Going flat

[docmattc]

Learning 'Sicut Cervus' last night my choir went a tone flat by about bar 20. What are common causes of drifting (or on this case plunging) flat and how best can we remedy it?

[alan29]

A couple of tips
1) Smiling lifts the sound and makes it less likely.
2) Plenty of breath to support the phrase to the end.
3) If it is in a flat key, transpose a semitone to a sharp one.
4) Be very careful with descending phrases, especially the semitones. Rising minor 6ths are pitfalls too.
5) Use agreed hand signals to tell them when pitch is going west.
6) None of that will work if they don't listen to each other.

Alan

[nazard]

Choral Wiki is down again so I can't give any specific comments on the piece, but common causes are:

a) a part not having the confidence to hold a discord, but falling into "tune" with the choir.

b) the altos or tenors not singing their own part but singing the melody a third or fifth down for a bar or two. This produces odd harmonies that people instinctively pull into tune.

I have used a couple of tricks to find the error. These might work for you:

Use an electronic keyboard to play the melody while the choir sings. Listen through a pair of light earphones that let in plenty of ambient sound. You will soon know when the pitch goes.

Get each part to sing in turn while your accompanist (if you're lucky enough to have one) plays all the other parts, but not the one which is singing, on a quiet organ flute.

Good luck!

[Dot]

From one who is completely spooked by choirs / parts going flat, I ask the rest of you - does it affect you, as long as the choir maintains tuning between the parts? I'm genuinely interested to know.

I sang in a choir that had a tendency to sing a little sharp - that was fine . When they went flat .....

Dot

[alan29]

I don't have perfect pitch unlike some, but I really don't like it when pitch goes in either direction. It never goes uniformly among the singers so you get some pretty "teeth on edge" stuff going on. That is another reason that I am not a fan of parish choirs.
Alan

[docmattc]

6) None of that will work if they don't listen to each other.

They rarely listen to me, let alone each other

Choral Wiki is down again so I can't give any specific comments on the piece,

Available on youtube, almost with a bouncing ball over the notes! I'm doing it G rather than Ab

From one who is completely spooked by choirs / parts going flat, I ask the rest of you - does it affect you, as long as the choir maintains tuning between the parts?

Unless it was really bad (I noticed the whole tone slip) I've not sufficiently good pitch to notice until I plant the chord down on the piano at the end (something I don't do on a Sunday for obvious reasons!)

[nazard]

There is nothing obvious about where you could loose pitch all in one go. I would suspect that people are being lazy with the runs up to the high notes which occur in all parts. They are not that high by pro standards, but enough to spook the average parish choir. They occur in all parts, but the top Es (in G) in the soprano and tenor could be high enough to cause trouble. As for a cure, I haven't found one yet.

I don't mind listening to choirs whose pitch wanders a little so long as it is caused by a series of small errors. I do notice, and dislike, when you get a sudden semitone modulation in a single chord change, almost invariably downwards.