Chapter 11

To me the most interesting things were the hollow square and the shapes of the notes. "We sit in a hollow square, with the leader standing in the middle so everyone can see him. The basses face the trebles – the lowest and highest parts – and the tenors face the altos. The sound all comes together and it's just wonderful.

"We sing about equally from the Denson book and the Cooper book – they've got titles but that's what we call 'em. We've got loaners of each, but let me show you from my Denson book—" here he grabbled a maroon colored book from one of the pews. It was cloth over boards, and rectangular from side to side, rather than from top to bottom the way a regular book is. He flipped pages. "Okay, here's a simple one – 'Big Creek, ' which is 494. See here – notice how them notes are four different shapes. The triangle is fa, the round one is sol, the rectangle is la, and there's a diamond shape that's mi. That one ain't in this song, not in any of the parts, but that's okay. We use these four shapes to help see what the notes are. Instead of A, B, C, an' all that, which you've got to just know, we've got fa, sol, la, and mi. In the major scale fa sol la fa sol la mi fa, each note is a half step above the one before it. Now you don't need to know all this right off, but that's how we tell how far up to go. You see here," he said, pointing to different places on the page, "how we've got a fa way up on the top of the staff, and then here another fa down in the lowest space. Because the scale is fa sol la fa, the higher fa is a step and a half above the lower one. That way we know how much higher to go, or how much lower."

"Now that's neat," I said. "I've been singing in church for ages, an' I don't do too bad at it, but I can't read a bit of music so whenever we come to a song I don't know, it takes me about three verses to begin singing it, an' about three times singing the song before I'm really comfortable with it. But with these shapes I bet I could learn to read music, more or less."

Benson grinned. "That's exactly what the shapes are about, Mr. Carpenter. They're to help people who don't have no musical training read music, an' sing."

"I'm Darvin," I said. "I'm a real informal country boy."

"Okay, an' I'm Cooper – shoot, call me Coop. Everyone else does."

"Okay, Coop."

"Now what we'll do when someone calls a song, is he'll stand in the middle, an' we'll sing the notes. Like here in 'Big Creek, ' we'll sing sol la fa fa fa la sol an' so on – well the trebles will sing those notes, an each part will sing its own notes. The parts are, top to bottom of the brace, treble, alto, tenor, an' bass. We'll give each note it's proper pitch of course, higher or lower, an' we'll sing 'em just the way we'd sing the words. Do you at least know about quarter notes an' half notes an' such?"

"Cecelia's hammered that much into my skull," I said, and she grinned. It's about all she's ever been able to teach me, and the truth is that she doesn't read music herself, though she knows more than I do and can work out a chart if you give her time. She grew up at Mount Tabor, where the people hardly ever look at written music – they all sing by ear and by heart.

"Okay, then when we sing the notes on this song, we'd sing these two as quarter notes, this as a half note, an' so on. An' then we go ahead an' sing the poetry – the words."

"That sounds simple enough, though I suspect actually doing it will take some practice."

"It is, an' it does – but once you get the hang of it it's easier."

"That's how pretty much everything works," I said.

"That's the truth," Coop said. "But let me get y'all loaner books – I'll take this one back 'cause it's mine, but if y'all will come with me, we've got both blue books and red books here on the back table." And there was indeed a table along the back wall, with books stacked on it – more of the maroon books, and some smaller blue books, also rectangular.

While Coop handed out the books, one each to each of us, I said, "I suspect this building's good for singing in. It's square, or nearly so, an' it's got that high ceiling an' wood on the floor an' walls."

"You've got it," he said. "That's one reason we've stayed here. We started out in Enterprise, but we had trouble keeping a place to sing, an' so one of us who had a cousin who went to church here wangled us a chance to come here. We've been singing in this church for several years now, an' people come from all over the county, an' from other counties too. We're the only regular local singing in southern Alabama."

Just then someone hollered, "Hey Coop, it's after 2!"

I looked at my watch, and it was indeed after 2 – about 15 minutes after.

Coop said, "Y'all sound like you'll fit best in the tenor section, an' that's where we like to put new singers anyway 'cause the tenors carry the melody. That's this section right here," he said, leading us to the pews that faced the platform. There were pews on the platform itself, facing the tenor section – I remembered he'd said that the altos faced the tenors. "I sing bass, so I'll be over here."