Video transcript
Festival of Choral Music repertoire 2021 - 10. The Captain's Tale - teaching tips

[music playing]

RACHEL KELLY: Hi, I'm Rachel Kelly. This video is part of a series on tips for conducting your choir.

This song is mostly in unison and the vocal parts are written all on one line. But sometimes, only the sopranos or only the altos sing. So when everyone sings in unison, it's marked tutti. Otherwise, it says altos or sopranos.

For the very last phrase, the two parts sing in parallel harmony one octave apart. The time signature is 2/4 so we conduct two beats in every bar like this-- down, up, down, up, one, two, one, two.

(SINGING) Here ye boys, what'll it be? Come, gather round, have a drink on me.

(SPEAKING) The rhythms in this piece will be easier to understand if you remember that a crotchet is divided into four semiquavers like this-- one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, tick-a, tick-a, tick-a, tick-a, tick-a, tick-a, tick-a, tick-a. Sometimes we see this rhythm with two semiquavers and a quaver like this--

[claps]

tick-a-tee-- like in bar 11 on 'what'll it.'

(SINGING) What'll it-- here ye boys, what'll it be?

(SPEAKING) Sometimes we have this rhythm, a dotted quaver with a semiquaver. Think of this as the first and the fourth of the group of four semiquavers

[clapping]

Da-da. Da-da, da-da, tick-a, tick-a.

(SPEAKING) We got this in bar 14 on 'tales to tell.'

(SINGING) Tales to tell.

[clapping]

Tales to tell, tales to tell.

(SPEAKING) Sometimes we have this rhythm, a quaver and two semiquavers like this.

[claps]

Tee, tick-a. When we see it in bar 12, it happens twice in a row.

(SINGING) Come, gather round, have a--

[clapping]

--tee, tick-a, tee, tick-a.

(SPEAKING) At bar 15, it's got a more syncopated feel because we hold the last one.

(SINGING) Tales to hear.

(SPEAKING) And finally, there's one with a semiquaver followed by a dotted quaver like in bar 16 on the word 'bottom.'

(SINGING) Bottom of the--

[clapping]

Bottom of the--

(SPEAKING) You could practise clapping these rhythms with your choir and even have your singers find more examples of them throughout the song. Every time we sing 'here ye boys,' the word 'boys' joins onto the next word like this.

(SINGING) Here ye boys, what'll it be?

(SPEAKING) Or--

(SINGING) Here ye boys, join our song.

(SPEAKING) Or maybe--

(SINGING) Here ye boys, the years pass by.

(SPEAKING) So there's not a gap after 'boys' like this.

(SINGING) Here ye boys, what'll it be?

(SPEAKING) And we only take a breath when we come to a rest in the music. So I'm going to sing you the first section and I want you to notice how some of the phrases might be a bit longer than you would expect

(SINGING) Here ye boys, what'll it be? Come, gather round, have a drink on me. Tales to tell and tales to hear at the bottom of the sea. All above come down below, hear the captain's tale.

(SPEAKING) That last word, 'tale,' cuts off exactly on beat two like this.

(SINGING) Hear the captain's tale.

(SPEAKING) Off. So you've probably heard singing teachers and choir conductors talking about diphthongs. This is when we have a word where we make two vowel sounds on one syllable. So the word cat doesn't have a diphthong because 'ah' is just one vowel sound. But boys, for example, has two sounds in the vowel, 'oh' and 'ee,' 'oh-ee,' so this is a diphthong.

Now remember, it's about the sound of the word when we say it and not necessarily about the spelling of it. So diphthongs can be problematic when you're singing because they can sound really awful. For example, if you went--

(SINGING) Here ye boys.

(SPEAKING) So the trick is to hang onto the first part of those two vowel sounds for longer and then just change to the second one as your finishing the word. So--

(SINGING) Boys.

(SINGING) So you'd sing--

(SINGING) Here ye boys, what'll it be?

(SPEAKING) I know that might all sound a bit technical, but if you model it the right way for your singers, I know they'll easily get the hang of it. There are a lot of diphthongs in this song-- for example, 'here,' 'tale,' 'down,' 'join.' You could go on a diphthong hunt.

In general, this song shouldn't take too long to learn because the melodies repeat quite a lot. Just watch out for the different melody at bar 86 near the end, which goes--

(SINGING) Hear now the captain's tale. Listen to the captain's wail.

(SPEAKING) There's a breath mark at the end of bar 91 just before the last phrase. This is so we can have a clean attack there, especially for the sopranos who have that high F.

(SINGING) Hear the captain's tale.

(SPEAKING) We want that note to sound effortless, like they're looking down on it from above rather than reaching up to it. So instead of--

(SINGING) Hear the captain's tale.

(SPEAKING) We want--

(SINGING) Hear the captain's tale.