Set in your native tongue first. You know this language and its nuance best.
Words have rhythm. Music has rhythm. The art of setting the text is to make the word rhythms align with music’s rhythm and meter. Doing this will give your vocal music a natural feeling, making the words easy for the singer to enunciate and for the audience to hear and understand.
Word rhythms are understood as having strong and weak accents/stresses. In English, a compound syllable word usually has one primary stress, for example hip-po-‘pot-a-mus. In some cases the pronunciation of a word shows no primary stress because of context within a sentence. It is best to check a dictionary and to read the text aloud to hear the patterns. Musical meter also has strong and weak beats. Elegant placement of word accents on musical meter is called good scansion.
Other forms of accent:
Another way to accenting words is not by beat placement, but by duration. Generally the longer a note is held, or lasts the more accent it has. There are two ways to accent by duration.
1. tied notes, that is a single note of long duration.
2. melisma — passage work/coloratura, a lot of notes per syllable sustaining the vowel sound.
About the voice:
First things first — who are you writing this song for and what are their strengths, weaknesses, range boundaries, etc.? Yourself?
Familiarize yourself with the basic singing voices ranges:
Male:
Bass – F (octave and ½ below middle c) to c (middle c)
Baritone – G (octave and ½ below middel c) to f(1) (fourth above middle c)
Tenor – d to c(2) (which is notated one octave higher)
Female:
Alto/Contralto – g (just below middle c to c(2) high c two octaves above middle
Mezzo-Soprano – a (just below middel c to c(2)
Soprano – c (middle c) to a(2) but depending on the kind of soprano maybe has high as c(4)
Be sure to study a wide range of vocal music Purcell, Dowland, and Handel (for English), Bellini, Puccini, Verdi, Rossini, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Wagner, Schoenberg, Berg, Wolf, etc.
Vocal orchestration—remember the ability of a singer to reach certain pitches and extreme registers does not mean that the singer can enunciate language in those registers. Open vowels are best at the extreme ends of the registers. Avoid two rookie composer mistakes ( that I also made in my student days), (1) writing a work with too large a vocal range, and even worse, (2) expecting singer to make words understandable at extreme ranges. As I mentioned above, take into consideration the particulars of the voice you are writing for, there are many different kinds of sopranos, for example, some dramatic, light, flexible, etc. My vocal mistakes, and everyone else’s, are based on a very simple fact – that a composer can’t generalize what singers can do by the study of a single unique voice. The “new music” specialist singer and the opera singer usually have very different techniques but both have much to offer. Do not confuse them and your vocal works will sing. Experience is the best teacher.
The solo singer like the first violin or any other soloist is expected to project themselves up front in the mix and over the orchestra. To insure that a vocal part won’t be covered up, unless that is your intension, keep your accompaniments out of the way. So, don’t cover the registers you want the singers to be heard in. Also don’t power up the brass to close in register to the singers
There are 3 ways to compose with vocal texts:
· text first then music (my favorite)
· text and music together—mostly singer/songwriter method
· music first than text—mostly when you are working with collaborators (ex. musicals)
Texts
You can set anything you want – prose or poetry. If you choose a rhyming text remember that a rhyming text imposes a poetic structure.
I suggest that you start using texts that are in public domain (P.D.) These texts have no copyright restrictions. Or, write your own text (make sure you get it copyrighted).
Using Copyrighted materials requires permission from the publisher. Look in the book, find the publisher, call them to locate the permissions editor (usually they give permissions to reviewers), send them your proposal etc. DO NOT SET A TEXT UNTIL YOU HAVE THE PERMISSION IN HAND. You may be given permission to compose your vocal work, non exclusive rights, but they may also reserve their right to negotiate fees, when the work is published.
Translations: recent translations of P.D materials will also require a permission from the copyright holder, if you want to translate a P.D. text you should copyright it yourself. Contact the Library of Congress for the forms.
To Do’s Lesson 4
Compose a syllabic setting of any poem you chose for piano and voice.
Make sure it scans correctly
Set a melody with words where the melody takes precedence over word accents.
What is lost and what is gained?