The blessing of acappella singing and shape notes

Sacred Harp Singing

This past weekend, some friends of mine and I dressed up and sang at an event that occurs every year out here in West Texas called Candlelight, where people come and tour the restored buildings from the 19th and early 20th centuries at the National Ranching Heritage Center while people reenact what people then might have done during the holiday season. We have been singing in what used to be a train station (that has awesome acoustics by the way--wood floor and high ceiling, etc.) for four or five years now, and some of the same people are in there with us every year. However, every year some of them ask us questions such as how long we have been together as a group, whether we have made any CDs of our singing, and where we learned to sing. We respond every time that we have not sung much as a group, though we might sing in the same congregation sometimes. In fact, we hardly ever sing as a group except at this event. Yet the people that ask seem rather astounded when we tell them that. These questions--plus the fact that the people that pass by on their tour often seem to be so attracted to our group singing that they will sometimes stick around to hear the song we are singing at that time all the way through--lead me to ask myself, Is our singing that unusual? Don't people usually sing older hymns this time of year anyway?

Now, bear in mind that I do not mean to flaunt our singing talents to the world by writing the previous paragraph. In fact, few of us have had any formal musical training, that is, unless week-long summer singing schools are defined to be "formal" musical training. Thus the fact that we cause such reactions, although flattering, was rather unexpected the first year we sang in the train station. Be that as it may, the two things that I believe we have going for us are our lifelong experience with acappella singing and shape notes.

With those two things in mind, I can begin to see why our singing seems to be such a novelty. First, few in our day have sung many acappella hymns and have not had the opportunity of hearing the powerful old hymns that were written two or three hundred years ago to be sung acappella. In addition, many of the well-known songs that are sung this time of year such as "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing," "O Come All Ye Faithful," and "Silent Night" sound different without the instruments. It seems that older hymns such as those contain a sound that is covered up by instruments but comes through like a soft yet brilliant light when sung without them--especially in a room with great acoustics. Some people that come through the tour--especially those who are musically inclined--are drawn to that sound and do not want to leave it.

Second, many people find it rather unusual that we are able to up and sing a song without at least pulling out a pitch pipe and without rehearsal, and yet we are able to sing four parts harmoniously and sometimes even produce overtones. Many of us who lead songs--including me--cannot say right off the bat what key a song is written in because we pitch songs by ear, not by the key. This leads to another fact about singing acappella for a long period of time: You have to be able to hear the other parts, hear what you are singing, and know whether it sounds right with no help from a piano, guitar, or any other instrument. 

Shape notes do help a lot, though. The most common shape-note system is the seven-note system, which has a shape for every note on the scale (do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, and ti) as shown on the first line below.

This system of notation is great for acappella singing because one always knows where every note on the scale is, and so one can use relative pitch to pitch a song without relying on an instrument.

Nevertheless, the most important ingredient that I believe attracts people to our singing every year is the fact that no instrument can match the instrument that God Himself made--especially when sung with the Holy Spirit's blessing by people who believe every word they are singing and have grown up learning the shape notes and singing that kind of music. Furthermore, the words are more powerful and present more vivid images than many written today. One of the songs we sang last weekend was a Sacred Harp song named "Lloyd," whose words are as follows:

My Savior and my King,
Thy beauties are divine;

Thy lips with blessing overflow,

And ev'ry grace is Thine.

The smilings of Thy face,

How amiable they are;

'Tis heav'n to rest in Thine embrace

And nowhere else but there.

Nor earth, nor all the sky,

Can one delight afford;

No, not a drop of Thy real joy,

Without Thy presence, Lord.

The last verse says it pretty well: The best things on earth (including singing) cannot be truly delightful without God's presence. In the end, we should all pray that we may have His presence whenever we meet to sing.