Vocal jazz is an art form that brings together choral singing, impro-visation, American popular and instrumental jazz repertoire, chamber music experience, and microphone vocal technique. For these reasons, it broadens the core choral experience with a new style of music and new approaches to singing. It provides the extra challenges that come with small ensemble singing, including close harmonies that require fine intonation, and therefore is a perfect fit for your extra-motivated and/or gifted students.
Roots
Vocal jazz is a relatively recent phenomenon in the big picture of choral music. The first professional vocal jazz groups that influenced our concepts of vocal jazz today became active in the 1950s and 1960s and include:
• Lambert, Hendricks and Ross
• The Swingle Singers
• The Four Freshmen, and
• The Hi-Lo’s.
By the 1970s The Manhattan Transfer had burst on the scene, and college and high school vocal jazz ensembles began to spring up around the country, starting in the Pacific Northwest where vocal jazz con-tinues to be a stronghold. Since the 1980s the influence of vocal jazz has spread around the nation and the world, with outstanding groups such as:
• The Real Group from Sweden
• The Idea of North from Australia
• The New York Voices.
It is important to listen to recordings of these major ensembles to develop a historically authentic aural concept of vocal jazz.
Repertoire Sources
Good vocal jazz repertoire can often be found at:
• vocal jazz reading sessions at conferences;
• state-approved solo and ensemble festival lists;
• websites, including those of the University of Northern Colorado Jazz Press (https://uncjazzpress.com), Sound Music Publications (www.smpjazz.com), http://www.a-cappella.com/
and www.singers.com/jazz/;
• your favorite choral music publishers and stores.
Arrangers
The following list of vocal jazz arrangers includes those with a proven track record of high quality choral music, as well as newer arrangers who are enjoying well-deserved success. Add your favorites to this list.
• Dave Barduhn
• Jennifer Barnes
• Randy Crenshaw
• Dave Cross
• Rosana Eckert
• Anders Edenroth
• Jeremy Fox
• Greg Jasperse
• Cathy Jensen-Hole
• Anita Kerr
• Kerry Marsh
• Phil Mattson
• Darmon Meader
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• Gene Puerling
The following list of selected SATB vocal jazz arrangements includes easy to moderately difficult pieces that are appropriate for secondary school choirs. While only SATB arrangements are listed here, there is no shortage of vocal jazz for SAB, women’s groups and men’s groups.
In fact, several of the tunes listed below are available in other voicings, as well as many more that you can find through the given websites and publishers.
• Alice in Wonderland by Paris Rutherford
• America the Beautiful by Kirk Marcy
• Anthropology by Paris Rutherford
• Begin the Beguine by Greg Jasperse
• Blue Skies by Steve Zegree
• Blues Down to My Shoes by Kirby Shaw
• Bourée by Ward Swingle
• Bridge over Troubled Water by Kirby Shaw
• Doctor Blues by Peter Blair
• Doctor Jazz by Kirby Shaw
• Down St. Thomas Way by Dave Cazier
• For All We Know by Dave Barduhn
• Happiness is a Thing Called Joe by Anita Kerr
• He Bop-N-Re Bop by Vijay Singh
• Holiday Blues by Roger Treece
• How Deep Is the Ocean by Rosana Eckert
• I’ll Be Seeing You by Phil Mattson
• I’m Old Fashioned by Jennifer Barnes
• In My Life by Steve Zegree
• Love Walked In by Steve Zegree
• My Country ‘Tis of Thee by Kirby Shaw
• Nature Boy by Michele Weir
• Oo-Pop-Dah by Dave Barduhn
• Orange Colored Sky by Leighton Tiffault
• Over the Rainbow by Teena Chinn
• Route 66 by Dick Averre
• Scat Blues in C by Randy Crenshaw
• Shortnin’ Bread by Dave Cross
• Straighten Up and Fly Right by Kirby Shaw
• Walkin’ by Bob Stoloff
• W hat a Wonderful World by Phil Mattson
• You Must Believe in Spring by Phil Mattson.
Performance Practice Swing
Although vocal jazz arrangements come in a variety of rhythmic styles, such as a Latin, rock, or ballad, the most fundamental rhythmic style of jazz is swing, and as Duke Ellington said, “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing!” While Latin, rock, and ballad jazz arrangements interpret eighth notes as written, it is now common knowledge that in swing music, eighth notes must be “swung” in a triplet feel, as seen in Example 10.1. There should also be a slight emphasis on the off-beats (off-beats 2 and 4) to enhance the swing feel.
Improvisation
Many vocal jazz choral arrangements provide space for improvisation, which is considered the essence of jazz (Madura, 1992). But choral
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Example 10.1 Swing Rhythm
directors often lack training in improvisation and while they have an interest in being able to improvise, they don’t feel that they can teach it (Madura Ward-Steinman, 2007). It has become common practice for the director to ask for volunteers to take the scat solos, and those volunteers often improvise in rehearsal and performance with little guidance from their teacher. But there are certain experiences and basic principles of improvisation that teachers and students can keep in mind to develop improvisation skills (Madura, 1996; Madura Ward-Steinman, 2008).
• Listen to live and recorded jazz extensively, both vocal and instrumental.
• Practice imitating jazz rhythms, melodies, and chords.
• Learn the harmonic structure underlying any improvisation by singing the chord roots first.
• Think about the solo as the telling of a story, with a beginning, a high point, and an end.
• Listen to the piano, bass, and drums for ideas so that some interaction is present.
Scat-Singing
Scatting is the act of improvising using syllables. To use scat syllables that sound authentic, note the following suggestions:
• Listen and imitate (or transcribe) scat syllables heard on recordings by such masters as Ella Fitzgerald, Jon Hendricks, Darmon Meader and Bobby McFerrin.
• Listen to instrumental jazz, particularly horns, and try to imitate their sound, creating syllables that come close to their articulations (“voo-vahn,” “dwee dwee doolya dot”, etc.).
• Study Bob Stoloff ’s outstanding book called Scat! (1996) for an encyclopedia of scat syllables that work with various rhythms, melodies, vocal bass lines, and vocal percussion.
• Have students create lyrics instead of scat syllables.
The Blues
A great format for beginning scat-singing is the 12-bar blues. The beginning improviser should first become familiar with the chord structure (in any key) by singing the roots of the chords on the syllable
“doo” holding each for four beats.
4/4 I7 / I7 / I7 / I7 /
IV7 / IV7 / I7 / I7 /
V7 / IV7 / I7 / I7 //
Next, sing a chord tone on each beat (arpeggiate the chords), as seen in Example 10.2. For example, in the 12-bar blues in the key of C, the I7 chord is c e g b-flat, the IV7 chord is f a c e-flat, and the V7 chord is g b d f.
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Example 10.2 12-Bar Blues Arpeggiated Chords
After familiarity with this basic 12-bar blues chord structure (there are more advanced versions with many chord substitutions possible), the singer can experiment with notes from the blues scale for impro-vising. The blues scale degrees are:
1 flat 3 4 sharp 4 5 flat 7 1
Notate this blues scale in the key of C:
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Practice this blues scale both ascending and descending in the chosen key of the 12-bar blues. The great jazz pedagogue David Baker calls the blues scale a “horizontal scale” because it can be used to improvise over all of the chords in the 12-bar blues. For example, if the 12-bar blues is in the key of C, notes from the C blues scale can be used to improvise over the whole piece with no change of tonic when the chords change. While this may sound simple, the challenges are many:
• Fear of improvising.
• The dissonance of the flat third in the blues scale against the major third in the I7 chord.
• Pitch accuracy in the descending form of the scale.
• The decision of which notes and rhythms to choose when improvising.
The simplest way to avoid these problems is to put many limitations on what the singer may choose, making improvisation attempts “safe.”
Limitations for beginning improvisers might include the following:
• First attempts allow the singer to use only scale degree 1 of the blues scale, on the syllable “doo”, but to make it swing.
• Second attempts add the aspect of story-telling by creating tension and release with dynamics or rhythms but still only singing the first scale degree.
• Early attempts can limit the number of measures of the impro-visation, with each student taking two or four measures.
• Little by little add other pitches from the blues scale, other scat syllables, and more measures.
Since the pitch may not change in the early attempts, singers don’t have to worry about “wrong notes” which removes the fear of failure.
Eventually continue these steps until the entire blues scale can be improvised over the 12-bar blues, which might take a whole semester.
Students can also compose short motives made up of some of the notes of the blues scale, and repeat them several times for effect (this repeated pattern is called a “riff ”).
The blues scale can be used to improvise to any 12-bar blues vocal jazz arrangement such as Doctor Blues, Oo-Pop-Dah, or Sc at Blues in C listed above. Other 12-bar blues titles from the vocal jazz literature include Things Ain’t W hat They Used To Be, Doodlin’, and Tenor Madness. Students can “trade fours” (improvise a solo for four measures each) or sing a 12-bar chorus.
When one tires of the blues scale, other more advanced impro-visatory ideas can be gleaned from the notes that each chord implies.
For example, while major seventh chords imply major scale pitches for improvisation, dominant scale chords imply the mixolydian mode.
Also, solos can be learned by ear or transcribed from other musicians’
blues recordings, which is a common practice method among jazz musicians.
Accompaniment
Many vocal jazz arrangements are a cappella, but much of the reper-toire is arranged for the traditional jazz “rhythm section” of piano, bass, and drums. The rhythm section is an authentic characteristic of jazz and choral directors often use an experienced rhythm section from the school jazz ensemble to rehearse and perform with the vocal jazz ensemble.
Vocal Jazz Sound
Vocal jazz is traditionally performed with a relatively small ensemble, ranging anywhere from 4 to 16 voices. Typically a sound system is used for close micing technique, with one to two singers per microphone. In vocal jazz choral singing, vibrato is minimized due to the careful tuning required for the close voicings and complexity of the jazz chords. A relatively bright sound is also desirable which can be achieved with an
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inner smile and raised soft palate. Consonant diction can also be relaxed because the microphone reduces the need for stressed consonants.
While the sound equipment is an added burden and often an unknown area for choral directors, you will be able to find students in the school who have a strong interest and experience in running sound systems, and they can enroll in your ensemble as the sound engineer.
The standard microphone for vocal jazz is the Shure SM58, and complete specifications for a desirable sound system can be found in Zegree’s The Complete Guide to Teaching Vocal Jazz (2002).
Certainly vocal jazz may be performed without an elaborate sound system (mics, stands, cables, mixer, amplifier, equalizer, and speakers), particularly if the group is a large one, but it should be kept in mind that close micing is a technique that produces that ideal sound of vocal jazz that we are used to hearing from such groups as the New York Voices, The Real Group and The Manhattan Transfer. One caveat, however, is that close micing amplifies right and wrong notes, and therefore, should only be used with your strongest musicians. It is an outstanding and thrilling learning experience to sing in a small ensemble with close micing for those students who can rise to the level of musicianship needed for that type of performance.