My First ArrangementHCNW – Session 3

Taught by Harry Buererhbuerer@spiritone.com

503-380-1551

This class is designed for the barbershopper who has an interest in arranging, but is not confident that he/she has the knowledge of harmony necessary to do it. We are going to assume almost no musical knowledge on the part of the student, and start from scratch in everything.

We are going to explore a 6-step process for arranging a song in the barbershop style, and then go through those 6 steps as a class. Briefly, the 6 steps are:

Select a SongSelect a Key

Determine the Implied HarmonyHarmonize Notes Contained in the Implied Chords

Harmonize Other NotesAdd Barbershop Embellishments

As you get more experienced, you can combine these steps or do them out of order, but this is a formula that you can always use to produce an arrangement. Depending on the song, you may find some of these steps more challenging than others, but that will show you where you need to improve. For the song we're going to deal with today, all the steps should be relatively straightforward.

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Step 1: Select a Song

The first step is to select a song to arrange. Along with this, you will probably want to obtain a copy of the sheet music, if possible. This will help you determine the harmonies, or at least have the definitive version of the melody, and not make you rely on your memory.

I'm not going to say much about criteria for a song. Certainly some songs do better in barbershop settings than others. But each person is going to be attracted to different songs. A good song for barbershop will have wholesome lyrics and strong harmonies that resolve around a circle of fifths. (Don't worry too much if you don't know what that means.)

There are some advantages to choosing songs that are in the public domain. If a song is copyright-protected, you are supposed to pay a fee for permission to arrange. To find out more, just Google “permission to arrange barbershop” and you'll be directed to Society resources and forms. The original copyright owner will retain the rights to any arrangement that you produce, and can refuse permission.

Any songs written prior to 1923 are in the public domain and can be freely arranged. Once an arrangement is completed, the arranger owns a common-law copyright on the arrangement, and can choose whether to register that copyright or not.

There are many places online where you can find sheet music, either free or for sale. Often universities have collections of old popular sheet music that is in the public domain. My favorite source is:

http://levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu/

Other sources can be found at: http://www.pdmusic.org/sources.html or by Googling “public domain sheet music”.

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For the purpose of this class, we are going to use songs with the simplest harmonic structure possible, with two chords: I and V7. Once you get a handle on basic arranging principles with songs like this, you can branch out into more complex and interesting songs.

Songs with this simple harmonic structure include: Mary Had a Little Lamb

Skip to My LouLondon Bridge

Down in the ValleyThe Itsy Bitsy Spider

ClementineA Tisket, a Tasket

He's Got the Whole World in his HandsDon't Sit Under the Apple Tree

How Much Is that Doggie in the Window?Buffalo Gals

Deep in the Heart of Texas

We will be using “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” as a demonstration in this course, but I encourage you to try out the principles on other songs in this list on your own. You can either try to reconstruct the tune on your own, or find it online. By Googling, I found this:

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Step 2: Select a Key

This step also includes deciding on a general form for your song, and writing out the lead part (on the treble staff with the stems down). You could decide on repeats, key changes, etc. But to keep it simple in this class, we will plan to just go through the tune once.

You should decide the key for the arrangement based on the range of the lead part. This will be different depending on whether you are writing for men or for women. There may also be a particular group that you're writing for, and you should consider the range of the lead singer(s) in that group. You can adjust the ranges of all the other parts as you write, but you should start with the range of the lead singer in mind.

The melody of “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” spans an octave, from the highest to lowest note. For most men's groups, you could have the lead range go up to at least E or Eb. For women's groups, Bb or A might be a more appropriate high note. We'll strike a compromise and put it in a key in which D is the high and low note. That would put it in the key of G major, with one sharp.

Once you decide on a key, you would write out the lead line on staff paper, either by hand (in pencil) or in a notation program such as Finale. This is done for you on the next page for “The Itsy Bitsy Spider”. For the remainder of this exercise, we will assume that we are writing in the range of a typical men's group when we select the ranges. There is also a print-out on the following page of a setting in Eb, for typical women's voices.

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Step 3: Determine the Implied Harmony

This may be the most intimidating step for those without a musical background. So I'd like to say a few things about chords first.

One of the characteristics of barbershop music is that typically each note in the melody is harmonized with a chord. In barbershop music, and in western music generally, chords are formed by stacking notes in intervals of thirds, that is, alternate notes of a scale.

The two most important chords in our music, and the only two that we will be using for this song, are the tonic triad and the dominant seventh chords. These are often notated by Roman numerals as I and V7.

A triad is a chord containing 3 notes, a root, third and fifth. In a tonic triad, the root is the first note of the scale, the key note, and the other notes are 3 and 5 of the scale.

A seventh chord is a triad that is extended by adding a fourth note, a seventh. The most important seventh chord is known as a dominant seventh chord, whose root is the fifth note of the scale, or the dominant. It is composed of notes 5, 7, 2, and 4 of the major scale. In this chord, note 5 is the root, note 7 is the third, note 2 is the fifth, and note 4 is the seventh.

Since there are 4 parts in barbershop singing, each note in a seventh chord must be represented. In a triad, one of the notes must be doubled (occur twice) in the chord to give us the 4 parts. In a tonic triad, the note that is doubled is almost always the root.

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The notes in a chord don't need to appear in order, as long as they are all represented. They can be distributed among the voices and in different octaves. But it is important to consider the inversion of the chord. The inversion is determined by which note is in the lowest voice, usually the bass part.

When the root is the lowest note in the chord, the chord is said to be in root position. When the third is the lowest note, the chord is in first inversion; when the fifth is the lowest, the chord is in second inversion, and when the seventh is the lowest, the chord is in third inversion.

Tonic triads should virtually always be in root position. In the barbershop style, dominant seventh chords work equally well in root position or in second inversion. First and third inversion chords are not as good because they set up overtones that detract from the ring of the chord. You can decide the inversion for a seventh chord based on which note the lead has. If the lead has the root, then the bass should have the fifth, since all notes must be represented in the chord. If the lead has the fifth, then the bass must have the root. If the lead has the third or seventh, you can choose whether the bass has the root or fifth, depending on the voice-leading.

In determining the implied harmony in the song, you can sit down at the piano and be able to play the I chord and the V7 chord in whatever key you chose. Then, either sing or play the lead line with your right hand, and play either the I or V7 chord with your left hand, and decide which chord is more appropriate at each point in the song, writing in above the staff whenever there is a change in chord. The chart on the next page can help you find the notes of the chords you need.

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Step 4: Harmonize Notes Contained in the Implied Chords

In this step we'll do the easy part of the harmonizing, building chords where the melody note is one of the notes in the chord. In taking “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” as an example, we'll look first at the places that are harmonized with a I chord, and then those with a V7 chord.

In the first full measure, we have the melody on a G, the root of the chord, on the words “it-sy bit...”. The last note of the measure, an A, is not in the G triad, so we'll wait until step 5 to deal with it.

Since the I chord should be in root position, the bass would be on G as well, preferably an octave down from the lead. That leaves the tenor and baritone to cover the B and D. As a general rule, the third should be as high in the chord as possible, because of its role in the overtone series. So having the baritone on D between the lead and bass, and the tenor on a B above the lead is a good solution. You can harmonize all the other places where G is the melody note with tonic harmony in the same way. These occur in measures 4, 9, 12, 13, and 16.

In measure 2 (and elsewhere) the melody note is on B, the third of the chord. Here we want the bass on the low G. The baritone would be doubling the G an octave above, and the tenor would be on the D above the lead. Other occurrences of this voicing would be in measures 5, 8, 10, and 14.

In measure 6 the lead is on a D. The bass would be on G, either the low or higher one. The tenor could double the G above the lead, and the baritone could take the B. At the end of measure 12 the lead is on a lower D. Here probably the bass and baritone would both be on Gs an octave apart and the tenor would be on B.

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To harmonize the places that take V7 harmony, we would start on the first note, the pickup to measure 1. Here the lead is on D, the root of the chord, so the bass would have to be on the fifth, the low A. Baritone and tenor should cover the F# and C. Since the tenor is on B on the next note, he should be on C here for smooth voice-leading. That would put the baritone on F#.

In measure 3 we have the lead on A, the fifth of the chord, so the bass would need to be on D, the root. Baritone on F# and tenor on C still works well. This voicing can be repeated in measures 11 and 15.

In measure 7 we have notes where the lead is on C, the seventh of the chord. Here we have options. If we choose to put the bass on D, the root, we can have the baritone on A and the tenor on F#. Alternatively, we could have the bass on A, the fifth, with the baritone on D and the tenor still on F#.

At the end of that measure we have the lead on a high D, the root of the chord, so the bass must be on A, the fifth. Probably the tenor would be on F# and the baritone on C (or vice versa).

This concludes all the melody notes that are in the implied chords. The other melody notes will be dealt with in step 5. Everything in this step can be done without a piano; once we have the implied harmony written in, we just fill out the chords.

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Step 5: Harmonize Other Notes

There are two ways to handle notes that are not in the implied chord, either by extending the chord, or by using a different chord, usually one whose root is a 4th lower than the implied chord that you're working with.

Let's consider first the notes that occur in sections with tonic (I) harmony. If the note to be harmonized is the 2nd, 6th, or 7th note of the scale, we can simply add it to the three notes in the tonic triad. In the case of the 2nd and 6th notes, the result is called an “add2” or “add6” chord. In the case of the 7th note, it gives us a major 7th chord. These are all legitimate barbershop chords if the added note is in the melody line.

In measure 1 we have a melody note 'A' in a tonic context in G major. We simply make this into an “add2” chord by keeping the G, D, and B of the previous chord. The same thing happens in measures 9 and 13, and we handle it the same way.

The only other non-chord note in a tonic context is in measure 5 where we have a C. This would be the 4th note in the scale, but we don't use suspended 4th chords in barbershop. So the answer is to use a different chord, in this case a V7 (D7) chord (a 4th lower than the tonic chord in the implied harmony). There are a couple of ways we can voice this chord. We could put the D (root) in the bass, the A in the baritone, and the F# in the tenor. Alternatively, we could put the A (fifth) in the bass, F# in the baritone, and D in the tenor. You could try it both ways and see which seems the smoothest.

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In considering non-chord notes in a V7 context, there are two extended chords that we can use, the V9 and V13 chords. A V9 chord is a V7 chord with a 9th added, and since there are only four voices, it typically occurs with the root omitted. The 5th is in the bass and the 9th in the lead. The 3rd and 7th are in the tenor and baritone.

There are no places in this song where we need to use a V9 chord, but there are several places where a V13 is appropriate. If the harmonic context is V7 but the melody note would be the 13th (6th) of the chord (the 3rd note of the scale), then this chord is the one to use.

In classical harmony, a 13th chord would also include a 7th. But due to the half-step interval between a 7th (F) and 13th (E), in barbershop the 7th is usually replaced by a doubled root. In our key this chord would include a D (root) in two different voices, an F# (3rd), and B (13th). (The 3rd is always needed.) It looks very much like a B minor triad with the 3rd doubled. But it clearly has a dominant function, and it's better to think of it as a barbershop form of the V13 chord.

The first place where this chord is needed is at the end of measure 3. The B is in the lead, and we would put D in both the bass and the tenor. Then the F# would go to the baritone. The exact same thing happens in measures 7, 11, and 15.

There is one other non-chord note, the G in measures 3, 11, and 15. You might think that we should harmonize it with a G major triad, but we really don't want tonic harmony in those places. It's better to use a chord whose root is a 4th down from the original, in this case an Am7 chord (IIm7). The G is in the lead, and we would have an A in the bass, E in the baritone, and C in the tenor. This would be the same on all three occurrences. This concludes the harmonizing of the notes in the song.

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Step 6: Add Barbershop Embellishments

Once you have the melody harmonized, the final step in this approach to barbershop arranging is to add embellishments that are characteristic of barbershop style. These can include swipes, bell chords, solo or duet passages, patter, echoes, blossom effects, tags, and others. You can decide whether to add any of these effects and where.

The swipe is perhaps the most common embellishment, and it consists of one or more voices holding a note at the end of a phrase, and some or all of the other voices moving to change chord or voicing. There are many examples, but one is in “My Wild Irish Rose” when the bass and the baritone swipe up on the word “rose”, and then the three harmony parts move on the word “grows”.

Bell chords are when each voice sings the word at a different time to highlight the chord. Usually the lowest voice sings first, to build the chord from the bottom, but not always.

Solos or duets can be used for pick-up notes, or for passages within the song. Patter usually occurs when there is a slow-moving melody, and other voices sing extra words to add a sense of motion. A well-known example is “Down Our Way”, when some voices sing, “Gee, but I wish that I could wander...”

Echoes are when harmony voices echo a word that the melody sings, usually at the end of a phrase. It's similar to a swipe, but a swipe can be all on one syllable.

A blossom effect is typically when all voices start in unison and progress in contrary motion to a spread chord. Tags can be of many kinds, but they are typically used to extend the final phrase of a song. A tag can be a repeat of the last words of the song with some fancy harmonization. Another popular tag idea is for the lead to post a long note (usually the tonic), while the other voices change harmony around it. If you add some of these effects to your arrangement, it will seem a lot more like barbershop.

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