hello this is Ben Parry I'm the artistic director of the National Youth choirs of
Great Britain and you are listening to the musicality podcast ever wondered why
some people seem to have a gift for music have you ever wished that you
could play by ear sing in tune improvise and jam you're in
the right place time to turn those wishes into reality welcome to the
musicality podcast with your host Christopher Sutton hi this is
Christopher founder of musical u and welcome to the musicality podcast today
I'm speaking with Ben Parry the artistic director of the National Youth choirs of
Great Britain but as you'll be hearing that's just one of many musical roles he
has including formerly being a singer and arranger with the world-famous a
cappella group the Swingle Singers and directing the london voices choir which
has performed on many of the hollywood film soundtracks that we all know and
love i recently had the pleasure of attending a workshop been presented at
the london a capella festival and he had such a great way of getting people of
all ability levels quickly singing some quite complex music that I knew we had
to invite him up to the show to share his ideas with you in this conversation
we discuss his own journey from classical church music to cabaret and a
cappella and how it's all informed the way he helps people sing now we talked
about by having a choir get their tuning from a piano can be a really bad idea
and the pros and cons of using intervals versus using scale degrees such as
sulfur or note numbers then is clearly a man who has thought deeply about singing
in all forms and he brings his unique experience and perspective to all his
roles to the benefit of his singers I loved having the opportunity to pick his
brains and whatever kind of singer you might be whether you're a vocal pro or
just do karaoke at the pub or you sing with your local choir or in a barbershop
group or you're only willing to sing in the shower but you wish you could do
more I know you're going to really enjoyed this episode
my name is Christopher Sutton and this is the musicality podcast from musical u
welcome to the show Ben thank you for joining us today I'm delighted to talk
to you so you have had an incredible career over the years a real range of
roles and projects and types of music it was hard for me to know where to start
I suppose one easy option is to start at the beginning and I'd love to know
you've become this incredible musician and artistic director and nurture of
young singers in particular but what was it like for you growing up was music
always a part of your life was it a late discovery did it all come easily tell me
what that was like I'd come from a very musical family my dad was a music
teacher in church organist all his life and my mum was a keen amateur singer and
in fact I guess I've been surrounded by music ever since birth actually
interesting I'm asked this question a lot you know what was sort of my first
musical memories and and there are many of them and there there are some of them
which are really sort of quite pivotal pivotal to my my career or my wish to be
a professional musician not least because that was a church organist I and
my three siblings all sang in the church choir this is in Ipswich where I now
live and I remember at a very early age I was too young to sing in the in the
choir so my three siblings were in the choir and I would sit next to dad on on
the organ bench and while he played one of the most abiding memories was them
singing in a choral evensong and this will be for sort of choral evensong
nerds if you like but there's a magnificat not SEMA despite Stanford
Stanford in c-major which starts with a huge great organ court and the choir
come in and I was age 4 and I turned to my dad and said Oh daddy what lovely
music and clearly this had a real it had a real effect on me sorry that is
terribly nerdy it's it's really it's it's a really important thing because I
think really quite a young age died realized that music was going to be a
massive part of my life and fast forward a few years just when I was sort of
seven or eight years old we were very involved with the music at snape
Maltings which is up in Suffolk where Benjamin Britten
lived and worked and ran his wonderful all brie festival that still goes on to
this day and mom used to sing in the Opera Festival sing as she sang with
Benjamin Britten conducting many times and I remember her coming back from
concerts and telling me all about it and we went to snake one day and to this
amazing concert hall that Benjamin Britten built and he was there and I met
him a lot of lot of other contemporary colleagues of mine are really sort of
quite jealous of the fact that I actually met Benjamin Britten which was
amazing and I remember him talking and I remember going into the hall and we sang
some of his music it was an opera that he'd written called the little sweep and
the audience has these audience songs and I remember singing this song all
about birds singing in the night and I thought I want to do this as you know as
a grown-up I want to be a musician so that was really sort of quite pivotal so
music was always around in the family we used to sing we used to play we all
played instruments so yeah I was surrounded by it wonderful and so given
that musical beginning I have to jump quickly to one of the big questions I
wanted to ask you which relates of it I think to to your work with the National
Youth Choir given that you were immersed in music from the beginning and you also
came from a family who were themselves musical what's your opinion on talent
you know if if someone's gonna become an incredible inspiring musician and
composer and arranger like yourself or one of the leading singers in the great
choirs of the country do you think it takes talent is it a natural thing or is
it more nurture than nature well I was just about to say natural nature and
that is one of those things I mean if you're surrounded by it obviously you
know you're going to engender a sense of what's around you
but there there is such an ocean as a gift isn't there there is you know
talent it has to be a natural thing as well but that doesn't preclude people
from doing it so if say for example you know you wanted to sing in a choir but
you felt that you hadn't had a background in it well join a choir you
know it's it's not it's it's as simple as that
actually and actually we singing this this is a big thing I have
constant arguments with my wife who's a professional violinists and she will say
you know the thousands of hours of work that she's had to put into practicing
and she gets so frustrated because singing is such a natural thing we can
all do it and this notion I remember my dad talking to me many times about the
notion of tone deafness and actually he didn't believe that tone deafness
existed anybody can sing if anybody can talk anybody can sing and in fact you
know we all have voice boxes so you know that that ability to be able to just
make that leap from talking to vocalizing to understanding you know how
it works is a really interesting thing actually it's just leaning on from that
I'm one of my nephew's is that is an amazing percussionist and he found it
really difficult to sing simply because he hadn't exercised these muscles that
we have in here so he talks very quietly very slowly it's all down here and I had
to get I gave him some exercises on how to sing and I could I could see it
actually it was a visible thing that he simply didn't know how to use that
muscle and how to hear in his ear how this was working out as an aural example
of of sound and it took about five minutes for him to work out and because
I would sing a note like blah and he would sing and it would be it would be
well over an octave below but once he worked out the notion of what was going
on in here and how to hear it we beaten it we cracked we crack the code and I
think it's possible for everybody to do that of course you know musicians if
you're going to do it at a professional level or at a really high level then
then talents gonna help isn't it but it's its nature and nurture in equal
degrees I would say that's really interesting to hear and we've had a lot
of that same experience at musical you with reluctant singers that it's partly
emotional or psychological and it's partly either physical you know if
someone hasn't moved their voice through their possible pitch range they simply
have no chance of hitting a note but some very simple exercises can can give
them that freedom so coming back for a minute to your own
journey you were clearly diving into the world of what I would consider kind of
classical church music in England growing up where did things go from
there for you I studied music at Cambridge University I was very lucky I
would say that I was a reluctant student nay perhaps a bit lazy and I say that
simply because I'm not I'm not I wouldn't have classed myself as an
academic I'm I'd be much more a practical musician I think if I could go
back and do it all again now I would find it so brilliantly fascinating but
unfortunately I think I'm a bit too old to do that but at university I of course
I was I was put together with all these amazing other people who were who were
keen musicians and not just that the thing about a university in particular
for me was that you know you'd be you be making music with chemists and lawyer
peasants and scientists and and all these other people in linguists which
which again you know from a singing point of view it's amazing if you've got
a singer in a choir who's studying Italian or German or whatever you know
that that's gold dance really isn't it so at university I wasn't I wasn't the
model academic student but there I found my love of a whole raft of other things
that I hadn't been exposed to before like you say I grew up with church music
and I grew up with my parents singing and and there was lots of music in the
house I was I was a not a bad violinist actually when you when you when you line
me up with my wife then I'm hopeless but I remember turning up to two University
in fact where I met my wife and I thought yes I'm going to be a violinist
now and of course there were millions of brilliant instrumentalists so I so
singing was the thing that I then begot began to get really interested in and
possibly most importantly actually and haven't thought about this for a long
time but in my first year I was asked to do a cabaret now I'd never really done
any light music so here I was singing some sort of cabaret songs and it's a
close harmony and I thought wow this this is amazing because I'd never done
this stuff before the really important part of that was a group who some of
your listeners if they're as old as me might have heard of which was called
Harvey and the Wallbangers now Harvin the Wallbangers were a group in
the 1980s who were ex Cambridge plural scholars and they got
together and they formed a close hominid group and then they got really kind of
funky and they started learning instruments and it was a kind of jazz
pop rock and roll combo and a friend of mine who was at university said you got
to come and hear this group party in the wall bangers and I went to this theater
and sat down and this thing started and it was closed harmony it was rock and
roll and I thought I'd died and gone to heaven this was just amazing and I
thought this is the sort of music that I want to get in two years later we
fast-forwarding a huge amount actually a couple of the group Chris Purvis is now
a major opera singer and Harvey Braff who started the group brilliant composer
are very good friends of mine and I wouldn't have imagined in a million
years that those guys would have been friends I worshipped them from afar in
the in the audience while they were on stage so you know that whole kind of
melting pot of being at university meeting different people and different
musical styles was something that was very very important to me hmm
and it's funny we we had kind of the same quarrel blend as a were in that I
grew up in a chapel choir singing a lot in my school days and went on to
barbershop and a capella and really loved that and I found it stretched me
in a very different way as a singer and one of the things I was excited to talk
to you about was just how you found it transitioning from that world of
classical choral music that can be quite formal and precise to a cappella which
is precise in its own way you know it's precise in a very expressive stylistic
way and obviously a cappella can be any genre anything from classical to jazz to
pop to rock to anything you imagine so how did you develop as a singer through
exploring that different direction that's a really interesting thing to
talk about because basically you know one informs the other vice-versa
I mean I what I do now was very much sort of akin to what I was
doing at university so one day I'd be singing in King's Choir and singing
evensong and just getting off on the fact that I was in this amazingly
beautiful building singing the most fantastic music the next day I'd be
writing a music essay on I don't know Marla symphonies or whatever and
listening to Marla's Ninth Symphony that's a friend of mine had to listen to
it on 45 you know when we used to have records he ran out of time and he went
to the library and he had to listen to on 45 instead of 33 to try and get
through it all and then the next day I'd be doing a cabaret and singing jazz
songs or you know singing in a closed harmony group
it's basically what I do now actually is you know from one day to the other I
have this for me I'm so lucky because I have this interesting eclectic career
where I'll be where I'll be touching on all these different sorts of music but
like you say you know the discipline that is required to sing in a choir like
King's College Choir is obviously going to inform you in a way you might
rehearse an a cappella piece you know the kind of all the attributes that are
there the style the blend the precision the way that you rehearse it the tuning
listening out for different parts how the balance might work and all those
sorts of things so so I I've been blessed that I've been able to to have
that in it as a student but then that's informed totally the way I work as a
professional musician as well and on paper my impression is your career kind
of went deep into the a cappella world with your time with the Swingle Singers
before circling back into that world of choral music yeah is that right yeah
very much so I mean the year after right after
University so I was doing some cabaret as a sort of young freelancer and
earning absolutely no money whatsoever and then the job came up in in the
Swingle Singers and I thought this was something that I should be throwing my
hat into the room for only twenty two but I did get the job they were really
mean to me absolutely you know they gave me five auditions which was just they
kept bringing me back and saying okay you sing this song and can you sing that
song in a particular style and in the end I
which is sort of quite unlike me because I'm sort of quite um come from
confrontational but I said to them actually can you just stop doing this
and if you want me to do the job just give it to me or if not just tell me to
leave but I did get it and I spent five brilliant years in in the swingles um
interestingly and ironically the one thing I didn't really enjoy was was
touring and being away from home and have to say probably nine ten months of
the year we were away from home but it was again a amazing kind of training
ground for me even though I was doing it professionally you know from the likes
of arranging for a part a cappella group doing some albums recording techniques
producing rehearsing arranging a piece of music and then rehearsing it with the
with the group so you had to be the leader and I really cut my teeth on how
one does that in it in a very effective proactive way
having said that during that time I was in the swingles are still actually was
in a singing church music because I had a job at the Tower of London they have a
brilliant choir there in the in the chapel within the tower and this was in
the days when you could actually drive your car right into the into the Tower
of London you could park outside the chapel you can't do that anymore so I
kept that job open and so if there was a Sunday where I was free I would go and
sing some wonderful church music I mean church music has been you know the love
of my life for as long as I can remember you know back in the days when Stanford
and seeing sitting on my dad's still love me on it on the organ you know so
I've always shared that love it in tandem with everything else that I do
but yeah it was a really interesting five years of real time mental
discipline and understanding of that particular art yeah it sounds like it
could be a real trial by fire you know we come back again and again on this
show to the importance of your ear and your brains awareness of music as being
critical to everything you do in music and you know to go so quickly to being
part of one of the top groups in the world of all time in a cappella music
and not only performing arranging and composing that must have
really pushed you to your limit in terms of your oral understanding of music yeah
I think I think possibly you know there's a degree of just thinking well
that's I that's what I did that's what that's what I'm good at
it's difficult as a good sometimes as a musician to say actually but I think I
think that's where my where my where my metier was you know that and I was given
the opportunity to do that it was an interesting time actually to join the
group because they'd they haven't sort of really made their mark but
particularly in the UK and the American market had dried up and so we were sort
of slightly at the low ebb and we took it upon ourselves to pay for a flight
out to New York and do a showcase in New York for Columbia artists who had
massive concert agency and we set our stall out basically the eight of us we
were we were all quite young you know and we thought right okay this is an
opportunity for us and we did it exactly that we thought right what are we good
at let's show the Americans what we're good at and we put together a hot I
think it was a 20 minute half hour little showcase of our best arrangements
we rehearse it and rehearsed it we flew ourselves out to New York put ourselves
up in a cheap hotel went and did the showcase and that really was the making
of the group from the time I was in it because Columbia artists thought we were
the best thing ever since sliced bread and from that we then toured the state's
four times a year regularly doing 20 30 concerts I mean we were there four or
five weeks at a time absolutely saved our bacon and from that we then
increased our repertoire massively of course but we then got a recording
contract with virgin classics and and on it went so you know that was that was a
really good time for me but it was it was interesting being part of that
so actually taking it upon ourselves to be proactive as a musician and like
you're saying you know just that whole idea of of rehearsing and really
listening to each other and understanding how how what our voices
were going to work the most effectively as an eight-part a cappella group often
you know we we weave I'll record something and we just did it
intuitively because we've worked together so much
we were just Naturals at tuning you you know you remember a bit there was if we
were a bit we're singing in unison and two of the Altos had to sing sort of the
same notes at one point and one sang a bit sharp on one sang a bit flat and the
two of them within a split second there's a recording of it it's a bit of
Debussy that they sang and they sang this note and within about a nanosecond
they to each found the tuning exactly because they were both wrong and they
they write themselves within less than a second it was extraordinary and I
thought wow you know that's that's real kind of oral discipline and something
that only comes obviously with really hard work and a lot of regular singing
but it's something that you know if you join a choir I mean I find this with
choirs that I work with all over the place you know if they do that regular
thing of singing week after week you're gonna get better individually but also
as as a team and that's one of the joys of singing in a choir isn't it mmm
absolutely and I love that you highlighted that because that to me you
know I I saying barbershop an a cappella to an amateur level but in one of the
abiding memories is how unique that situation is you know you can sing as a
soloist you can sing in a choir as part of a large number but it's only really a
cappella where you're one of maybe four people and you can all look each other
in the eye and you can be so in the moment all performing with the same
instrument essentially and it requires so much of you to be present and react
to one another in a way that I think performing in an instrument ensemble or
a large choir just it does it's not quite the same we did we did that little
exercise at the end of the workshop where I I met you the other day where we
were tuning this is something that I've really become interested in this this
whole idea of what's called just intonation and so if you play the piano
it's it piano is tuned at what's called equal temperament so that the distance
between every single note is the same now if you play a chord we're quite used
to hearing it nowadays and you play a chord on the piano you go yeah that's a
nice chord well actually it's not in tune because it's false to have the gap
between each seven exactly the same it means that if you
play a certain interval and if we're talking about a third so you go one
three on an honor on a piano if it's tuned and I think I talked about this in
the workshop actually the third is always really sharp one three and
everybody kind of likes sharp thirds because they sound really good as any
because our ears have been tuned to what's called equal temperament actually
if you sing in a choir and you tune a chord and actually you make that the the
third lower than it would be on a piano and the fifth one five nice and bright
which on an equal temperament piano is flat the chord sounds much more in tune
isn't it's got the natural harmonics within it and that to me is something
really interesting and I think what you were talking about just then with we're
singing in a acapella group particularly when you've got one part of voice
spending a lot of time doing that sort of thing can be really really rewarding
we're so used to hearing equal temperament the piano is my is my is my
least favorite instrument but you know what I mean when it comes to tuning I
think that's really really important thing and particularly when you you can
do it in choirs as well we do at the National Youth Choir all the time and in
fact in my choir at King's College for the mixed choir that sings on Mondays
even though we have very limited rehearsal time we often just balance and
tunes and courts so it will sit on a chord we'll say that people who are
singing the keynote like if it's in C major
people singing C just make sure that's in tune then we'll put a nice bright G
in which is the fifth and then we'll have a nice scent to the third and you
can really tell the difference and I I don't think there are many choirs who
spend so much time doing that but I would encourage all choral conductors to
work much harder at that because I think that's that's that's a whole minefield
of wonderful stuff we can research yeah what a beautiful example of how you've
drawn on your a cappella experience to inform how you to react why of sanity
because I like you say we take for granted that the piano is the correct
answer you know you play the piano chord that's what you're aiming for but of
course if you're just four people in a room and it's up to you to make the
major chord you find that the tuning you trust your ear and you adjust as needed
yeah there's one profession choir who shall remain nameless do I
guess conducted and they were they were we were rehearsing a piece and the
pianist was playing along and you know just helping them to find the notes and
I asked him to stop playing actually and the choir was really offended that it--
they said we you know but we're we're sight reading this and I said well yeah
you're a professional choir come on sight read it and don't don't rely on
the piano it's actually actually one thing that's really really interesting a
real interesting exercise and of course we didn't in that workshop where I met
you we didn't use any piano you know we just did it all with the voices and I
think that's a really good discipline for some choirs actually just part the
piano put close the lid just get on with the singing listen and and hear what's
going on and use your voices to create the sound rather than relying on not
only the tuning of the piano but of course it's also it's that percussive
effect so the chord goes down and you hear it you go oh that's where we need
to sing actually if you watch the conductor or you or you watch each other
you should be able to internalize the rhythm as well we're getting deep we
keep getting deep into the semantics of my approach to choral I hope so you you
mentioned sight-reading there and that's something else that I think causes a lot
of people x20 comes to singing and particularly you know singing in a
church choir where you might be handed a thick wad of manuscript paper and expect
it to somehow magic up the notes and you know a musical you we focus a lot on
relative pitch and helping people understand the relationship between the
notes in the scale and you had a really elegant exercise at that workshop which
I say elegant because I think it's something you can explain in a few
moments but someone can go away and practice every day and develop a really
valuable skill with and I was wondering if you could just share that the singing
of scale degree numbers and then starting to take them out and remix them
in different combinations yeah absolutely and before I do that I should
say that when I was really young my dad tried to teach me the piano and he
failed dismally like all parents do trying to teach their children
instruments but he started me at an early age around about five and I did
everything by ear so I can still I can still play by ear
but I could not cite read when I was 5 and my dad didn't realize this he
started the first few weeks in he say write this here's a little tune written
down right would you like to pay that to me and I go well you play it to me first
and then I'll and then I'll do it and he literally played me to the tune or the
piece and I would play it back no perfect but I was doing it by ear I
wasn't reading the music and he after a few weeks he cottoned on and he said no
you do it first and I said well I can't I can't really do it and he used to make
me put this is really horrible I love my dad dearly but he used to play piano
duets with me where I'd have to keep going and he said come on keep going
keep going and I remembered being in tears so you know I sight read and I had
to learn how to do that because my ear was was was very keen and I could I just
fixing things up all the time I'm still not the greatest sight reader on the on
the piano I can sight read science I can start seeing really well and it's and
it's an easy thing to pick up I mean obviously there's the whole solar system
which is fantastic it's not something I've ever done so I've never used it
although I do understand how it works but what we have done it I picked this
up more recently with the National Youth Choir is using the number system so you
take your your dough if you like your one and you use that and you can tune
and you can think about degrees of the scale very easily and whatever key it
might be so if one is there and you can literally do a little pattern just going
one two one three two one four three two one
you can carry on going five four three two one but you can actually go five six
seven one six seven one seven one one one then if you want to do a little
exercise which I think we did take out three and go one two one clap on three
two one then you've got to find four four two one perhaps five is a click
four two one six and you're taking out various notes you've got to find where
four is but you always relate it to one and that's basically what I do if I'm
reading as well so your sight reading know where C is if you can understand
that so C is the one that hangs down below the line and it's got its got a
ledger line through it if that's middle C that's always gonna be your one so you
can work out where three or six or four or seven and two it's it's really as
simple as that and if you change key and suddenly G becomes one and a is gonna be
two and B is going to be three and so on so that that little the size I think is
really helpful the other thing that we did was just call out four numbers
between one and seven so you go one five seven two and you've just got to work
out one five seven two or whatever else and just give yourself those little
exercises and you're very very quickly attuned to where those up where you are
in the degree of the scale antastic well if for any of our lesson lesson over
it's a beautiful F of it's something that I think any listeners can start to
experiment with you know even if you just start with one two and three and
whether you've ever done before or not you probably know the sound of one two
three two one just play around with that produce three playmates exactly and the
one three two or two three one or three one two you just you know combination
locks absolutely and it's it's the kind of instinctive understanding of the
scale that I so wish someone had explained to me when I was growing up
singing because I was immersed in ringing all day every day trying to
sight-read from sheet music using intervals and using reference songs and
it was such hard intellectual work trying to figure out what the music
should sound like from the sheet I'd love to talk I'd love to talk to you
about intervals because intervals is a really interesting thing because yes
intervals are useful if you want to read from music but there's that there's a
slight misnomer I feel about trying to work out what intervals are so you go
one two three four five that must be a fifth and tried to count it up now it is
a way of doing it I'm not saying it's wrong I I'm very much at the opinion and
we took we've been talking about you know our aural perception that actually
intervals an interval recognition um is much easy
if you can use sonic recall I once had the most fascinating conversation with
someone who was writing a film script about a child who had sonic recall now
this wasn't a musician it was something else it was a spy film I don't need some
crazy stuff but he'd heard that I I went on about sonic recall a lot and I and I
had this a chat with his guy he was writing this fascinating script and he
understood where I was coming from this because of course all intervals sound
the same now the one that you can really hear is the minor second a semitone
so if you play those together you can hear the beats it goes but that if you
play a major second you can almost hear them it goes really fast because they're
obviously there's a there's a there's a a wave sign that's going really fast and
you can actually hear it but if you can work out stay with me go with me on this
is if if you can work out what a fifth sounds like not the two notes separately
but actually what the actual sound of a of an interval is then you're met it's
easy so you could actually do worse than actually sitter our dear friend the
piano and play major thirds and go oh that's what a major third sounds like
and sometimes of course and the famous French composer messy on believe that
all music was just colors so you could you could assign yourself a color if you
thought that a major third sounded you know yellow then then that's yellow it's
gonna sound the same wherever you play it or whether we're ever two people
seeing it if you thought that a perfect fifth I know two notes five notes apart
that sounded gray then then listen to Gray's all the time you know major six
minus six and all those sorts of things I think that's really helpful and I
would maintain that that that's an even better way than counting up intervals I
hope that kind of makes sense it's always been something that I've really
latched onto because that's how much and that's how my three children if you play
them intervals they'll just go yeah that's a major text because they know
they know the color of they know the sound of it they're
recalling the sound we've definitely seen that with our members that musical
you going between what we would call the melodic form where it's one note and
then the other note and the harmonic form where it's both notes together
can definitely help people tune in you know if you get the sound of that blend
of the two notes into your ear and it becomes much easier when you hear them I
think absolutely for us the limiting factor in intervals just tends to be
putting them to use you know naming them in isolation is one thing and you can
get very good at that but we found people really then have a gulf when it
comes to using them to play by ear or recognize chords it takes a lot of work
to bridge that gap of course and yeah I for us with our members anyway it just
seems like the sulfur approach or numbering the scale degrees like we've
been talking about it gives you a much faster route to understanding lately the
melody is on the chords but I think I think the sonic recall leads on from a
bluesy so when once you've learned what we're a third is then if you start
playing thirds you go that sounds the same as that third right it's all it's
always going to and but no absolutely I agree that the numbering system and all
the so far is is definitely the first approach to that hmm so you're one of
those fascinating music educators who has the kind of top level experience in
terms of expertise and you know being a world leading performer but actually
works with some of the most beginner stage musicians you know you work with
the National Youth choirs are great rhythm obviously those are very high
level acquires but you're taking very young singers who don't have that
expertise or experience yet I'd love to hear how you how you approach that you
know what's your attitude when you're directing one of these choirs and
welcoming new singers in do you find it's a challenge to get them up to
scratch do you have particular approaches you use to bring them into
the choral setting rapidly or well that's really interesting because one of
the things we haven't mentioned that the choral courses that one one of which are
run in the summer these are these are run but they're they called the Eaton
choral course is simply because they were founded by Ralph Oliver - who was
the director of music Eton College there are five courses each
year and the interesting thing about these courses are in the past they were
sensibly designed to to offer experience to people who wanted to do choral
scholarships and particularly at Cambridge and Oxford now we know of
course the landscape with choral singing has changed completely now in a very
very positive way and so what we're finding now with the of the Eaton choral
courses is that you know we have a much broader range of abilities and people
young people wanting to go into different areas so you know there'll be
other universities there'll be some who don't necessarily want to go to
university they might want to go to a music Conservatoire they might take a
walk might want to go on and do some vocational training or whatever but they
share a lot of singing the fascinating thing about the eton core of course is
they are unleashing so a group of 50 young singers between the ages of 16 and
18 will turn up never having some together before and our challenge is
that by the end of the week they're going to be doing a concert or an even
song in somewhere like Eton College Chapel or King's College Chapel
Cambridge or st. Paul's Cathedral and some of them to do actually a live
broadcast even song on BBC Radio 3 it's got to be that good and so their
trajectory it's fascinating to watch over the years this is actually this
year is the 20th year I've been to I've been directing courses and watching that
trajectory from a young group of singers who who start there and there are some
who've actually never sung and acquired they've been signed up by their school
because they love their singing and they may have had some singing lessons but
they've never sung in it in a in a chapel choir if you like and getting
them to sing Anglican Psalms to the degree where they do it live on radio
through is some challenge I can tell you but you know in invariably they go with
the flow and because they aren't their minds are so open to adaptation and
development and inquiry there's a wonderful sense of cohesion as you go
through the week and they do get terribly tired I remember the first time
I did it first couple of years by about day five of an eight day course and they
were on their knees and I thought oh no you
they've lost interest come on stay with me but I realize it's just that they
were tired and they were loving it but you know their level of concentration
was was waning through fatigue then as we know with all young singers you know
they pull it out the back at the last minute as well so there's an element of
that but just going back to what you were saying about you know working with
with people who are at the very beginnings of their of their at their
the journey with music that that's a challenge as well that's where you know
the workshopping for me has been so interesting because you know there are
no barriers there you know you're standing there's no piano there's no
music stand there's no music there's no sense of a language barrier you know
we're doing exercises that don't require that we sang some African chance you
know where you just learn the the syllables you don't you you know it's
not a language that we speak so there's there's there's no there's no barrier
there either and particularly there I think the round
that we did we did we did a six part round and suddenly you're singing in six
part harmony but actually you've only just learned one tune by ear and
suddenly you're creating six part harmony I think is a really interesting
way of just engendering an enthusiasm and a response from from young people
remember doing a workshop years ago in Scotland where we used to live in
Edinburgh and I chosen this song it was a it was a Christmas concert and it was
with primary children and it was in it was in five five eight and it's kind of
when Christmas time is party time why have I chosen something that's in five
eight you know be much easier to go one two three four this kid these kids have
ups they have no perception of what five eight was it didn't matter and they just
did it completely naturally they just understood the the rhythm of the words
and they just latched on to it straightaway I remember coming out of
that thinking oh my god you know that would that would test some professional
adult choirs but for the young kids you know they they are amazingly adaptable
and malleable in their in their approach to their music making so we needn't be
frightened of that sedating why is there not a contradiction there you know you
have studied classical choral music in the very rigid formal traditional
sense where there is a way of doing things
step by step people are taught very carefully and perform very part in a
very polished way and at the same time you're talking about you know any group
of 50 people coming into a room and performing six part harmony you're
talking about a group of young singers coming together for a week and
performing on Radio three how is there no contradiction there how have you
managed to reconcile those two the very careful structured traditional approach
to singing and teaching singing and this much more inclusive encouraging and
effective way of getting a group of people singing together simple answer I
don't know I don't know I've always I've always latched on to that notion and I
mentioned it earlier about one informing the other yet that this whole thing of
of you know the discipline of singing in a professional choir or conducting a
professional choir informing the way I might work with a bunch of young primary
children and I've talked about this before actually where you know sometimes
it surprises me I'll be I could be doing so with my London Voices choir which is
a group of professional singers who is mainly a recording choir so we do a lot
of film soundtracks and you will have heard London voices you know anybody
who's interested in film will invariably have heard London voices doing singing
on film so you know I mean the likes of Harry Potter and The Hobbit and even the
latest Bond film you know we were singing on that there you have the the
the the sheer discipline of being in a recording studio in London the like
going on there is no rehearsal there sight-reading and it's got to be perfect
the first time to the the opposite end where like we say you know you've got a
group of primary kids who just want to come in because the teachers told them
and you've got to infuse them for 40 minutes and they come out absolutely
buzzing both groups come out buzzing that's great and sometimes I'm really
interested by that notion of sometimes you'll get a better sense of application
from the young singers than you would for
the from the professional singers because they do it as a job some of them
and then sometimes you know you'll get the more enthusiastic approach from the
professional singers rather than the kids it kind of topsy-turvy and that's
what fascinates me with the with the work that I do because there are always
those challenges it's never it's never the same one day to the next
and I guess like you say it is a bit of a contradiction because you know how can
you how can you stack up singing in African chant with with a
bunch of schoolchildren - singing choral evensong in King's College Cambridge
well they did they do because because singing in a way is just it's just a
natural thing it's part of us always has been for thousands and thousands of
years and in in that sense you know that I think that's that's a really wonderful
thing that it's actually you know one sharing the other I I think for me
personally I don't I don't know why I haven't really sort of reconciled within
myself why I do the both and and that the two inform the other but but hey I'm
lucky I guess as long as I do I think the thing is with with it with being a
musician one of the most important things is you know a lot of people say
as an actor you know oh well it's down to luck and who you know well yeah okay
it might be but there's also having a natural talent there's also being in the
right place to the right time there's also doing a very good job and making
people feel good about themselves so when you turn up I remember asking a
Hollywood composer this once is one of the soundtracks we were doing I said you
know how do you end up writing for Harry Potter when it used to be John Williams
and he said well it's because I do a really good job but then people can rely
that people can rely on that composer to deliver the goods and I think as
musicians you know whether we're amateur or professional that's the thing you
know you've got to engender a sense of enjoyment and inclusivity and
understanding and empathy particularly if you're singing in a choir soloist is
a different thing but if you're singing in a choir if you're playing in an
orchestra you know have an understanding with your fellow musicians and just find
that sense of enjoyment as well because enjoyment has to be part of it
fantastic well I had a final question which was how can listeners know if they
are good enough to go and join a choir but I feel like it's somewhat redundant
to ask it give a nice conversation I think anybody's good enough and I mean
of course the thing is that that singing is it's always been a cool thing to sing
but it's it's become increasingly cool with with the likes of you know the TV
series and things that happen on the radio and the acapella competitions and
and choirs office choirs you know what a brilliant thing that is as well so there
are opportunities there for anybody at whatever level I mean just a really
sobering thought was a was a conference I went to the other day where I heard
about the choir with no name which is the choir for homeless people and you
know that we had a presentation from the woman who runs the organization and she
was saying you know that in any one night there are 3,000 homeless people on
the streets of London that's just in London I mean that then you've got
Birmingham and Liverpool and all these other places you know there may be they
don't know but they may you know up to two million people homeless but they've
got this thing called the choir with no name I would urge your listeners to go
and look them up on online and it was so sobering and empowering and
thought-provoking that you know here are people who are at the rock bottom with
with life in general you know whether whether through money problems family
problems mental problems but the choir with no name they don't they don't
purport to be able to put people back off the streets and get them into inter
into work and all those sorts of things it it's just an empowering thing that
people come to sing together and that's all all it's about some people actually
they say you they have the success of them actually turning up to the
rehearsal whether or not they sing you know that is a challenge in themselves
when they do sing and they show this video of these people they were saying
you know this is the highlight of my week you know this is the thing which
which makes me feel happiest and they sing together they're given a hot meal
and they talk to each other and there's that sharing at just this love of
singing and that and we kind of all sat back on our chairs and went wow you know
there there but the grace of God go I it was
extraordinary so I just mentioned that because at any level you can find the
opportunity to make music together and we all know how good music is for us and
the making of it and how it stimulates our brains so yeah there's there's
there's opportunity for everyone there and particularly we're singing because
you the instruments within you fantastic thank you so much Ben for joining us on
the show today not at all the musicality podcast is brought to you by musical you
more musical - you calm I spent a lot of time in the world of church music
growing up and in my experience there are two types of educators there most
are very formal and traditional and can make you feel quite intimidated and
nervous about trying to sing this kind of music the other type is surprisingly
down-to-earth encouraging and supportive while still having that total expertise
and enabling you to develop that expertise yourself I think you'll agree
with me that Ben is definitely in the latter camp so I was really keen to hear
his thoughts on what had helped him become the musician and educator that he
is now and his perspective on how to reconcile these two worlds of excellence
and accessibility Ben grew up immersed in church music with two musician
parents and plenty of choral singing even at the age of four he knew that
music would be a big part of his life I asked Ben early in the conversation and
it really came through and what he said later too
that he believes that success in music is a combination of nature and nurture
whether it's the child of two musicians being raised with plenty of music
education - or it's the interplay of him directing a professional choir for film
soundtracks one day and an assorted group of total beginners the next day
he's found that there's no contradiction between the discipline experience and
precision needed for singing at the highest levels and the absolute
accessibility of singing to anyone who has a voice
Ben's studied music through University and found
spected interest in more popular styles of music going on to audition and land a
place in the Swingle Singers and spending five years touring and
arranging for the group we talked about the unique requirements of a cappella
singing and how it gives you a perspective on tuning blend and
collaboration that you just don't get in an instrumental group or a large choir
Ben has clearly brought those insights into his work with choirs of all sizes
and styles and I loved hearing his explanations including why piano is just
not a helpful instrument for choirs to tune to one topic we've covered on the
podcast a few times is sulfur the doremi system of naming scale degrees it was
great to hear Ben's opinion on this he uses numbers instead of names but
essentially is teaching his singers the same system try out the exercise he
recommended of singing up the scale in numbers and then moving between the
notes in different orders and then clapping or slapping your fingers in
place of certain notes this is a fantastic and easy way to start training
your ears and your voice to understand the notes of the scale and that has an
immediate impact on your ability to sight sing from written music or to play
music by ear it's rare and wonderful for a musician who has performed and taught
at the highest levels to still have such enthusiasm for helping people take their
first steps Ben gave three great examples which should inspire anyone
considering learning to sing nor join a choir with the Eton choral courses he
takes a group of aspiring singers of all ability levels who've never sang
together before and in the space of just a week he has them singing a standard
that's ready for BBC radio broadcast in his workshops he's frequently
encountering a group of people of very mixed ability levels and as I
experienced myself he's found can be easy and natural to get them singing
some even quite complex music together in just a short session and finally he
mentioned the wonderful choir with no name project which provides a singing
opportunity to homeless people around the UK and demonstrates how simple yet
powerful the act of singing can be for each of us
I'm sure you'll be interested to know more about Ben and his various projects
and you can head to Ben Perry net for his personal website and we'll have
links to the King's College Choir of Cambridge and the National Youth choirs
are Great Britain in the show notes for this episode at musicality podcast calm
so that you can learn more about those choirs and the concert dates they have
coming up thanks for listening to this episode stay tuned for our next one
where we'll be talking about that challenging yet learning skill mentioned
in this episode of sight reading music from a written score thank you for
listening to the musicality podcast your musical journey continues head over to
musicality podcast calm where you will find the links and resources mentioned
in this episode as well as bonus content exclusive for podcast listeners
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