This isn't a specific question so much as my general interest in
others' experience with the same phenomenon.
I work with singers a lot, and from time to time I'm asked to type up
a transposed copy of a song that the singer wants to sing in a
different key, for an audition, recital or whatever. In theory, my
task is to just copy the original exactly as is, then let Finale
magically change it to another key and we're good to go. But
sometimes it's not that simple.
Very often, the song is one from the early musical theater era --
say, Rodgers & Hammerstein or thereabouts -- and the singer is a
belty mezzo. The style in those days was to write women singers
higher than most women are used to singing today, and even the lower
songs are generally in the middle soprano range. Since the belty
mezzo is happiest from about G to G on either side of middle C, she
typically wants the song transposed down a third or even a fourth.
This feels perfectly natural to her, since that's where most female
pop and jazz singers sing nowadays, and it's very likely where she's
heard that very song recorded by some pop star.
So far, so good. I'm not a purist, and I have no problem with
transposing to whatever key the singer likes. I am, however, a
pragmatist, and what troubles me is what happens to the piano
accompanist. A typical accompaniment style for a song of this era is
for the right-hand to double the melody with chords harmonizing
downward from that. That means that even in the original key the
right hand was going into the ledger lines below middle C. After the
song is transposed so that the melody frequently dips below middle C,
those chords become practically unreadable.
What do you do about that? If I see myself as merely a scribe, I can
just let it plummet down into the ledger lines and tell the singer,
"Hey, that's what you asked for; it's not my fault you're transposing
too low." But of course I'm more involved than that. As often as
not the singer is a colleague, and even if she isn't, I still don't
want to give her something unworkable. I don't think there's
anything wrong with a singer wanting to transpose down, but I hate to
give an ugly, hard-to-read score to the pianist. If it's an audition
situation where the pianist is sight-reading, he or she might fumble
over a hard-to-read score, making things that much more difficult for
the singer, and the audition becomes a disaster.
I guess there's two parts to my question:
(1) As an engraver, how do you typically go about making the
transposition more readable? Do you cross-staff the lower RH notes
into the bass clef? or maybe cross staff the whole part down? or
maybe you switch the RH to a bass clef for extended passages?
(2) Suppose the singer is going to sing the transposed piece in
recital, and you're involved. How do you feel about the pianist
simply playing the original accompaniment pushed down a fourth? Does
it really sound good down there? If not, what do you do about it?
Do you revoice some of the chords so that they sound better. Do you
move unusually low sections up an octave?
Surely I'm not the only one who has had to deal with this. My
primary background is classical, but I'm not so out of touch that I
haven't noticed that most female pop singers nowadays sing way down
in the low range. Most contemporary songs must be written that way,
so what is the standard style for piano accompaniment for such
songs? Do they tend harmonize above the voice? Do they just stay
down low and let the pianist deal with having his right hand in the
tenor octave all the time? And if so, how is that typically written?
I appreciate any thoughts or observations.
mdl
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