Guides and Tutorials
Guides
The following will clear up some of your confusion regarding
the terms and names used by us.
Tutorials & Lists
We hope you find these instructive and useful. First, though,
comes the obligatory warning. This is what
your life will become if you pursue singing Sacred Harp: Your
Terrible Future But if you choose to continue on,
here is a collection of tutorials in the art of this kind of
singing:
- Singing
School Workbook This will take you from knowing nothing
to the intermediate level of skill. PDF.
- Primer on Beating
Time/Leading This gives you the arm motions, and tips on
leading at all-day singings. There is a little bit of overlap
with the Singing School Workbook. PDF.
- Listen to the Leading
Lesson from the February 2012 PNW Convention-Washington
Session.
- Accenting
Lesson by Matthew Parkinson for the Auvergne France
Sacred Harp singers, with links to audio examples.
- Singing Minor Songs
and Ignoring Accidentals This is a collection of the
reasons for not singing accidentals that are printed in the
music and why we sing minor songs with a raised 6th. This
topic is included in the Singing School Workbook, but not as
thoroughly as here. PDF. *Cooper Sacred Harp minor songs are
sung the same way, they're just not in this list.
- How to Find the 6th in Minor
Songs This handy lesson will teach you how to find
the note in minor music that needs to be treated in the Sacred
Harp way. Note: there is
reference made in the handout to two Denson Sacred Harp
songs, not labelled as such. PDF
- List of Sacred Harp raised 6th
Minor songs This is a handy list of the *Denson Sacred
Harp songs that are minor and include the sixth note of the
minor scale somewhere in the parts. It identifies which staff
position the note is on and in which part it appears. PDF
- Critique of a Popular Scales
Illustration Much angst could have been prevented if our
beloved Sacred Harp books printed our minor music the way we
actually sing it (as indeed, the Rudiments instruct us to sing
it). Let us be reconciled emotionally to this by contemplating
the angst non-English speakers react to the way in which we
make some consonants do double duty for which sound that
letter of the alphabet represents on the printed page, e.g.,
"cancel". Non-keynote Fa simply has a similar dual role...
- List of Denson Sacred Harp
songs to be Wary of This is a miscellaneous list of 9
songs, all in the major, with one or another thing to be alert
about. The problem is stated, and one solution is offered. If
the explanation for each is too brief, write us...
Advice Columns
Tune Books
- 1911 James Ed. Original Sacred Harp This is a
free PDF document, hosted on google drive, which you are free
to download and install on your own device. You'll want Adobe
Reader to view it. (Karen Willard put this together from a
digitized book on books.google.com). Copy and paste this link
into your browser to download it from Karen's google drive:
-
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5-GbQldgI08MnQwNVFjTXV4YTg