At 1:05 AM -0800 2/12/07, Mark D Lew wrote:
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.
This is such a great bunch of questions that I'm going to send in my reply BEFORE reading what the rest of you have to say.
Mark, I suggest stepping back from the purely mechanical "please transpose this down for me," and looking at the overall picture.
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.
OK, fact: The Golden Age musical theater composers (i.e. before mics were introduced) knew EXACTLY where to pitch their songs so they would carry clearly in a house the size of the typical Broadway theater. And the majority of female singers used chest voice to generate the energy needed by pushing it up higher in their ranges than it should properly have been used. And when singers auditioned, that's what the composers and producers were listening for. In the case of Rodgers and Hammerstein, their leading ladies were virtually all belters, while they cast real sopranos in second lead roles where it was all right to sound "pretty."
But in general classical terms like "soprano" and "mezzo" don't apply to the musical theater of that era, and imply things that aren't present.
Second fact: When stage musicals were turned into movie musicals, virtually all of the belt songs were, in fact, transposed down a 3rd, 4th, or 5th so they would sound effective not in a theater but in the intimacy of a recording studio. That's one reason, among many, why the originator of a role may not have been chosen to play that role in the movie, Julie Andrews being an exception.
In fact, even for a classical singer, a transposition of as little as a half step, either up OR down, can make an enormous different for that singer on that song, having nothing to do with range but rather where the phrases fit in that particular voice.
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.
A dangerous generalization, as is lumping "female pop and jazz singers" into one group when every voice is different. Barbra Streisand knew her range and her good notes cold, and never attempted to sing higher than her best sound. Celine Dion the same, and her arrangers and songwriters had to fit the songs to her voice.
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.
OK, you've done a good job articulating the problem, but I'd suggest stepping back, again, and looking at the big picture.
The accompaniment exists to frame and support the singer, right? Therefore anything that makes the accompaniment sound bad makes the singer sound bad, right? Therefore, the accompaniment has to be adjusted, rearranged, or recomposed to be effective in the lower key, right? That's the answer to your question!
The sheet music accompaniments you describe, doubling the melody in the right hand, are something that a competent accompanist would never really be caught dead playing, at least if any jazz stylization is involved. Rodgers and the other composers of his era didn't intend their songs to be sung to the piano, but to the orchestra in a Broadway pit, with the piano providing nothing but a framework including the harmony and elements of the style. That's why they considered the guitar or banjo or ukulele boxes adequate as substitute accompaniments. I emphasize to my vocal arranging students that whether they are transcribing, transposing, or whatever, there's always a point at which you have to forget the mechanics and start arranging.
So, as you've discovered, mechanically moving the written accompaniment, which was written to support the singer in that key, simply doesn't work when you get beyond about a whole step transposition. So at that point you become an arranger.
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?
Think, rather, that the use of mics and amplification have allowed the use of the low range and of a different, more intimate kind of vocal production and stylization. And mics have been with us since the 1920s!!! Our summer musical in 2006 was "Kiss Me, Kate" in the revival version. I was really puzzled that while Kate's songs still called for exactly the same high range and quasi-coloratura as the original, her two more intimate ballads had been transposed down a minor third. It finally dawned on me that the difference was that in the original, no one would have been using mics. In the revival it had been adjusted down on the assumption that the leads WOULD have been using mics, and that the songs would be more effective in the lower key THAT THE MIC MADE POSSIBLE!
Did you watch the Grammies last night? The female pop singers were using range all over the map, so it isn't necessarily helpful to oversimplify the situation. Every voice has its own best range and best tessitura, and its own money notes. That's why, during the years I directed a very good college show ensemble, I tried to break my young singers of the habit of imitating the singers they heard on the recordings, because their voices were not the same and they needed to find their own interpretation and stylization of a song that fit THEM. Some could do it. More could not.
John -- John & Susie Howell Virginia Tech Department of Music Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
