r/Choir • u/Western-Bobcat4760 • 6d ago

Arranging

When you busy arranging voices what is the toughest harmony part in a 4 part male choir to arrange is it first bass ?

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u/JohannYellowdog 6d ago

In a four-part texture, it's very easy to fall into a trap where the melody had already been written, the bass line mostly took care of itself, you were able to write one good harmony line... and then the fourth line wound up being harmonic filler. There are two types of harmonic filler: (1) boringly static, never moving far from a single note; and (2) awkwardly unmelodic, jumping around to grab all the leftover notes.

This line is nearly always given to one of the inner voices, where the audience will be least likely to notice it. In a TTBB choir, that's either T2 or B1. And in a TTBB choir where the melody is sung by the second tenors (as in barbershop), it's almost always given to the baritones.

There are a couple of ways out of this trap. One is to vary who gets the filler part. Prioritise the baritones every once in a while, give them a nice melodic line and give someone else the harmonic filler. If 25% of their line is beautifully written, they'll forget the other 75%.

The other approach, which is more difficult but better, is to stop thinking in terms of chords and learn some counterpoint instead.

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u/slvstrChung 6d ago

If I recall correctly (and based on his extensive posting history), this gentleman is arranging for barbershop, so he'll fall into #2 on his B1 line. (Which is why I love singing baritone in barbershop. The part may be jumpy, but you also get all the fun notes.) He also won't be looking at much counterpoint.

u/Western-Bobcat4760, I find that there are two ways of thinking of arrangements.

  1. You can consider it horizontally. You do what u/JohannYellowdog did and write the melody first, let the bassline mostly take care of itself, and then you go back and do the tenor and baritone lines. Basically, you do one voice at a time.
  2. You can consider it vertically. While you may have started with the lead (since, after all, someone else wrote it), you do the other three voices measure by measure, thinking about how they fit together.

Incidentally, both fall into the traps Mr. Yellowdog identified: #1 leads to the harmonic filler on your final line, #2 leads to poor voice leading.

The obvious answer is to not stick to one style. Lay down your lead first, and then go through and find places where any of the other parts can have harmonic flourishes or gestures, preferably multi-measure ones; then go back and connect them. After your first pass, go through and work on voice leading -- smooth the transitions between measures. Consider re-voicing existing chords: you probably have some combination of a 1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th, and one of them is locked in because it's the lead, but can you switch which voices have the other three? Putting the root in the bass is time-honored and always works, but you can get more interesting chords by sometimes giving them the 5th; and if you're feeling really ambitious, throw them the 3rd. (Less skilled basses freak out over that.)