As a bass singer, I do a few strange things. I have to think like a bass player or cellist. I sing notes that move around more harmonically than melodically, sort of like the leftmost fingers of a pianist.
I have learned a few tricks of the trade over the decades.
First and foremost: sing squarely in the middle of the pitch. Most bass notes work well with this rule, partly because most bass notes (at least in the stuff I sing) are the "roots" of their chords. Everyone lines up on top of your note. It's quite fun.
Renaissance music has great overtones because the intervals tend to be pure. Listen to our Forestier CD (especially the Credo of the Missa Baises Moy) for some of this. You can click on our website at http://www.chicagoacappella.org/about_us/sample-sound.htm and listen for a minute or so. It's the first piece listed on that web page.
Of course, as soon as there is a rule there is an exception.
If you are singing a cappella, and the chord is in first inversion (i.e., the bass note is the *third* of the chord), you must pull the bass note up just a few hair-breadths. In technical lingo we call these "cents," with a cent being a hundredth of a semitone. If you come to a Chicago a cappella concert, you'll hear me and Matt and Aaron and Ben do this.
It has become intuitive for me to do this. I don't know all the science behind this -- just enough to be dangerous. I just know what works, and what the vibrations are when it works.
More recently, we had a few pieces with lots of 2nd-inversion chords, especially Lauridsen. I have to work hard not to pull those upward too -- I can see the altos cringe when I do -- and sometimes even a few cents down is the way to go.
The main reason I like singing a cappella is that it is based on what's called "just intonation," where you sing according to the partials of the overtone series. This tuning stuff is a non-issue for choirs that sing with pianos, because the modern piano is tempered, throwing off the whole tuning system I just mentioned. The piano dominates the tuning so much that there isn't any finesse left for the singers.
There are still issues of tuning when singing a cappella swing music, which is based on modern piano harmonies, but singing those pieces tends not to be quite as tricky as singing pure or just intervals. The hardest part there is making sure that the whole and half steps are exact; even in swing, not all whole steps are created equal.
One of the joys of singing with Chicago a cappella is that the tenors are so frigging in tune with the basses. Trevor and Hoss can hear ridiculously miniscule variations of pitch. We're always adjusting in the moment, especially them. Betsy Grizzell is also a master at this. The great early-music choirs are all about tuning... I've written about this in earlier blogs.
When an interval between a tenor and bass totally lines up, it generates overtones. When the alto and soprano are perfectly tuned on top of that, you get the goosebump shimmer that great a cappella singing allows. You can even feel it when you're not singing, if the tuning is good enough and if the acoustic allows for the room to hum along.
The great English tenor, Rogers Covey-Crump, once told a mutual friend of a hunch that he had. Rogers and his colleague John Potter surmised that polyphony evolved accidentally, from people singing chant in the French cathedrals. The acoustics in those rooms -- and he was singing in enough French cathedrals to know -- constantly generate overtones from in-tune singing. He thinks some cats just started laying the overtones they were hearing from the room on top of the chant notes they were all singing. The result was improvised and unintended polyphony, and it was cool enough to write down. Go figure.
So sing those first-inversion bass notes up a few cents, those of you who sing a cappella. Or tell your basses to do it, if you're not a bass. Give it a whirl and tell me what you think. Have a great week.
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