Heidi Gerber-Salins:
Vocal Harmony Arranger - Phase I


Heidi Gerber-Salins' Creativity

Ms. Gerber-Salins, as part of making the Phase I recording for Hymns and Songs of My Mother, in addition to her role as the producer and audio engineer, also functioned as vocal arranger of harmony parts for some of the hymns. She created several new duet harmony parts in place of using the alto harmony parts from the hymnals. Ms. Gerber-Salins extemporaneously created those new harmony duet parts out of her head. Her vocal harmony arrangements add variety and harmonic listening interest for those duet parts.

An extreme example is her arrangement for "Were You There", with her singing both the lead and most of the harmony parts. At one point she commented her ideas for that arrangement were inspired by arrangement styles use by the a cappella singing and recording group, Sweet Honey in the Rock®.

(Sweet Honey in the Rock recorded many of their early albums at Bias studio where Ms. Gerber-Salins had the opportunity to work with them. I saw a reference to them having subsequently recorded at Tonal Park in Takoma Park, MD, founded by Charlie Pilzer, possibly because it is more geographically conveniently located for them.)


Ms. Gerber-Salins was also responsible for introducing David to the use of Descants in some of the hymns. For background on how that happened, see Influence on use of descants.

The gems of Ms. Gerber-Salins' vocal arrangements are scattered throughout the album, as is her influence on the use of descants on several hymns.

Availability of Ms. Gerber-Salins' Vocal Arrangements

As of release of this album, the vocal hymn harmony parts extemporaneously created by Ms. Gerber-Salins are not written down, and currently only exist on this recording. Whether this project or Ms. Gerber-Salins may chose to document and have those harmony parts she created become available, is unknown. And if so, how she might chose to make them available is unknown? Feel free to click on the link below to the Comment page and comment if you so choose.

Background About Hymn Vocal Harmonies

Standard Hymn Harmony Lines

Including melody and harmony together with the lyrics of hymns was established as the new standard for hymnals in 1861, when the Church of England published the first edition of the hymnal Hymns Ancient and Modern. Prior to that, hymnals commonly only included the lyrics, that were sung to commonly known tunes. Since then, it is common to include music for the melody (primarily as Soprano) and harmonies, typically three supporting parts, together with the verse text/lyrics. This is the classic Soprano-Alto-Tenor-Bass (SATB) structure.

All the hymns published in the hymnals collected by David's parents followed that four-part melody and harmony structure together with the lyrics, intended for congregational singing.

The three hymn harmony parts (Alto-Tenor-Bass) typically included with the melody, tend to follow a pattern of being easier for congregations to follow. While that facilitates singing of hymns in "part harmony" by less musically trained congregations, it also produces an effect that might be described as "sounding like church hymns."

Descant Harmony Line

None of the hymnals used as resources for selection of these hymns contained the additional high part, now commonly known as a descant. However, some more recent hymnals began including descant parts. The example that directly impacted this recording is the 1982 Episcopal Hymnal. The wonderful experience gained in phase I when the Producer and her mother added a descant from the 1982 Episcopal hymnal to the refrains on the last verse of "Christ the Lord Is Risen Today," clearly demonstrated addition of Descants can add a wonderful dimension.

David subsequently had the great good fortune of discovering an internet resource, i.e, an extensive list of hymn descants published by arranger Mr. Jeff Whitmill. (He makes them freely available for all to use via his website found at https://whitmill.net/descants/.) Special thanks to the generosity of Mr. Whitmill!!

His resource made it very practical to select descants for several hymns from Mr. Whitmill's list and add them to several hymns in Phase II. (A discussion of descants is provided under Phase II. As an easy cross reference, if you want to immediately read that material, you can click here on Descants.)



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