Making an a Cappella Medley – for Christmas Or Any Other Time of the Year

KSKS35 Making an a cappella medley – for Christmas or any other time of the year Jane Werry is a by Jane Werry specialist leader in education, and director of music at Hayes School in Bromley. She is an A level moderator for INTRODUCTION OCR, and a regular contributor to Music With the immense popularity of Pitch Perfect, preceded by Glee, and backed up by Gareth Malone’s TV Teacher online programmes including the recent Naked Choir, there has never been a more conducive time for getting resources. students to sing a cappella. There are lots of great things about this idea. It will take some work to get a cappella sounding good, and along the way students will need to think about tuning, timing, communication and their own vocal range. The modern a cappella tradition is all about devising arrangements, so harmonies and textures will need to be considered and used in a creative way. The development of listening skills is fundamental to any foray into a cappella. It needs a minimum of resources. You can branch out into choreography and exciting techniques such as beatboxing and throat bass. In fact there’s almost nothing not to like. It does, however, need to be tackled in a systematic way to anticipate some of the pitfalls and head them off at the first opportunity. To do a cappella well is difficult and requires perseverance. This resource uses some Christmas songs as a starting point for a cappella. However, everything covered here could be used equally as effectively with other songs, and I will give non-Christmas starting-points too, for use at any time of the year. Your a cappella project could last a few lessons or anything up to a whole term. You could start with Christmas songs, and diversify in January – the aim is to be as flexible as possible. All the ideas here can be combined with the now legendary Musical Futures Find Your Voice project. LEARNING OBJECTIVES AND KEY CONCEPTS The objectives for this project can be summarised as follows: To develop students’ vocal confidence and singing technique. To gain an understanding of how chords, harmonies and textures work together in a song. To improve students’ aural awareness: their ‘inner ear’ and ability to maintain an individual part. To develop creativity in creating a version of a song, or a selection of songs. Key concepts and terminology: A cappella, pitch, range, soprano, alto, tenor, bass, falsetto Key, chords, major, minor, modulation Bassline, harmony, rhythm Texture, counterpoint, homophony, cut, drop Ostinato, riff Keeping in time and in tune Structure Metre Timescale A very brief version of this project could take place over a couple of lessons. If you focused purely on Christmas songs, these could be the last two lessons of term. However, there is much to explore, and the unit could last for as long as a whole term. It would be perfectly feasible to start off with Christmas repertoire, and then shift the emphasis to other songs in January. 1 Music Teacher December 2015 Prior knowledge It would be possible to do this unit with classes that have very little prior knowledge. In this case, it is safest to keep it simple and limit the parts to melody, bassline and percussion. Where students have more prior knowledge and experience, it may be possible to add more harmony parts, and give more emphasis to theoretical understanding of the way that chords and keys work. Resources The beauty of a cappella is that it doesn’t need any! However, access to audio/video recordings is essential. The capacity to record students’ work in progress for self-assessment and peer critique is also important. Depending on the direction in which you wish to go with the project, you may use any instruments to provide a chordal, melodic or rhythmic support for the vocal work. BUILDING VOCAL CONFIDENCE If your students have not done much singing before, or have not done any for a while, you will need to do some activities to boost their vocal confidence. Even if they sang with enthusiasm and confidence at primary school, the early secondary years can be a time when students are overcome by crippling embarrassment about singing, and it can take a bit of work to get over this. Singing yourself, with confidence, is of crucial importance. Even if you do not consider yourself a singer, it is imperative that you lead by example in singing activities. Beauty of tone is not required: just as much accuracy of pitch as possible, and a ‘have-a-go’ mentality. Starting off with some call-and-response chants, and also vocal activities that involve making noises (rather than what might be thought of as conventional singing), can be really helpful in getting students use their voices in as risk-free a way as possible. It’s all about building confidence, and a bit of silliness here can work wonders. CHANGING VOICES IN EARLY SECONDARY YEARS If you teach boys, you are likely to encounter changing voices surprisingly early in KS3. It is likely that you will need to plan for a wide variety in range, from those whose treble voices will be with them for some time to come, to those that may already be quite well established with their lower, baritonal range. The thing to emphasise is that boys should sing in whatever range is comfortable for them at any particular time. If there is a choice between higher or lower, go lower; it is important for nothing to be forced or strained as changing voices can be quite delicate. A boy’s range can change extremely rapidly and unpredictably, and may be different from week to week. At some points during the changing process he may only be able to manage a range of about a 5th. The great thing about a cappella arrangements is that all pitches and ranges can be catered for. Girls’ voices change during puberty too, although less noticeably. Depending on the type of singing girls have been doing, they may have a noticeable ‘gear change’ between their lower and upper The must-read book on vocal technique registers. Most girls to whom this applies are frightened about using their head voices, and tend to for young singers is push their lower range. Tell them that they need to use their upper range in order to strengthen it – Teaching Singing to singing involves a range of muscles, and those involved in reaching the upper notes need exercise if Children and Young Adults by Jenevora they are to function well. A good singer is one who can use their whole range of notes evenly, so girls Williams (Compton need to embrace their head voices as much as they can. Publishing, 2012). Music Teacher December 2015 2 A cappella inspiration The history of a cappella is rich and varied. From its ancient roots in unaccompanied sacred choral music and madrigals, modern a cappella has progressed through the barbershop groups and glee clubs of the American collegiate system in the early 20th century, some of which have great names such as The Whiffenpoofs. The modern popularity of a cappella can be traced back to the ‘father of a cappella’, arranger Deke Sharon, who was behind the 1990s talent show The Sing-Off (see this documentary about his influence). The big change at this point was having voices replicate instrumental sounds, including borrowing beatboxing from hip-hop. Later on, TV shows and films such as Glee and Pitch Perfect have created a perfect storm of a cappella groups on YouTube. Here are some of the best: Home Free are an American group who specialise in country-style arrangements, such as this medley. Pentatonix are undoubtedly one of the most influential a cappella groups around at the moment, and do covers of current hits such as this Ariana Grande song. They have a lot of processing applied to their vocals, so the sound is quite difficult to reproduce live, but students are likely to enjoy their repertoire. My own favourite is Romanian group Jazzapella, whose arrangements, such as this one of Clean Bandit’s ‘Rather Be’, are spectacular. Peter Hollens is one of the artists who specialises in compiling a cappella arrangements where he sings all the tracks himself, or in partnership with a guest artist. Many of his songs are from films: your students might enjoy this medley from Frozen. Mike Tompkins is another solo a cappella artist: his videos often have helpful labels for each part, so you can get a better understanding of how it is put together. Check out his version of ‘Firework’ or his collaboration with the Muppets. British group Sons of Pitches recently won Gareth Malone’s Naked Choir series. Their varied arrangements cover a variety of styles, and their recordings are humorous and refreshingly unprocessed. Vocal warm-ups and starter activities There are so many great collections of vocal warm-ups and starters out there that the best thing is to point you towards where the best ideas are collected. Where these are available in video or mp3 format, so much the better. The best collections of vocal activities that I have found are as follows: Musical Futures Vocal Union Total Choir Resources CânSing The one vocal warm-up that I consider to be indispensable is ‘doing the numbers’ or ‘1-2-1’. The reason for this is that it gives a framework for making harmonies within a key that fit together. It also gives a way of talking about different keys that makes sense without talking about key signatures: you can just talk about which note they are counting as ‘1’.

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