Singing Tempo

zwgeem

Hello,
I am a cantor for my parish.
I think I have no problem in pitch but I feel hard to sing with the right tempo.
Do you have any method to measure the right tempo when singing a song (e.g, a vernacular plainsong)?
Personally I now started to use Smartphone app of metronome. While traditional metronome makes tick-tock sound, this app has a function to mute. So my job became much easier now. But I wonder if my method is too secular?
Could you share you thoughts on this or other methods to measure the tempo?
Thanks,
Victor

smvanroode

Welcome to the forum!

You can find some thoughts about the tempo of chant is this old thread: http://forum.musicasacra.com/forum/discussion/289/tempo-for-chant/p1

ClergetKubisz

Welcome to the forum! I will attempt to answer your question. Generally, especially with chant, you must consider intelligibility of the text. I will err on the slower side usually because it helps the understanding of the words, especially in large, boomy churches. It is a judgment call for each individual musician, as you must also take the music into consideration. However, for chant, the text is the most important part, so the music has to serve the text. It comes down to two main aspects:

1. The tempo must be musical: the music must make sense at the tempo you select.

2. the tempo should not be so fast that the words cannot be understood.

Some of this will depend on the space into which you are singing.

I hope that helped!

zwgeem

Thank you for information and thoughts!
But, is there anyone who can focus on the tempo of vernacular hymnody instead of that of Gregorian chant?
For middle-sized church, I normally use 100 ~ 110 beats per minute for quarter note in singing a vernacular hymnody. Do you think it is adequate?

Andrew Motyka

It depends on the hymn. Sing while you practice playing hymns. A relatively amateur singer should be able to sing reasonable phrases in one breath at your tempo. If they cannot make it through the line, it's too slow. If they are gasping between phrases, it's too fast. Other than that, it's more of a matter of knowing your congregation.

Adam Wood

Get a group of people to sing IN YOUR SPACE, unaccompanied.
Sing a number of things the group likes and things typically sung by your congregation.
It is important to sing them without accompaniment, and without someone CON.DUC.TING.

If the piece feels boring and deadening, it is being sung too slowly (and likely slowly down as it goes.) If people feel they are racing and that their blood pressure is going up, it is being sung too fast.

Also:
Kill your metronome.

IF you can't feel the right tempo without a metronome, you aren't a musician.

CharlesW

Know your congregation and at what tempos they sing best, and know the acoustics of your building. All hymns are not best at the same tempo, so vary according to the characteristics of the hymns. If your building is highly reverberant, let the last chord come back to you before starting the next stanza.

melofluent

Kill your metronome.
IF you can't feel the right tempo without a metronome, you aren't a musician.

Here's what Adam meant to say: use the metronome only as a tool if you're stymied and the composer supplied a marking. It's like a meat thermometer, it will tell you how hot the beef cut is, but not whether that's ideal for the cut of the beef.
Secondly, one becomes a discerning musician by determining a song's "natural" tempo off the page. For example, Farrell's "Christ be our light" will generally be felt in a moderate waltz as if in "1" not "1-2-3," particularly for a entrance processional. But as an Offertory or Communio, the one should be slowed by a tad.
On the other hand, the old chestnut "Lead me, Lord" is most often ruined by taking it at break-neck speed. Why is that wrong? Because the text is quarter note based, and pushing the tempo to essentially cut time will render that text unintelligible.
Lastly, if you can, avoid listening to recorded examples until after reading the tune off the page. Sometimes just rhythmic recitation of the text suffices to determine a tune's natural flow.

Adam Wood

Here's what Adam meant to say:

Yes, precisely.

Andrew Motyka

Sometimes just rhythmic recitation of the text suffices to determine a tune's natural flow.

This, but I would replace "Sometimes" with "Usually."

Ben

"Sing it like you speak it (ish)" is something I use all the time when trying to figure out rhythm and accent. It's very helpful.

MaryAnn Carr Wilson

Melo, the meat thermometer analogy is brilliant.

IMO, Andrea's advice in his first post as regards phrasing is spot on.

Kill the metronome, at least outside of practice and figuring out the feel of a piece.

melofluent

Melo, the meat thermometer analogy is brilliant.

I love it when a beautiful woman associates me with "brilliant." Even if she's my fourth daughter, one father removed.
W, my eldest daughter Char, and I provided music for the most beautiful woman I've met yet, our Visava, Marie Mendes, 98 years young, black dress, mantilla and rosary in place right next to Wendy at Mass. Feel free, Vava, to share with me the Third Secret's not all that bad, except for Jackson and maybe Adam.

zwgeem

Thank you all for the comments.
Actually the main reason I use the app metronome is to lead the congregation.
Maybe my original question should be "Do I have to lead the congregation or adjust to their tempo?"
(Actually I, congregation and church official have all different ideal tempos. That's the problem)
(I will kill the tool after all definitely)
(Also, the reason to kill is because of musicianship rather than secularity?)

Adam Wood

I don't really follow all of what you are thinking/implying in your post...

The Church has no "official" tempo for anything.
You should definitely not use the metronome while leading a congregation.
Metronomes are anti-musical, and should not be used in performance.

As an organist, your job is to lead the congregation at the correct tempo, not follow it. When musical leaders follow the congregation, everything slows down and dies.
On the other hand, you have to pay enough attention to know whether you are going too fast or too slow.

If you can't figure out what's too fast and what is too slow, you may not be much of a musician.

CharlesW

zwgeem, pay no attention to that man behind the screen - or the metronome, either. Listen to what your congregation is actually singing, taking into account the building acoustics. If they seem too slow, speed up a bit, but don't overdo the speed. What Ben said about singing it like you speak it is good advice. Hymns are, after all, speech set to music.

Andrew Motyka

Go easy, guys. I do not think English is z's first language (no offense intended if it is).

When he says "church official" I think he means "music director."

I agree with Adam. During congregational singing, your job is not to follow the congregation's tempo, but to make a musically informed decision and lead them.

Salieri

A priest that I know, while acting as Seminary organist (when he was a seminarian), once stoped the entrance procession after one verse, said to the congregation "The congregation follows the organ, not vice versa; let's try it again", sent the procession back to the West door, and started again. Who here is brave/crazy enough to do that? Then again, who hasn't wished that they could?

chonak

In some countries congregations have an ingrained habit of singing behind the beat: it must be a trial for organists!

Andrew Motyka

I've gotten so used to playing ahead of the congregation (due to the delay) that I can consistently sing a quarter beat behind my own playing.

BJJ1978

It bothers me when I come here and want to participate in discussion, read someone's question and then see responses like "if you use a metronome you aren't a musician." Yes, I see the reply by Melofluent who clarified that, but still.....that's a terribly ridiculous and unkind thing to say. In fact, if more musicians consulted their metronome now and then, perhaps they'd have a better sense of consistency in their tempo. Signing off. I thought this a site for support.

CharlesW

I don't think anyone needs a metronome. Set a pace the congregation can comfortably maintain and don't deviate from it. I can't stand organists and directors who want to turn hymns into interpretive stage presentations. I tell my choir that hymns are not choral pieces, they are for the congregation, and the choir is invited to sing with them.

melofluent

BJJ, this thread (I just reviewed it) is by and large quite supportive. Adam's zealous statement he personally redacted, and there's been much wisdom offered by many.
Consider the carpenter's maxim: measure twice, cut once. I'm not a carpenter but I would imagine that master carpenters go for decades literally adhering to that maxim before self-assessing they have the intuitive skill to forego the mechanic approach and trust their innate sense of proportion.
So it is with the practice tool of a metronome. If the composer/arranger indicates q=60, you can practice, as conductor, that to exactitude. But someday you'll realize you've read through say a thousand arrangements of Arcadelt Ave Maria, with one version asking for larghetto cantabile, another andante moderato, and another allegretto. Huh? Then you'll say to yourself, "Yo self, internally sing the first phrase in your brain, hear it feel it there and in the heart first." Then you're ready to give the choir the prep beat and you're off well.

Choirparts

Melo - Arcadelt's "Ave Maria" was a great example.

noel jones, aago

SWGEEM said he was the cantor, which may indicate there is no organist.

So, if he's a free standing song leader he's facing having to set a tempo with his singing and then hearing the congregation sing back to him - which can slow your tempo down. It's a struggle.

Swgeem, you might find it extremely helpful to get two more people -male if you are male, female if you are female to sing with you to lead the music. You will be amazed at how much easier this will all be.

The other solution is to plug one of those little earbuds into the phone and sing along with a recording that only you hear. After some of this, you then reduce the volume more and more until one day you do not need it.

Establishing a tempo for other people to follow is a nerve-wracking experience at first.

I was at a church where they kept insisting on singing really bad hymns that I did not know so I would get a choir member to lead it becauseI had no idea what the tempo should be since the music, being poorly written, did not make a lot of sense.

Let us know if any of the advice we have offered is of help. The best to you!

Musicteacher56

Tempo is, for the most part, subjective. While the composer usually sets a metronome marking, only a director can honestly and fruitfully conduct at a tempo that will justify the music. Now, that's not to say that conducting a piece that's written at 100 should be conducted at 60; however, there are times when a "feel" is there that only the director can see and, therefore, conduct. Also, I've found that sometimes using the same hymn for different parts of the mass require different tempi. There are times when I use an upbeat hymn at communion time because I love the lyric, yet bring it way back in tempo because of where it is in the mass.

But, that's just my humble opinion and I concede to those who are more experienced and more educated.

ClergetKubisz

Well, it just takes some musical instinct. You have to know what sounds good in terms of the tempo. It is always good to either play or sing through the piece, or a little of it before you decide on a tempo, that way you get a good idea of what it will be like. Trained musicians are more likely to have relative pitch, the inner ear as it is sometimes called, as they've been trained to be able to do that. This allows us to look at music and get a pretty good idea of what it will sound like without playing or singing it (actually, we sing it in our heads, and sometimes aloud), and from that we can determine a musically acceptable tempo. You can listen to three different recordings of Beethovens Fifth Symphony all by the same conductor, and have three different tempos that all work.

miacoyne

If different groups of people sing in different tempos, it's hard to maintain a steady beat and focus on it. This happened in my new parish. The cantor and the organist are at an extreme distance from each other, and the delay is significant. Plus the celebrant sings in a different tempo with a loud mic. Although cantors are all paid professional singers, they were keep falling behind the organ. It got worse when the organ was playing in a quite fast tempo. I had to use metronome when I practice with cantors for a while. I told them instead of trying to match with the congregation, maintain the steady beat and that's the only way the congregation can follow the cantors, and remember that the cantors are the last ones to hear the sound from organ pipes. It improved the singing and the tempo significantly. Also, give good breaks for 'breathing' for the congregation. If metronome helps you, use it, at least for a while. (you would probably end up not needing it eventually.) Before you do any musical nuances, maybe having a steady beat for the congregation is the most important in this situation for now. (for metered hymns) You can start with a bit faster tempo and increase slowly. If you have an organist or music director, I would practice with them to reach for the desired tempo that you agree together.

ClergetKubisz

Oh absolutely! I always tell the cantors not to follow the congregation. In many cases they shouldn't follow the priest either.

CharlesW

Never follow the priests! LOL. I moved my cantors to the choir loft some years ago, and have never regretted doing so. At least the cantors and the organ are always together.

Musicteacher56

Amen, Charles!!! My priest changes tempo mid-hymn....and the singers and congregation have an awful time. I started singing along with them while playing to keep the tempo where I want it. That has resulted in some pretty dirty looks from the priest, but it is, after all, my call as DM. It doesn't always work, but I think he's getting the message.

CharlesW

With a two-second reverberation in the building, something will always sound off depending on where you are sitting.

miacoyne

CharlesW. When you moved the cantor to the choir loft, people in the pew were ok with it? No complaints? I don't know whether my pastor will allow that. They are so used to having the cantor in the front. I wish I can do that.

My next task is also asking the celebrant to turn off the mic when he sings with the congregation. ( I don't have a gut to ask yet.)

CharlesW

The priest/microphone is still a problem Our associate walks out the door with his still on, and we can hear his conversations in the building. LOL.

The cantors were not a problem, since the pastor didn't want them in front. The people didn't seem to like them there, either. Too much drama! With two second reverb, it was really hard to stay together - here is where some super musician jumps in and tells us how he stays with the cantor, 5 blocks and 20 seconds of reverb away. ;-)

donr

Even though we are in a very small church, I have the cantors sing by the organ. The only reason for this is because we are building a new church and when its finished (at least a year away) the cantor will not be missed up front.
Normally you would want to proclaim the word of God from the Ambo.
You have to consider the delay. The tempo will slow if you listen to the PIPs or the Celebrant. If you are the song leader, you must set and keep the tempo (ebbs and flows not withstanding).

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