Month: May 2013

The Memorial Day holiday weekend meant we had just five singers at the fourth Sunday singing in Palo Alto: three basses, one tenor, and one treble. That was too many basses, so I said I would sing tenor with the caveat that I couldn’t sing any tunes with particularly high notes. Terry was pitching for us, and with me singing tenor he had a bit of a challenge balancing my inability to sing very high against the lower limit of the basses and the other tenor. But though we had to skip a few tunes that we would have liked to sing, and though we missed the altos, and though I was occasionally unable to sing the very high notes, we did pretty well.

In fact, I had a lot of fun at this singing. When you’re singing with just a few voices, you really get to hear the other parts; and since I was singing a part that was unfamiliar to me, on some of the tunes it felt like I was hearing them for the first time.

This singing also proved to be a good workout for me; the Bay Psalm Book of 1689 warns us against “squeaking above, or grumbling below” (and indeed it is easy to hear both problems among Sacred Harp singers today). I had to work on not squeaking. When you sing Sacred Harp at the upper end of your range, there is a natural tendency to sing notes a little flat, and there’s also a natural tendency to let the quality of your voice degenerate into either a loud piercing tone or what I can only describe as a hooting tone. So I worked hard to hit the high notes right on pitch, and to keep the tone or timbre of my voice consistent all the way from the lower notes up through the highest notes. This meant I had to listen even more carefully than usual to the other singers to make sure I was in tune, and it meant I had to pay a great deal of attention to my breathing so I could maintain a consistent tone. In large part I succeeded in not “squeaking”;

We had an even dozen singers at the second Sunday Palo Alto singing today: three basses, two altos, two trebles, and the rest tenors. It was a nice mix of voices, and I thought the singing was pretty good; some of us were hampered, however, by extraordinarily thick pollen; I think both Arnold and I got it the worst, but I heard some scratchiness in some other voices as well.

After the singing, Lindy, who is charing next year’s Golden Gate singing, told us that she has started an online survey to find out more about what people want and need for singing. What was more important than the survey, though, was that she has been getting around to the three regular Bay Area singings, and the local singing in Healdsburg. The Bay Area Sacred Harp singing scene has always felt fragmented to me, and it’s nice that the incoming chair of the biggest Bay Area all-day singing is making such an effort to reach out to singers throughout the Bay Area.

I’m not sure why the Bay Area Sacred Harp scene feels fragmented. At first glance, you’d think we should be quite unified: several of us make an effort to get to all the local singings as often as we can, and most of us get to all-day singings whenever we can. But it does feel fragmented. Partly it’s because of the geography and the traffic — getting from the Peninsula to the East Bay, and from the East Bay to San Francisco, means crossing the bay on one of a few heavily traveled roads.

My guess is that another part of the reason we’re so fragmented is that we don’t have enough all-day singings. The distance from Healdsburg to Palo Alto is the same as the distance from Boston to Northhampton. In the area around Boston and Northhampton in any given year, you’ll find half a dozen all-day singings and at least one convention or maybe two. In the Bay Area, by contrast, we have just two all-day singings, and a convention only once every three years. Conventions and all-day singings build enthusiasm; they draw in new singers; they make existing singers sing better; but most of all they draw people together.

I do have to admit that my judgment may be clouded on this topic. Because of my job, I can rarely travel to other regions to go to all-day singings and conventions. I would love to see three or four smaller all-day singings in addition to the Golden Gate All-Day singing — plus an annual Bay Area Convention. And no, that’s not too ambitious — I know from my time singing in the Boston area that it’s well within the realm of possibility.

Just eight people showed up at today’s Palo Alto singing — we had changed from the fourth Sunday to the first Sunday to accommodate the Healdsburg singers moving their date, and it seems not everyone got the word.

It may have been small, but it was a good singing. I like small singings because often you have more time to work on tunes and get them right. I love it when we go over another section’s part, singing it in unison — it’s a good chance to get to hear and see how another section’s part fits in with your section’s part.

At one point today, we had three basses, one tenor, one treble, and one alto. I thought I’d try to sing with the lone tenor, to better balance the parts. I lasted about three tunes (and didn’t sing any of them very well); I found it very tiring to sing constantly at the very upper limit of my range, especially on tunes where I don’t know the tenor part and was sight-singing. I was very happy to get back to the bass section, and grateful that there are many people can sing those higher parts.