Improvised A Cappella Arranging

Bob Habersat
Shedthemusic

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who am I and Why am I here

  • Former choir director

  • Currently a high school guitar, music production, and theory teacher

  • Active music producer

  • author of shedthemusic commercial music curricula

Lets start with a little reflection

  • Who’s hurting

  • NAFME Standards: Create, perform, respond

  • The student centered classroom

  • Project based learning

Initial Listning

  • What do you hear?

Decronstruction of an a cappella arrangment

  • Recreation of a band with voice

  • Vocal percussion (VP) for drums

  • Melody (single voice or sung in harmony)

  • Chordal parts

  • Bass Line

  • Effects

Start with some bass

Add Percussion

  • Three basic sounds: kick, snare, and hats

    • Kick: BPF with lots of air

    • Snare: use side stick, its easier: K with lots of air

    • Hats: Ts

    • Open hats: Tss

  • Lets Jam

  • Rhythm of the bass and kick

    are linked

Chords

Sample Study Sequence

  1. Arpeggiate the I chord: Do Mi So Mi Do

  2. Assign different voices (top, middle, and bottom) to sections

  3. Have sing the arpeggio up and stay on your voice coming down

  4. Audiate the ascending arpeggio and phonate the chord

  5. Repeat for the inversions of the IV V and vi chords

  6. Assign voices to different sections and sing progressions

  7. Apply to existing and original progressions

Texture

  • Words, timbre, Syllables

  • Chordal rhythm Roles: Pads, Punches, Ostinattos

  • Change harmonic texture to differentiate repeated sections

Pad: Long Chords

Punches: Short Chords

Ostinatto: Repeated rhythmic figure: can be arps, power chords, bell tones, short stabs.

Thin Texture

Dense Texture

Melody

  • Solo pop singing is the opposite of choral singing

  • Create a safe space for students to experiment being a solo singer

  • Characterizing the voice

    • Start by “pitching” the end of a word in a spoken phrase to find their natural sound

    • Work on singing with that natural sound by listening and recording yourself

    • Find a reference

    • Add in compression, breadth, distortion, and crunch pedals

  • The rip take

  • Normalize taking chances through modeling

Harmony

  • Singing in lane with the melody

  • Work on harmony Intuition with the gospel 1s and 2s

    • Thanks Whitney Covalle!

    • Triad pair of the I and ii chord

    • Assign parts to the I chord

    • Ascend and descend the scale, but skip ti.

  • Ear out harmonies as a class

    • Find pop songs that have harmonies in the chorus

    • Sing the chorus

    • Sing the harmonies

    • REPEATE

    • Find pop songs that don’t have harmonies in the chorus

    • ADD THEM

Expression

The arrangement

  • Chart the form

  • Create a narrative for texture, dynamics, and part assignments

Your Turn

Questions?

  • Come see me at NJMEA:

  • Songwriting with a DAW: Thursday 10:30-11:30 CC420

  • Songwriting with a DAW: Thursday 11:45-12:45 CC420

  • Songwriting with a DAW: Thursday 2:15-3:15 CC420

  • Pop Guitar Literacy: Friday 9:00-9:00 CC401

  • Empowering Students Through Music Technology: Friday 1:00-2:00 CC417

  • Email me bob@shedthemusic.com