongs to another part

*giggle* So true! Also, playing by ear on the guitar is greatly enhanced by learning enough music theory to decode basic chord structures.

Serge, #118: No, French is not a tonal language.

I have the range of tenor-to-high-sop, if I'm warmed up and in practice. I seem to have lost some of those B's and C's, but that may be because it's been forever since I've done formal warm ups before singing. My sight-reading has gone stale from lack of use, but that may be because I'm not reading what was my "traditional" music - Sung Matins/Evensong/Compline is a whole different animal and modes are written on staves that are not treble or bass.

I can remember recently a day that our (now former) choir director was disgusted at us. We needed to shift the key down a step and everyone would get about halfway through the first line and shift back up. The sopranos explained to him that "It's not what is written on the page, damn it!" and he just couldn't understand why we couldn't mentally shift from a G-clef to an F-clef and sing it down a step. Because he practices plainchant every day, his brain has the wiring to accommodate the shifting of the staff and the rest of the choir didn't.

That was about the time that I realized that I see plainchant on the page and I categorize it as something other than 'reading music'. Plainchant modes are separate, with rules and types that I'm in process of memorizing and rely on intervals. The staff is just a description of the intervals. Reading music involves seeing notes on a page and reproducing that specific note. An A is so ingrained in my brain that I can produce it always, as the human pitch pipe, and an A is the start of the scale. Otherwise, I end up like Elliot and hear it once to get a sense of it, twice to learn it, three to sing it, four to perform it (and that's still what I do if there is no written music).

It sounds closer to what we did in marching band for football games: the music and the formations for the halftime show are intertwined in my memory, so that I retrieve both for a lot of the pieces we played. (Rehearse them separately the first day, so we'd have the music in our heads if not memorized, then put them together the second day, and the final practice was a few hours before the game.)

Hearing the music helps a lot, even when you can read it, because for a lot of things, you only see your own part.

Serge @ 120

I think that as far as we can make out, Ancient Greek was. (Accents in Ancient Greek mark pitch changes.)

AFAIK, there's nothing else Indo-European that is.

Q: If you throw an accordian, a banjo, a trombone, and a viola out the window all at the same time, which one hits the ground first?

A: Who cares?

Least-used phrase in the English language: "Is that the banjo player's Ferrari?"

pgbb 123: It's pretty certain that Proto-Indo-European was a tone language; there are remnants of tone all over the IE languages (the [o/e] alternation in Russian is one such, and IIRC the [u/i] alternation in English (as in goose/geese) is also a trace.

As for tone itself (which may be relative level (as in Hausa) rather than contour as in Chinese--or it can be both, as in Thai), it's gone from the IE languages. The only pitch-dependent meaning left in any IE (AFAIK) is Swedish tonal accent: in some words the pitch of the accented syllable can make a distinction between two words.

This is all recalled from my linguistics degree, which I received in 1981. Take with appropriate quantities of salt.

dcb: I don't know that she has absolute perfect pitch,. i.e. she makes mistakes, but she can tell, in short order, that she was a little off.

She can also switch keys on a dime. She and her sister were singing, and she was in a key which was going to end up to high for her sister, who let her know.

So she took a couple of bars of decoration to sequence down a bit, and they picked up, so that no one was jarred by the change.

There is a reason she makes a living singing opera.

I either learn things by ear the second or third time through, or I can't sing them at all (the latter is extremely rare). I am all but hopeless at reading music for singing purposes--I can, or rather could, do it on the piano, but not when singing.

In eighth grade chorus they started trying to teach us to sight-sing, and we got up to thirds before the effort foundered and died and I've never tried again. I'm sure I could learn it if I wanted to apply the effort...but I really don't have any use for it these days.

I have a limited variety of "perfect pitch"; I can, for example, produce middle C by singing in my head as follows: "When you sing you begin with Do". Because that Do is on middle C. It requires learning a short phrase for every pitch I want to be able to produce.

Not musical, but....

Q: What's Forrest Gump's Facebook password?

A: 1forrest1

Steve C.@128: Probably just that I'm not au courant with popular culture, but that's a sub-genre of joke I hadn't noticed before—"what is <famous person's> password?"

Thanks!

Thomas @ #92

That makes some sense of why the part drones in a slightly different location.

I was also told that SATB parts were written often so that if need be, one could drop all but the soprano (Melody) and the bass line and still have the sound work. This led to the tradition of boring alto lines - it's easier to remove something that's not interesting to start - and zig-zagging bass lines, because they're less interested in how the line sounds and more in putting the next-most important note in the chord in that place.

(LenorA please. Three syllables.)
_____

I did decide that near-droning alto lines do one good thing, as does playing chords on the mandolin - I'm growing a skill at improvising decent harmonies when singing around a campfire, by finding some note somewhere in the chord. Not always exciting harmonies (Though if they were TOO exciting, they'd be distracting and/or wrong for that context), but sometimes a fairly dull harmony is still more exciting than the Nth iteration of a song sung for years upon years.

I, too, learn most songs from listening, and use the score mostly to note rhythm and remind myself of the ups and downs. (Elliot's comment at 107 could have been me.)

I'm getting better, if not terribly good, at 'hearing' bits of the music in advance. But I have wondered if that's because I'm getting better at reading music again, or if I'm just getting better at anticipating the shapes and habits of most of the musical styles we use. I think the real answer is half and half.

It helps that I could read music well enough to sight on a few pieces in high school. But that's near half my life in the past now.

I can do a semi-decent sight-singing if the lines make any sense. Sir Artur Sullivan, whatever his other faults, has some pretty classical lines in there that just make sense, so I can usually wrap my voice around them.

The really fun part is that if you're doing Gilbert & Sullivan with an orchestra, as intended, instead of those warped piano parts that are a horrible approximation of a full orchestra, you're going to find your line in the orchestra somewhere. Great fun.

I love harmony. I used to be in a chapel choir that would fight for it. There's a number of harmonies that I sing that I wrote because they're so obvious to me, which is why I get paid the big bucks... oh wait, no I don't. Sorry, that's somebody else. That's why I have fun...

Kathryn@116: Quoting Deutsch: "Perfect pitch for years seemed like a beautiful gift."

{shudder} People with perfect pitch rarely become musicians. Every piano and organ in the world is gratingly out of tune (that equal-tempered scale, y'know), musicians who tune to each other instead of a digital tuner or stroboscope spend the whole evening sounding flat, and on and on. Horrible!

It's important to not confuse "perfect pitch" with "absolute pitch," which is the ability to sing (or identify) a particular pitch from a standing start. "B natural! Go!" "Laaaa!" "Correct. Now close your eyes." {strikes a piano key} "G" "Correct."

Lee@105: "when I was in chorus we were expected to read from the score"

Vocal sight-reading is an order of magnitude more difficult than instrumental sight-reading. "When I see THAT note on the page I do THIS with my fingers and/or THIS with my lips, and I will get the note I want, or something very close to it, which I can then fine-tune by ear." Even fretless bass player or trombonist starts with an open G string or first position, and then makes a fairly modest jump out to the unmarked territory of the note involved.

A singer doesn't have a 'neutral' or 'default' position to start from. If you overshoot a note or start to drift flat, there's no physical index that you can 'reset' against. "When I see THAT note on the page, I . . .scrunch my throat up kinda about this much?" For me personally, trying to identify a pitch by making it 'feel' a certain way in my body has an accuracy of plus or minus at least two whole steps. A C4 feels almost exactly the same as an E4 to me. Even the ends of my range aren't really that useful. "OK, here's the lowest note I can sing without it sounding like an unpitched growl. That should be an E3. Except on days that I have a slight cold, or the planets are aligned funny. Then it might be a D3, or even now and then a C3. Or possibly an F3."

When I'm 'reading music' and playing my bass guitar, I'm reading the notes. When I'm sight-reading in choir, what line or space a note falls on is pretty unimportant: what I'm reading are the *intervals.* "Up one scale step. Same note. Same note. Up two steps. Down three. Back up two, but there's a natural, so make it a half-step sharper than the note I think I *ought* to be singing." (Assuming we're in some flat key, of course. I don't care *which* flat key, I just need to know if naturals are canceling flats, or sharps.)

Sometimes I'll be reading the music and think "Oops, that feels like I'm off the top of the staff, but I'm supposed to be singing an F. That means I probably went to the A instead, and I'm a third higher than I ought to be."

Because I read music better than many of my fellow members, I keep a pitch pipe in my bag, and I frequently double-check pitches during rehearsal pauses. There's really no easy way to know if you're singing the right pitch, especially in jazz music, where the 'right' note might be quite a bit more dissonant than the one a half-step lower.

Lila@94 "only a stupid piano player would expect a g-sharp in the tenor to require a g-natural in the alto"

I'm with Tim (@97) on this one. It's absolutely correct to include the canceling, *unless* (and *only* unless) each choral part is on its own line. Likewise, if the piece is in C and is SATB on a grand staff (one treble clef staff and one bass clef staff bound together with a squiggly bracket on the left), and the tenors have a G# in the bass clef on beat 2, then the altos had better sing a G# on beat 4 even though there's no spiky octothorp floating in front of it. Them's the rules.

We've had that happen in BlueStreet a few times. "Wait, my fellow altos, I don't think we're agreeing on that note. We're in the key of A-flat, so that's a B-flat, right?" "No, the basses have a B-natural tied over from the previous measure." "Oops!"

Yet another reason why most vocalists don't rely all that much on sight-singing. Instead, the accompanist plays each section their line, and people learn their notes by ear, using the printed music more as a guide for the *rhythm,* (and entrances) but not the pitches. Writing choral parts to make it easier on the singers but harder for the accompanist would almost certainly be detrimental to the overall quality of the performance. I'm sure that 95% of all singers in church choirs, community choirs, and at least 75% of all high school and college choir singers, will sing what the piano player plays for them, rather than what's written, if the two are different.

And I don't really have a problem with that. See next post.

Dave @ #134, each choral part on a separate line is exactly what I'm talking about. The pianist has his own 2 lines, he shouldn't be playing ours. And re the choir needing the pianist to play their parts for them so they'll 'know how it goes', see my foregoing remarks on music education.

Tim@98 "I'm not a singer, but I would expect singers to care even more [about having chords written enharmonically], since choral music is not bound by equal temperament, and in a first-rate performance the third of a C-minor chord will be a noticeably different pitch from the third of a B-major chord."

Oh, lord, I *hate* enharmonic equivalent notes. I'm holding an F. Breath. Key change, turn page. Come back in on an E#. Let's see, that's down a notch on the staff, but not as far as usual, 'cause of the sharp . . . oh, f***, it's the same fricking note!

Since I have to read *intervals,* enharmonics are a nightmare. I always put big Xs through them and right the "real" note in instead.

Now it is entirely true that "in a first-rate performance the third of a C-minor chord will be a noticeably different pitch from the third of a B-major chord." For an instrumentalist, that means knowing when they need to "lip it up," or kick the little lever on their trumpet, or not use the open-string G. But as mentioned earlier, vocalists don't have those set-points. A first-rate vocal group, especially if they're performing a cappella, is *always* tuning *every* chord. We spend a fair amount of time in BlueStreet doing exactly that. "The opening chord for this phrase isn't ringing. Yea, it's just an eight-note chord and we're singing 150 bpm, but it needs to be in tune!" And our director will have us sing up to that point, hold us on that beat, and then glare at us until we get the chord in tune. Nobody in the choir is going to take the slightest notice if a chord is misspelled enharmonically. We're going to tune the chords as we go anyway.

{light bulb}

Wow. Yet another reason why sight-reading is naturally less relevant for vocalists: the ear is so much *more* important than for instrumentalists. If you listen carefully, you could probably tell the difference between a particular note played on a violin, and one on a viola. With a string octet, though, most people won't really notice if the second violins hand a line off to the violas, and being able to tell if you're listening to both of the 'first violins' or the 'second violins' would be extremely hard to determine if you're blindfolded.

On the other hand, it's going to be almost impossible to miss when the altos hand off to the tenors, and hardly anybody wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the two altos of a vocal octet and the two sopranos, or between one alto and the other alto.

Five cello players will normally and naturally have extremely similar timbres; it's really really easy to get them to blend together. Five baritones will normally have extremely *different* timbres. What's worse, human ears are engineered to be able to pick out and magnify those differences. Getting them to blend into a uniform whole is *really*hard*. This is exacerbated by the fact that vocalists are usually singing words; they're *changing* their timbre across a gigantic range, from "eeee" to "sss" to "ooooo" to "ahhhhhh", and everybody needs to land in about the same spot, so that one voice doesn't end up sticking out.

I'd never really realized this before, but yes, when I'm in a choir, I'm *listening* so much harder than I ever did when playing in the band. I have to keep my tone, and my pitch, AND my volume synchronized with the parts around me, both those I'm supposed to match (the other baritones or basses) and the ones I'm supposed to complement (sopranos, altos, tenors). Especially since there's less than 30 members total; if I'm on a bass line, there are only two other voices on the same part, and they're not standing next to me.

Thank y'all; I had never realized how very different group singing is from group playing.

Tim Walters @ 98... choral music is not bound by equal temperament

Coming soon!
Tempers flare in "Gunfight at the OK Choral"!!!

Dave, #133: Sometimes I'll be reading the music and think "Oops, that feels like I'm off the top of the staff, but I'm supposed to be singing an F. That means I probably went to the A instead, and I'm a third higher than I ought to be."

So you do have some idea of what notes feel like in your voice. I suspect that when I was in choir, I had that to a higher degree than you do -- because that was pretty much how I did it. Of course, there was some "reading the interval" involved too, but for coming in after a measure of rest or for large interval jumps, that sense of where a note fell in my voice was invaluable.

Lila, #135: I agree. My choir never had the pianist play the line for us that I can recall. We were expected to be able to read the music ourselves!

OTOH, it does sound as though what Dave is singing is a lot more vocally difficult than most of what we did, and hearing how the line is supposed to sound might be useful sometimes.

Dave, I'd like to play some of my old choir performance tapes for you and see if you think we were horribly out of tune. It doesn't sound that way to me, and yet my experience of singing is much less strenuous than yours appears to be.

We frequently sing Rutter (yeah, yeah, church choir). The thing about his music is that it's very easy to *listen to* - everything sounds "right" - while simultaneously being challenging to perform. Which is a wonderful thing.

He has one place where he changes keys midstream (I think from 6 flats to nothing). There's an enharmonic transition (the phrase sung goes from C-flat to B-natural IIRC). The written notation *marks the equivalence*! Thank you! Thank you!

I've got into the habit of using the same marking in other music when it happens. Still haven't worked out what to do when the A-flat becomes a G-sharp at the other end of the phrase, though.

Serge @137
Tempers flare in "Gunfight at the OK Choral"!!!

If you cross threads a bit, that would be "Gnufight at the OK Choral".

Strikes me that "OK Chorale" would be a slight improvement both in grammar and pronunciation.

Meanwhile, a temper tantrum in the biology dept would result in the "Gumfight at the OK Chordate"?

Paul A.@141: Isn't there a P.D.Q. Bach "O.K. Chorale"? (Googles...) Yep: "O.K. Chorale from the Toot Suite"

Clementine's Pa and Big Bad John walk into a bar. The bartender says he can't serve them. "Why not," they ask. "Because you're miners."

Speaking of sight-reading, or the lack thereof, I spent some time yesterday learning the bass part to The Cardiacs' Hello Mr. Sparrow for an upcoming gig. It was a nice ear-training exercise, especially the section around 3:27.

Dave Howell @ 136 ...
Wow. Yet another reason why sight-reading is naturally less relevant for vocalists: the ear is so much *more* important than for instrumentalists. If you listen carefully, you could probably tell the difference between a particular note played on a violin, and one on a viola. With a string octet, though, most people won't really notice if the second violins hand a line off to the violas, and being able to tell if you're listening to both of the 'first violins' or the 'second violins' would be extremely hard to determine if you're blindfolded.

On the other hand, it's going to be almost impossible to miss when the altos hand off to the tenors, and hardly anybody wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the two altos of a vocal octet and the two sopranos, or between one alto and the other alto.

Er... I think that really varies by person and experience -- and also by vocal group. For the majority of the groups that I've sung with, the director would have slaughtered us if you found that much difference between the different voices handing off to each other in close quarters.

@146 - actually, it's as much a question of timbre as of pitch. I would like to go into more detail, but I am running off to work. This is a placeholder for more nuanced thought in about 12 hours.

Dave Howell @133
I'm sight-reading in choir, what line or space a note falls on is pretty unimportant: what I'm reading are the *intervals.*

This is why shaped notes (especially Aiken notation) are so great for singing, and so "why bother" for instruments. The intervals (progressions) and chords are marked directly--not just indirectly via a combination of staff position and key signature. (Do Mi Sol--C E G in C natural, B-flat D F in B-flat--look the same and sound the same, they are just in different positions on the staff.)

SamChevre @ #148, yes indeed. Although it's now mostly found in Sacred Harp sings, shaped note was once the national standard for sight-singing, and back in the early 19th century it was widely distributed.

Following up my 148: The section of the Amish/Mennonite world I grew up in still uses Aiken notation. We learned it in school, all the songbooks I grew up with were shaped note (Aiken system). I think that's the only place left where shaped notes are in everyday use.

Me @147: @146 - actually, it's as much a question of timbre as of pitch.

Ok, here's my attempt, nuanced or otherwise, to unpack this for any non-vocalists who might still be following this thread.

If the altos are handing off a melody (or harmony line, or whatever) to tenors at a given pitch, there's going to be a change in the timbre of the sound and it is likely to be noticeable to many casual listeners (who may not be sure what they're hearing, but they'll hear something.)

The pitches where alto and tenor voices overlap tend to be in the lower half (or two-thirds) of the alto range - where the women are singing in their "chest" voices" - and the upper half (or two-thirds) of the tenor range - where the men are singing in their "head" voices. The difference between 'head voice' and 'chest voice' is difficult to explain in text but it's a sound quality that has to do with resonance - head voice is the higher part of a singer's range and has a clear quality, chest voice is the lower part of the range and has an earthy or velvety quality.

Where the section ranges overlap there's usually this difference between the quality of sound you'd get at a particular pitch depending on which section's singing it. This I suspect is one of the reasons that some choral directors are not comfortable with women singing the tenor part : they're usually singing the higher tenor notes in a contralto/alto chest voice, rather than the head voice a male tenor would have at the same pitch.

Thena @151: Interesting. I wouldn't have said it had to do with chest voice/head voice, but that's partially because my last bit of choir training involved a teacher/director (with strong opera background, if that matters) who sorted for parts not by notes defining the edges of your range, but by vocal color.

All the pale voices were sopranos, the clear ones high sopranos (me and one other); the brown voices were altos, etc. We had two pink voices, who she always put together, but sometimes they were the low soprano part and sometimes they were altos, depending on how the song sorted out. We had only one guy on good days, so he got to be sorted by note-range, and we mostly did SSA arrangements.

In that Professora T's view, "Range can be changed; color is for life."

Once she had us demonstrate it, I heard what she meant; voices that *sound the same* blend better into a single part, even if individuals have to lip-synch through the few notes on one end or another they can't manage.

For examples, think about the differences between the voices of James Earl Jones, Paul Robeson, and the really low guy from Crash-Test Dummies -- they're all about the same 'deepness' in terms of range, or at least they have overlapping range, but you could probably distinguish their voices from each other if you tried. I don't know if Professora T would've sorted them all into one section or not.

Similarly, Flanders from the Simpsons and certain female vocalists have similar RANGES, but their COLORS are totally different.

Thena@151: I've been passing on saying RAEBNC here since the thread seemed to be doing fine with people discussing their experiences, but since you actually mention non-vocalists following -- there's at least one, reading and enjoying and learning bits (that I'll probably never have a use for, but still). Non-musician entirely, somehow completely missed out on any musical training (maybe my parents were too careful to avoid pushing me?; my father was an enthusiastic enough amateur violinist to have roughly-monthly string quartet sessions pretty much his entire life, and very occasionally got drafted to play in a show orchestra too).

Elliott Mason @ 152: In that Professora T's view, "Range can be changed; color is for life."

And right on cue, an old experiment in range and color extension comes over the transom. Interesting, if less than convincing.

Oh, I almost forgot:

Happy imperative day!

March forth and celebrate.

From Peter da Silva, via J.D. Falk, an extremely geeky bar joke:

A TCP/IP packet goes into a bar.
It says, "I'd like a beer".
The barman asks, "You'd like a beer?"
The packet responds, "Yes, a beer."

(Now I expect all the IP networking gurus and programmers will be groaning, and everyone else will be going "Huh?")

Clifton Royston @ 156:

NAK