RE: Music
06-20-2012, 05:05 AM
So I happened to be looking at styles of folk music, and stumbled across a style called "sacred harp" which is basically based off of an old hymnal that relied on "shape notes" or notes that when written on the page, were drawn in as one of four shapes, each representing one of four base sounds: "Fa, La, So, Mi".
The parts are divided into four sub parts based off your singing range, and the singers sit in little trapezoids that make up a larger square, with a conductor in the middle.
Every song has two parts: A "warmup", where the entire song is sung with just the base sounds. In the second part, the actual lyrics are sung.
I don't know much about folk music so it was interesting to find something that has such an simple but intriguing structure. It was apparently designed (or at least took root in) small communities that didn't have access to instruments (or quality singers). Its a song form that is set up for anyone to sing, regardless of your vocal quality.
The wiki on it has better info. It's a little piece of history that sounded neat to me.
The parts are divided into four sub parts based off your singing range, and the singers sit in little trapezoids that make up a larger square, with a conductor in the middle.
Every song has two parts: A "warmup", where the entire song is sung with just the base sounds. In the second part, the actual lyrics are sung.
I don't know much about folk music so it was interesting to find something that has such an simple but intriguing structure. It was apparently designed (or at least took root in) small communities that didn't have access to instruments (or quality singers). Its a song form that is set up for anyone to sing, regardless of your vocal quality.
The wiki on it has better info. It's a little piece of history that sounded neat to me.