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’.
Choose a key that is comfortable for all singers, or relevant to the key of the song you are about to do. Encourage boys to sing an octave lower if that is what’s comfortable. Start with call and response, singing the notes to their number names, and work up to a point where they sing the numbers and notes according to how many fingers you hold up.
3 Music Teacher December 2015 Move by step for a while, increasing the range gradually. When you first moving by leap – say from 1 to 3 – chances are they will sing the word ‘three’ to the note 2. This will take some work, and you may need to explain the need to ‘think through’ 2 in order to get to the right note for 3. You will probably find that your classes get better at this over time, and it is worth starting each lesson with a ‘numbers’ session.
You will also need to go downwards from 1, so the concept of 1 and 8 being equivalent is a very important one. So, once the ascending numbers have been conquered, you can move on to the descending ones:
If and when it is appropriate, you can move on to minor keys as well: working with a natural (Aeolian) minor is most effective here, unless you have a reason to explore harmonic and melodic minor scales.
You can play around with combining numbers to make chords and melodies. You can even use the numbers to explore harmonic ideas like dominant 7ths, or even major 7ths and 9ths. You can recalibrate which note is 1 to create a key change.
EXPLORING VOCAL RANGE It can be useful for the teacher, and interesting for the students, to know exactly what everyone’s vocal range actually is. So, after a bit of exploration through warm-ups, position everyone where they can see the whiteboard and visit a virtual piano site that displays the name of each note played, such as Virtual Piano. Although the names of the notes here are numbered on the keyboard from 1-61 (rather than the more conventional C4 being middle C), it does give a sense of relative pitch, which is what’s important here.
Start in the middle, and have the whole class carry on up the scale until they reach their highest note, making a note of what this is. Then repeat the process in the downwards direction. You could even make a diagram on a large picture of a keyboard showing each student’s range.
The results of this exercise are likely to be interesting, and possibly surprising. Knowing who, if anyone, has got good bass notes, will be particularly useful in creating your a cappella arrangements.
Getting going with a song
A good Christmas song to start with is ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’, as it will work with melody and bassline only. The model for this is the opening two verses of the Glee version, which, while it is not a cappella, gives a repeating bass pattern that is easy to reproduce.
Set up a bassline in quavers that goes 8888 8888 6666 7777 in the major key of your choice, singing to ‘dm’ for now. Establish that the melody starts on the notes 5-3 – it is this relationship between the pitches of the parts that is so important to establish right from the start. Practise singing the melody and bassline together, swapping the groups around and trying different keys.
If this goes well, a harmony part can be added in, on the notes 3333 3333 4444 5555. It is at this point that the whole thing suddenly gets more difficult, and you may find that it takes some work to get the harmony parts going independently, without them being sucked into the gravitational field of the bass pitches. There are a number of ways that you can help students with this:
Get the two groups to sing their first notes before you start, listening carefully for the sound of the 8 and the 3 together. Those singing the harmony part can sing up to 3 from 1 while the bass singers hold the 8. Try using a different sound for the harmony part: if you are singing that bassline to ‘dm’, perhaps sing the harmony part to long ‘oohs’ – a semibreve and two minims. If you have at least one really strong singer who can hold and lead a line, get them to lead one group while you lead the other. In the absence of a student who is able to help in this way, make a quick multitrack recording of yourself or
Music Teacher December 2015 4 students singing each part, using GarageBand, Soundation, Audacity etc. You can then mute or solo parts as necessary. If all else fails, you could of course double any part on an instrument. If you are not doing this project at Christmas, a really good song to tackle as a starting point is ‘Rolling in the Deep’. Use Mike Tompkins’ excellent a cappella version here as a model. This is the bass part (labelled as ‘guitar’ on the video):
In the first verse, this is all you need to accompany the melody. It will definitely help to have done the numbers warm-up with a (natural) minor scale first, going down from 8. You could divide your class up into two halves, with half singing the bass and half the melody, and then swap. Because the percussion at this point is only a kick drum, this would be easy enough to add in as well, with a percussive ‘p’ sound, preferably into a microphone at close range – we will explore beatboxing in more detail later.
Now look at what happens in the second verse: although the music is the same, the texture is developed, and there are more parts. Firstly, there is a snare on beats 2 and 4, which can be done with hand claps or a vocal ‘kh’ sound. Secondly, there is the part marked ‘piano’ on the video which doubles the bass with longer ‘oh’ sounds.
Experimenting with texture
The sky’s the limit for creating different textures with a cappella, using a range of different syllables and vocal sounds. By playing around with these over the course of a song, some simple harmonies can be given a lot of interest and variety. Watch Bill Ward’s a cappella version of ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’ here. This features a wide range of textures, that change with each new section of the song. Because all the parts are labelled on the video, students should be able to analyse quite easily how this is achieved.
Another helpful clip is ‘Since You Been Gone’ from Pitch Perfect, which will probably be familiar to students. This includes easily replicated ‘dm dm dm’ and ‘wow’ sounds, which can be used on any parts, and instantly provide variety to a vocal texture.
Adding some beatboxing
Beatboxing is fun, cool, and it’s easy to learn the basics. It’s a great way to get students enjoying using their voices musically. The only thing that might put you off is your own inexperience, and it is well worth doing a little practice yourself before you start with a class. There may be experienced beatboxers in your class already who can be commissioned to teach part of a lesson for you, but failing that there are innumerable examples and tutorials on YouTube.
Shlomo and Beardyman are my favourites here, and both have tutorial videos. Unless you are fantastic at beatboxing yourself, it is definitely worth showing your class one of their performances to act as an inspiration. However, it is easy to get a basic beat going with novices really quickly, that can then form a rhythmic backing to your a cappella singing.
The basic sounds you need to teach are as follows: A very plosive ‘p’ that is almost a raspberry. Shlomo recommends pushing out your bottom lip and making a sad face. This is the bass (kick) drum sound.
5 Music Teacher December 2015 A percussive ‘k’ with an explosive rush of air after it: you could think of it as ‘khhhh’. This is the snare sound. ‘Tsss’ through your teeth, which may be short or long. This is the hi-hat sound. Getting really close to the mic makes the most of the All of these sounds are purely percussive, and are not voiced (ie you do not use your voice to make any kind of proximity effect vowel sound). All of them will sound a million times better through a microphone, especially if you form a seal – this creates an between your mouth and the mic by wrapping your hand around the head of the mic. Your mouth should be as artificial boost to the bass frequencies close as possible to the microphone without your lips actually touching it. of the sounds you make, and gives To combine the sounds to make a basic beat, first of all alternate the ‘p’ and ‘kh’ sounds: a spectacular booming bass.
Once that is going well, add in the hi-hat sound on the second half of each beat:
You could, if you wanted to keep things simple, build up this beat with three groups of students, one on each sound. If you want to spend longer exploring beatboxing, or return to it in later lessons, you could at any point transfer this beat to a drumkit. Another great (and quick) thing to do is to get students into pairs and challenge them to create their own eight-beat sequence using the three basic sounds. Once they have done this, they could get together in fours, and teach their sequences to each other before doing them end-to-end in a four- bar pattern.
Add some textural variety to beatboxing very simply by introducing a ‘cut’ where the beat stops, and there is a ‘swoosh’ of white noise sound. Achieve this by making a ‘sh’ or ‘ch’ (as in ‘loch’) sound, and moving your tongue and lips to make the pitch of the sound go from low to high. The rest of the singing may stop at this point too, to add drama to the ‘drop’ when the beat comes back in. This can also be a good point to change the beat to a different pattern.
If you want to explore beatboxing further, there are some fascinating advanced techniques to investigate. Two of these are lip bass and throat bass. Both of these involve producing lower bass sounds than can be achieved through normal singing. Lip bass involves (very roughly speaking) blowing a pitched raspberry into a microphone. Throat bass uses laryngeal clicks (a vocal creak sound that everyone can make) to create bass frequencies. There are some tremendous video tutorials on advanced techniques such as this from KRNFX on YouTube, such as this one.
Creating a mashup
Generally speaking, students will find singing independent melodies together easier than singing homophony. So if you are doing this project in limited time, or just want to keep it simple, a mashup could be the answer. Combining different songs together is also great fun.
‘Sleigh Ride’ by KT Tunstall is a good place to start if you are giving the project a Christmas flavour. It is based on a classic 1950s I-vi-ii-V progression throughout the verses, so the bass part can be sung like this:
Music Teacher December 2015 6 Another easy harmony part could be added:
Or even this characteristic line:
Now for mashing up! Once you have got the main melody of ‘Sleigh Ride’ going over the backing, you could add the following, in whatever combinations you desire: The first part of ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ ‘Blue Moon’ ‘Without You’ (Nilsson) ‘Sherry’ (The Four Seasons)
Another Christmas song that can be added into the mix is ‘What Christmas Means to Me’, originally performed by Stevie Wonder but covered by Hanson, CeeLo Green and others. It is based over this riff:
The harmony underlying this is close enough to the I-vi-ii-IV of ‘Sleigh Ride’ that the two could be used It is worth finding out whether any interchangeably, and ‘What Christmas Means to Me’ could be added into the mash. ‘Santa Baby’, as sung by of your students Kylie Minogue, also fits. harmonise naturally before showing DEVELOPING THE CHRISTMAS MASH FURTHER them exactly what parts to add. Start There are limitless possibilities for adding in snippets of other Christmas songs to the mix. Stopping a repeating by challenging them pattern and doing something different is one of the most effective ways of making a contrast in any kind of to see if anyone arrangement. An ideal festive snippet for this purpose is ‘Deck the Halls’, as the ‘fa la las’ are perfect for can come up with a harmony above the harmonising. main tune. Chances are that if they do, it will be in 3rds. If it is appropriate, this can spark a discussion about intervals, and the best ones – 3rds and 6ths – to use for harmonies.
If you have any groups that need more advanced challenges, you could get them to try a key change. ‘Sleigh Ride’ provides a great example of a ‘plus one’ key change, using the ‘ding-a-ling-a-ling-a-ding-dong-ding’ riff. Explain that this kind of key change just involves moving the note counted as ‘1’ up one note. However, this is quite challenging to pull off in a group, and any who can achieve it deserve just credit!
7 Music Teacher December 2015 Another challenge could be to introduce a section in triple time. ‘Carol of the Bells’ is ideal for this, and Barlow Girl’s version is perfect to use as a guide. The most basic accompaniment might be based on this bassline:
Because of the repetitive nature of the melody, adding harmonies in layers is relatively straightforward. Groups could be given an audio track of Barlow Girl’s version and then use this to work out the parts aurally.
CREATING A NON-CHRISTMAS A CAPPELLA MASHUP The key to creating a mashup is to find a chord sequence that is used in several songs, as the key feature of a mashup is being able to superimpose the songs on top of each other. The Musical Futures Find Your Voice resources use the I-V-vi-IV pop progression as featured in Axis of Awesome’s ‘Four Chords’. However, if you want to pursue an alternative, I can recommend Emeli Sandé’s ‘Next To Me’ as a starting point. It uses this progression throughout:
It is straightforward enough to build up a vocal accompaniment in three parts like this:
One of the great things about this progression is that it is very easy to double on instruments if the voices need some support. This might include xylophones or keyboards, but it is easy to play the bassline on bass guitar, and the chords on ukuleles. It is even possible to miss out the G chord and just do four beats of Am and four beats of C, provided that there is a bassline that includes the B.
So, what to add to create a mashup? ‘Wake Me Up’ by Avicii, ‘Riptide’ by Vance Joy, and ‘Cups Song’ from Pitch Perfect all fit beautifully over the backing, and can be combined with ‘Next To Me’ in whatever combinations you like.
MANAGING AND ASSESSING THE PROJECT
Having done some initial workshopping of the basic ideas and musical material as a class, it makes sense to get students into small groups to produce their own mashups. Groups of five or six work really well for a cappella – if the groups are too small, they won’t have enough people to cover a range or parts, or be able to layer up songs in the mashup.
Recording work in progress is essential, and listening back to these recordings not only jogs students’ memories about what they did last time, but also gives them opportunities for evaluating their decisions. A secondary benefit is having evidence, should it be required, of the progress that students have made with their work over time. You could set homework tasks for students to listen back to their work in progress and comment on it.
Music Teacher December 2015 8 A good way to keep track of progress over time, together with teacher feedback, is to use a radar diagram. The important thing here is to think very carefully about the things you want to assess. Here is an example for this project:
You may decide that 12 different areas for assessment are too many, particularly if you are making this a brief project, but you could have any number. The diagrams work like this:
Each student has their own diagram, but all diagrams for a group are on one sheet for ease. This sheet is given out to the group at the start of each lesson, and collected in at the end. The teacher awards marks as they hear work in progress during the course of each lesson, by drawing a blob in the relevant place on the diagram. Don’t worry if you don’t get round every group in one lesson – you can prioritise them next time. Each lesson, the teacher uses a different coloured pen, and writes the date at the top of the sheet. This way it is clear, for example, that everything written in pink is from 16 January. Marks can build up, for example, if a student was given 3/5 for structure last lesson, and this time they have improved in this area, their mark may go up to 4 or 5. The total at the end of the project will be out of 60, if you have 12 assessment areas marked out of 5. Students in the same group may well end up getting very different marks. As you are assessing and drawing blobs, you can also add a written comment to the sheet, to make it clear what students have to focus on in order to improve. These comments may be directed towards a particular student, or the group as a whole.
9 Music Teacher December 2015