It goes without saying that bluegrass is a vocal music. Singing is such a huge part of our music and many
of our bluegrass heroes have shaped a style of singing over the years that we
all have come to enjoy. Today, we will
examine some of the aspects of singing in the bluegrass setting.
I’ve also had requests to cover some of the basics of
how to sing harmony as well as requests to cover basic chord structures. Therefore, I’ve included two appendices –
appendix one covers Nashville numbering and a related notation scheme that is a
necessary background for harmony singing (it also covers some basics of chord
construction that might be of use to beginning bluegrass musicians). Appendix two gives a simple example on how to
construct a three-part bluegrass harmony.
The Voice as a Musical
Instrument
Most musical instruments, including the human voice, can be better
understood by separating them into three basic elements – an energy source, a
sound producer and a resonator. For
example, in any of our bluegrass stringed instruments (such as a guitar):
·
The energy source is a moving pick, striking the
string.
·
The sound producer is the vibrating string.
·
The resonator is the sound box, providing amplification
and tone coloration.
A human voice has the same three basic components:
·
The energy source is the diaphragm and several
pairs of associated muscles, which, working together with the lungs, provides a
moving stream of air. Effective use of
the diaphragm (and lateral oblique muscles) is especially important in singing.
·
Sound production (or phonation) comes from the
vocal folds that are within the voice box (or larynx). The shape and size of these folds are very
unique for an individual and can sustain several different modes of vibration. For example, a modal (normal) voice vibrates
the entire fold whereas a “falsetto” will vibrate the edges of each fold.
·
The resonator is a set of seven chambers1
in the body providing amplification and tone coloration. The shape and size of these chambers are also
quite unique to an individual and, along with the vocal folds, give each person
her own characteristic voice sound.
Primary resonance modes taking place in the head and/or chest lead to
the eponymous head and chest “voices”.
Another set of these chambers (e.g. aspects of your mouth) is capable of
taking the sounds and forming them into consonants and vowels.
Classical voice pedagogy teaches us that humans are capable
of producing several voice stages, or passaggi, that have dramatically
different timbres. The aforementioned
chest voice and head voice are two examples of passaggi. Most voice professionals describe more than
just these two stages, and, for example, according to the acclaimed vocal
teacher Richard Miller, a trained male tenor voice is capable of seven passaggi. Each of these passaggi invokes different
vibratory modes of the vocal folds and resonances in different parts of the
body.
The Bluegrass Lead Voice
There are a wide variety of lead vocal styles in bluegrass
music that range from full deep voices to high squeaky ones – and everything in
between. However, there is one unique
vocal sound that is strongly associated with traditional bluegrass – that being
the high lonesome sound that Bill Monroe pioneered. To me, it sounds like this distinctive vocal register
comes from forcing a chest voice into a range normally associated with a head
voice without fully switching into a falsetto, giving that high, closed
sound. A word of caution for those who
might want to try this at home: Tony Rice famously lost his once fantastic voice
(as have others) – apparently from improper vocal technique. I’d urge anyone attempting to recreate the
Monroe-esque (or any other) vocal sound to consult with a vocal professional to
make sure no damage is being done.
Bluegrass lead singing, like in other genres, is highly
individualistic and each vocalist has his or her own approach to the lead. Great singers, of course all can convey the
magic of a good story line and invoke emotion in the listener. James King is one of the best and is known to
break down crying on stage while performing an especially sad song. I’ve seen audience members weeping uncontrollably
along with James during one of his concerts.
And if you don’t get chill bumps listening to Larry Sparks, you should
have your autonomic nervous system checked out.
Harmony Vocals
Harmony singing is an essential part of bluegrass music – it
has been used to augment choruses all the way back to the proto-country music
times early in the 1900s and before.
Bluegrass harmonies rely on singing a line typically above and sometimes
below the melody line in such a fashion as to usually make a chord.
The earliest pre-bluegrass harmonies that I am aware of
occurred back in the string band era of the 1920s – if you listen to some of
the recordings of (say) Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers or similar string
bands, you can hear folks in the band joining in on choruses and sometimes
these folks will manage to deviate from the melody in such a way as to hit a
harmony note or two. This style of loose
but very energetic harmony singing continues in old time bands of the present
day. And it sounds great.
The “brother” duos of the 1930s feature very tight two-part
harmony where one brother sings lead and the other brother would sing a harmony
line that consists of notes above the lead that seem to blend well with the
lead part. These recordings from the
Blue Sky Boys, the Delmore brothers, the Stanley brothers, the Monroe brothers
and others, show wonderfully tight and beautiful harmonies. Some of these
two-part harmony lines have entered the bluegrass lexicon unaltered and become
sacred as iconic tenor harmony parts.
After Mr. Monroe formed the Original Bluegrass Band back in late
1945, sophisticated three and four part harmonies became a key part of this new
music. Much of the harmony that our
bluegrass father incorporated came from southern gospel music. As early as 1801, parishioners throughout the
American south were using techniques such as shape note singing <link> to
assist in finding the proper harmony parts in spiritual songs. Many of the sidemen recruited by Bill Monroe
and other major bluegrass acts came from a southern gospel background and were
thusly well equipped to sing the necessary harmony parts.
Stacking Bluegrass Harmonies
Bluegrass music frequently uses three-part harmony, with
each part more or less corresponding to the notes of a chord. Bluegrass people have developed an odd
nomenclature for discussing these harmony parts. In a conventional bluegrass harmony
stack-up, the part directly above the lead is referred to as the “tenor”
harmony and the part directly below is called the “baritone” harmony. It doesn’t matter if the vocalist is using a
tenor or a baritone singer’s range of notes.
In bluegrass, the labels “tenor” and “baritone” refer to the harmony
line not how high or low in pitch the singing is.
There are two other ways of stacking the harmony parts
besides the ‘conventional’ way that was described above. The first is to take the baritone part (conventionally
below the melody) and move it one octave higher so it is above the tenor part
in pitch, and this part becomes the high-baritone part. The resulting harmony line is almost
certainly not in the ‘classically defined’ baritone singer’s range – in fact it
might even be in the tenor or the counter-tenor range. But the bluegrass naming convention is to
continue to refer this as a ‘baritone’ part, albeit a high one. As mentioned above, it is the harmony line,
not the range that determines baritone or tenor. The resulting stack-up is melody (lowest in
pitch), then tenor, and then high baritone (on top).
The second possible rearrangement is to take the tenor part
(which is above the melody in a conventional arrangement) and move it one
octave below so it is below the baritone, it becomes (wait for it…) the low
tenor part. If you are an Osborne
brother, you are very familiar with this stacking because Bobby sings lead in
the stratosphere and even young children and small yappy dogs are unable to get to
pitches higher than his voice. The logical
solution: low tenor. In this stack-up, the lead line remains on
top, the tenor harmony line moves to the bottom becoming the low tenor, and the
conventional (low) baritone is sandwiched in between.
Many bluegrass songs and gospel songs in particular have a
bass line in addition to the other three harmony parts. Singing bass sounds really cool and it is
easy to do – even for young children with high modal voices. Firstly, you need a microphone. You need intimate contact, and I mean really
intimate contact with the mic. Sanitize it
with some rubbing alcohol first if you need to but you need to literally kiss
the mic. Most mics have something
called a “proximity effect” which takes the bass part of the sound spectrum and
amplifies it tremendously when the sound source is very close. Everybody can sound like Herman Munster by
swallowing the mic. Once positioned
thusly, just sing the root note of every chord (with a few exceptions) and you
will have a great bass harmony line!
If you would like to learn more about how to sing basic
bluegrass harmony, I’ve included a simple example in Appendix 2 at the end of
the blog.
Getting the Blend: Vowels and Diphthongs
Doyle Lawson once said that a getting a good vocal blend is
“all about the vowels.” Indeed, good harmony singers do pay close attention to the
vowels… if they are not sung in the same way, the harmonies will sound flat and
possible band drama will ensue.
Diphthongs are especially important and tricky to get
right. What is a diphthong, you might
ask – the word means “two sounds” and it refers to two adjacent vowel sounds in
the same syllable. Diphthongs are
everywhere and they change depending on the version of American English you
happen to be speaking. From my Northerner’s perspective, our Southern
counterparts often create diphthongs out of plain vowels (and vice versa). As an example, my name in the north is
pronounced “Jeff” – a short “e,” no diphthong.
When I was living in South Carolina, I became known as “Jeeeoooff”. This southern version of my name has this
beautiful diphthong inserted in the middle and is drawn out like a lazy
meandering river on a sunny afternoon (boy is that a horrible metaphor). Now just imagine if someone wrote a song
about me and we had people from both New York City and South Carolina singing
harmony. When they came to the word
“Jeff,” the vocalists would be essentially singing two different words and the
harmony would sound horrible.
The important aspect of singing diphthongs is for all
singers to not only pronounce the word the same way but to also transition thru
the diphthong at the same rate. To
illustrate, let’s take the word “girl,” which is a commonplace word in
bluegrass songs, and, as we will see, is fraught with potential problems. Note that "girl" may not be a true diphthong, but since the "r" makes the vowel sound change as you are singing thru the word, it behaves exactly like one. First of all, everybody pronounces “r”
differently – if you have both New Yorkers and South Carolinian singers in the
band you should just avoid songs with the letter “r” and change the word from
“girl” to “gal.” But if you want to
keep the original word “girl” because it rhymes with “oil” (yup, I’m from NYC),
the dreaded diphthong must be addressed.
If the lead singer transitions quickly thru the vowel and lingers on the
“rrrr” – for example he pronounces it “girrrrrrrrrrl” and one of the other harmony
singers lingers on the first part of the vowel e.g. “giiiiiiiiiiiiirl,” the
harmony blend will totally disappear during that word. It might sound flat even if all three singers
are perfectly on pitch. Since it is
often the case that one or more of the singers in a bluegrass band is sensitive,
a battle will ensue with each side accusing the other of being off pitch (when
in fact they are all singing in tune).
When everything is clicking and all the harmonies are
blending, there is nothing better than singing bluegrass music. Especially if you get the diphthongs right.
Keep on pickin’ (and singin’)
Jeff
1More precisely there are seven chambers
responsible for the resonance of the human voice. They are the chest, the tracheal tree, the
larynx, the pharynx, the oral cavity, the nasal cavity, and the sinuses.
Appendix 1: Basic Primer on Nashville Numbering and More
Last time we took look at the fundamental physics behind
music and how the overtone series leads to musical scales, why chords are
harmonious and why blues scales sound cool.
We are now ready to introduce some standard musical notation based on
the theory discussed last time. I have
used this notation over the years to both think about music as well as teach
it. It is loosely based on the Nashville
Numbering system, which you can read about on Wikipedia here <link>. This notation will help us discuss harmony
and some other related concepts to be covered in Appendix 2.
Thinking about the notes
Since bluegrass music is not played in a single key, it is
much easier to think about the notes in the scale as a series of numbers that
can apply to any key. This way, if I
learn a song in (say) the key of A and our guitarist / lead singer decides,
after reaching puberty that he would rather sing it in Eb, I don’t need to
re-learn the song. This applies to both
individual notes and chords.
Let’s start with the A Major scale.
A-B-C#-D-E-F#-G#
How would we list the notes of “Mary Had A Little Lamb?”
(Note that since we are just developing some theory here, I am not going to
differentiate the time value of each note, as is done in standard musical
notation.)
C#-B-A-B-C#-C#-C#
If I wanted to play that same song in G, it would be a
different series of notes:
B-A-G-A-B-B-B
Each different key would require a different set of notes to
be memorized or learned.
But what if I were to assign a number value to each
note? There are seven notes in a major
scale, and let’s use Arabic numerals to denote each note of the scale (in this
case an A scale):
A-B-C#-D-E-F#-G#
1-2-3-4-5-6-7
Mary had a little lamb would be written:
3-2-1-2-3-3-3
The numbers wouldn’t change if I shifted the song to the key
of G, or the key of Eb for that matter.
I only need to learn each song once and then, if I have done the
homework on my instrument or my voice, and know the scales of all the keys, I
then can play or sing that song in any key without transposing. I just need to think of the numbers, not the
notes. If you are familiar with shape
note singing, this scheme essentially solves the same problem, but without the
shapes.
This is a very convenient notation for harmony singers as
well. Using this notation, we can easily
figure out harmonies (and have a framework to think about while singing
harmonies). We will give an example of
how to do this after the next section.
I also use this system when I am in a jam and someone starts
playing a new song, one I have never heard before. I find if I can recognize and replicate a few
of the key notes (as well as think about the chord structure, to be covered
below), I can produce a rudimentary mandolin break on the fly, the very first
time I’ve played the song – just as long as I can hear the melody at least
once. My thought processes at the time
of panic – just before I take my first break in this unknown song – are to
think about the melody in terms of numbers, and then attempt to construct a
break using those numbers as a framework.
It works most of the time (but sometimes ends up with a spectacular
failure).
The key point is to be able to fluently think about notes as
numbers: to be able to recognize
melodies on the fly and assign numbers to them. This is not as difficult as you
might think but will require some practice.
It is a fundamental skill that I would highly recommend for any
beginning bluegrass musician to acquire.
Chording away
Now let’s discuss chords.
Briefly reviewing from our blog post last time: a major chord is
composed of four notes, including the root, the third, the fifth and an
octave. The reason these four particular
notes sound harmonious is they contain pairs of notes that are separated by the
five most harmonious intervals – the octave, the perfect fifth, the fourth, the
major third and the minor third.
For an A Major chord, the notes would be A-C#-E and A
(octave). Using our Arabic numeral
notation, its 1-3-5-1. And as with
scales, a major chord is always 1-3-5-1 in any key. An F Major chord is 1-3-5-1, and so is a D
Major.
If we are playing a song in the key of A, we will need more
than just an A Major chord. You will
find that you can play most of the songs in bluegrass in the key of A with two
just additional chords – the D Major, the E Major. And to avoid confusion with the notes of a
scale (which we are using Arabic numerals to denote), we will refer to chords
using Roman numerals. So, an A chord in
the key of A would be a I chord (“I” as in Roman numeral “one”). The D chord is a IV chord (in a song that is
in the key of A). Roman numeral "four," or
IV. It is a IV chord because the root
note of the chord is the 4th note of the scale.
The 4th note of the scale in the key of A is a D. For similar reasons, the E Major chord is a V
chord (in a song that is played in the key of A).
I, IV, and V are the three basic chords in bluegrass
music. There are also a couple of less
common chords that you will encounter - these are the II (major and minor), VI
(major and minor), bVII (pronounced “flat seven”) and the III chord, which we
include in homage to the song “Old Home Place”.
These “roman numeral” chords are listed in the table below, with a
translation into all the keys. You will
need to memorize this table. But once
you do, you will only need to learn songs once (learning them by the roman
numerals) and then can play in any key without transposing. This will also come in handy when the guitar
player yells, “go to a IV chord next.”
KEY
|
I
|
IV
|
V
|
VI*
|
II*
|
bVII
|
III*
|
G
|
G
|
C
|
D
|
E
|
A
|
F
|
B
|
A
|
A
|
D
|
E
|
F#
|
B
|
G
|
C#
|
Bb
|
Bb
|
Eb
|
F
|
G
|
C
|
Ab
|
E
|
B
|
B
|
E
|
F#
|
G
|
C#
|
A
|
D#
|
C
|
C
|
F
|
G
|
A
|
D
|
Bb
|
E
|
D
|
D
|
G
|
A
|
B
|
E
|
C
|
F#
|
E
|
E
|
A
|
B
|
C#
|
F#
|
D
|
G#
|
F
|
F
|
Bb
|
C
|
Dm
|
G
|
Eb
|
A
|
*Note that the VI, II and III chords are sometimes minor but
not always.
Appendix 2: So You Want To Sing Harmony?
In my experience it is always best to start with
constructing the tenor harmony first. The tenor line is the easiest to find and
often consists of iconic phrases in order to “sound like bluegrass.” To find the tenor line, start with the tenor “rule” – sing the note that occurs in the current chord
directly above the melody line. If you
can find the first harmony note, you’ve won half the battle. Continue to sing this line, going up in pitch
when the lead goes up and down when the lead descends. You will find there are places where, in
order for it to “sound like bluegrass” you may need to deviate from this
note-for-note shadowing of the lead and you should go with your feeling here.
The baritone part comes next and, as implied above, it can
be much trickier than the tenor part.
The game with singing baritone is basically to “fill in the missing note
of the chord.” Most of the time this
note will be directly below the melody line but occasionally you will have to
cross over the melody (e.g. choose a note or phrase higher in pitch than the
melody) if the tenor singer has left a gap between his part and the
melody. It takes a sharp ear to sing a
baritone part and it is often best to slow things down and make sure you are
blending on each and every sustainable note.
At the end of the day, the baritone’s job is to blend in and fill out
the vocal trio – and not to stick out (which very much not like the tenor
part).
Constructing a Basic Tenor
Harmony
Now we will put some of this notation to work and show an
example of how to construct a tenor harmony.
Let’s take the first line from the song “Rolling in my Sweet Baby’s
Arms,” which using our notation for writing notes, would be written like this
(I’ve simplified the melody somewhat):
Rollin’ in my sweet baby’s arms
3 3 3
3 3 3
2 1
The chord being played during this phrase is a I chord. As mentioned above, this consists of the
notes 1, 3 and 5.
The first word, “Rollin,” is on a 3 note. And we find, conveniently, that the 3 note is
within the I chord. The “tenor rule”
states that the tenor harmony is usually the next higher note than the melody
of the chord currently being played. The
melody is on 3, so the harmony is on 5.
Once we find that note, we follow the idea that if the melody goes up,
the tenor line goes up and vice versa.
Note that in the word “baby’s” the melody drops. This is a transient word – the note being
sung is not in the chord being played.
Have no worry, though – the next note (the word “arms”) is sustained,
and it is on the 1 note and it is is squarely in the I chord. So, the tenor harmony would be:
Rollin’ in my sweet baby’s arms
5 5 5 5 5 5
4 3
Now for the Baritone
Adding a baritone to this line is relatively simple. Starting with the melody, we find the note
directly below and within the chord. If
you do this exercise you’ll find that the baritone line is
Rollin’ in my sweet baby’s arms
1 1 1
1 1 1
6 5
Note here that the 6 and the 5 are the ones below the
melody, not above. This is implied by
the direction of the melody, which is down.
One of the problems of our simple notation is that the octave that the
note occurs in is not explicit – but the context of the song seems to always give
you the correct octave.
Again, with the exception of the transition note on the
second half of the word “baby’s,” we are always forming a major chord and the
harmonies will blend accordingly.
The Rest of the Song
You can now take this scheme and extend it to the rest of
the song. It becomes a little tricky when the chord switches beyond the "I" chord. The way to approach this is to look at the notes of the new chord in the key you are currently in. The IV chord for example has the notes 4-6-1 when expressed in the key of the song. This is just taking the 1-3-5 and shifting it up to the root note of the IV chord which is a 4. You will find that, generally speaking, the "important" melody notes (e.g. notes that are on downbeats or are sustained) will fall on one of the three notes that the chord contains. This is not always true but can be used as a rule of thumb. Similarly, the V chord will have the notes 5-7-2 and the melody will have "important" notes contained in this chord. The next step is to find the tenor harmony by re-applying the "tenor rule" of moving up to the next chorded note. Similarly for the baritone, the game is (usually) to move down to the next chorded note.
I will leave it to the reader to complete the harmony of "Rollin' In My Sweet Baby's Arms". If you need help, just leave me a comment in the blog comments section and I will reach out to you to help you thru it.
Finally, just remember that 99% of
songs have melodies that end on a “1” note – so to check your harmonies, the
tenor should (almost) always end on a “3” note and the baritone should (almost)
always end on a “5” note. Happy singing!
