Leaderboard

Composing music is the Godliest thing we can do. I imagine an emissary - a composer - sent to a far off galaxy in the distant future to demonstrate to whatever life form is there, music. And God says, you see this man, you see his instrument and you hear it. This is the gift I gave him, my proudest acheivement.

The harmonic series is the series of overtones of a fundamental pitch, so if the fundamental frequency is f then the frequencies in the harmonic series are f, 2f, 3f, 4f, 5f,... and of course double the frequency means one octave higher. Other ratios correspond more or less precisely to diatonic intervals - for instance 3:2 corresponds to a perfect fifth. However, apart from the 2:1 ratio for an octave, the intervals do not correspond exactly to intervals within equal temparement.

Sing every line yourself, in your own octave, to be sure it will work. Can you make it to the next rest without needing a breath? (For large choirs, they can stagger breathe, so this doesn't matter, but for chamber groups it's important.) Does the way the stresses of the text line up with the strong beats in the music feel sensible? As for voice crossing, the timbre between the male and female voices is pretty different, so crossing between the alto and tenor lines is common and can be a nice effect. Since the altos will be at the low part of their range, and the tenors will be in the high part of their range when that happens, the audience can usually hear through the timbre difference that you have crossed the parts, and finds it fun. As opposed to crossing an alto and soprano line, or tenor with bass, where there isn't enough timbre difference to hear clearly that one line is diving while another is climbing past it. It sounds more stagnant. The listener is more likely to hear it as two parts just staying consistently in a certain range and not realize the parts have flip-flopped. The sense of motion is gone. Try to move the singers around in their ranges throughout the piece. Singing in the high part of your range for an extended period is straining to the voice, and you will hear the strain. Singing low for an extended period is also straining. As is singing on your "break," the transition between head voice and chest voice. (Regular register vs falsetto if you're talking about men.) But all of these things are perfectly comfortable as long as you are moving around occasionally. You just don't want to ask anyone to stay within the same three note range for a whole piece. And remember that the posted ranges for the different voice parts you see a lot of places are ranges for professional soloists. Not the average choral singer. (Soloists tend to become soloists because they have naturally wide ranges anyway and have done years of training to learn to use their range without damaging their vocal chords.) You can find ranges for choral singers listed on the internets as well if you know to look for them. (:

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