Barbershop Arranging — Part 9: “I’ll Be Here” Analysis
Deconstructing Westminster’s stunning 2019 contest ballad
This is Part 9 of a 10-part series on barbershop arranging, and the last of three arrangement-analysis posts. The full guide is here. See Part 7: “Down Our Way” Analysis for an explanation of the analytical methodology.
In Part 8, we deconstructed a gold-medal barbershop ballad from the 2010s arranged by one of Barbershop’s living legends, David Wright. For this final post in the series, we’ll carry the torch ten years hence to the present day and consider what the cutting edge of Barbershop sounds like in 2020—approaching the 100th anniversary of the formalization of the style. In particular, we’ll focus on add9 chords, jazz chords, and embellishments, which together signal Barbershop’s increasing acceptance of classical, jazz, and contemporary a cappella influences.
The song
The arrangement we’ll analyze in this post is, in this writer’s eyes, the most layered, progressive, and masterful Barbershop work to date: “I’ll Be Here” from The Wild Party, arranged by retiring Westminster Chorus director Justin Miller. This seven-minute ballad was the first of two groundbreaking songs in Westminster’s 2019 gold-medal-winning International set, likely to be Miller’s final contest with Westminster after a decade at the helm.
Since 2009, Miller has guided Westminster to make choral music as much a pillar of its ensemble identity as Barbershop (their ostensible mantra: “We will sing our Barbershop like our choral music—and choral music like our Barbershop”). The ensemble has also sung several contemporary a cappella arrangements from Grammy-winning aca-star Ben Bram and others, as well as several jazzier numbers over the years.
In Miller’s final international appearance with Westminster, he and the chorus put all of this influence solidly on display, pushing the Barbershop art form forward more in one performance than any group has likely ever done before. Be sure to watch the video before proceeding with this post:
I spoke with Justin for a few minutes in passing at the 2019 Far Western District convention, after Westminster had won the 2019 International contest. Having never seen a barbershop arrangement from him before, I asked about his process for putting together such a wonderful first hit as “I’ll Be Here,” eager to learn if his approach was more ear-driven (like mine) or more theoretically minded. He offered that he leant on all of the above—and he mused that in trickier spots, he would often wonder to himself, “What would David Wright do here?”
Beyond his treatment of the content from the original song, what’s perhaps more impressive is his treatment of additional content that he composed himself. The original song is only two minutes and thirty-three seconds long, compared to Westminster’s seven-minute behemoth that takes the soul on an emotional journey to infinity and back!
Focus
Since we’ve focused so much on the “minimum viable progression” in posts past, I’d like to look not at the first verse—which tends to be more of a standard harmonization—but rather at the second, which necessarily demands more variety and development over its predecessor. In so doing, we’ll seek to answer how arrangers add variation from verse to verse, which we have not yet discussed!
Below is a transcription of the verse to be analyzed in this post, which starts at 2:06 in the video. Our aim will be to understand three things:
- The original harmonization of the song,
- The basic Barbershop harmonization used in Verse 1, and
- How Verse 2 can be treated differently to add drama.
Choosing to normalize the abnormal
This arrangement embraces many non-traditional Barbershop elements that together give the arrangement a decidedly contemporary feel. In particular, it seems that Miller made several deliberate choices when crafting this chart, consistent with the following hypothetical self-allowances:
- “I’m okay using some ‘illegal’ chords to keep the song’s jazzy flare.”
- “I’d like to use classical embellishments to add part-wise interest.”
- “I’ll like to treat add9 chords as a norm, rather than an exception.”
We’ll define each of these in detail later in our analysis. For now, we’ll simply note that because Miller was presumably deliberate about these devices and integrated them with care throughout the arrangement, the listener accepts them as the “language” of the arrangement, even though they’re non-standard choices in Barbershop. Indeed, audiences tend to appreciate risks as long as the risks are tastefully executed.
1. Melody
Let’s look at the melody from the original song, sung by Taye Diggs on the cast album from 2000. Specifically, we’ll isolate the second verse, starting at 0:40:
Here’s a transcription of the bones of the melody, with the words modified according to what Miller eventually used in Westminster’s arrangement:
2. Chords
The original song is rich with jazz influences: including Dominant 7s with a sharp 11 (i.e., sharped scale degree 4 relative to the chord root) as well as Minor 7s throughout. We also hear a prevailing progression from IV → V7 → I (e.g., on “If you fail, I will soothe you” and “No more harm, no more fear”). This is not necessarily a Circle of Fifths progression, but it is one that is perfectly acceptable to retain if we wish to keep the same harmonic architecture from the recording. Here are all the chords for Verse 2, sourced from chordify.net:
E (IV) → F#7 (V7) → B (I)E (IV) → F#7 (V7) → B (I)Fø7 (bvø7) → C#ø7 (iiø7) → B (I) → F7 (bV7)C#m7 (ii7) → F#7 (V7) → B (I)
In the back half of the verse, we see a rash of seventh chords including a ii7 → V7 → I progression in the last three chords—good news!—but we have one troublesome F7 against a B-natural melody note in m. 6 that is beyond salvaging. Overall, the harmonies in the back half of the verse will need some attention.
Additionally, we’ll need a couple more chords in the front half of the verse to address the stagnant harmonic rhythm in ms. 2 and 4. As is, there is no drama propelling the arrangement forward when we reach the B Major Triads in those measures.
3a. Basic re-harmonization (e.g., for Verse 1)
Miller addressed both these issues with the following harmonization, which he uses in Verse 1 of his arrangement (starting at 1:20 in the video):
E (IV) → F#7 (V7) → B (I) → D#7 (III7)E (IV) → F#7 (V7) → B (I) → D#7 (III7)G#m (vi) → D#7 (III7) → B7 (I7) → C#7 (II7)Eadd9 (IVadd9) → B (I)
The new chords are denoted in red in the following video (while unmodified chords are expressed in blue):
Explaining the choices
Of note, we’ve now injected a III7 chord to carry the tension past each of the first two phrases. The first of these follows a non-standard Dominant 7 resolution into IV—a deceptive cadence of sorts in which D# becomes a leading tone—and the second progresses according to the Circle of Fifths, from III7 to vi.
The back half of the verse now starts on vi and walks a tightrope of Dominant 7 sonorities, through III7, I7, then II7. Each of these manages to include their primary respective melody pitch: D#7 contains C# on “climb,” B7 contains D# on “end,” and C#7 contains B on “time.” Moreover, the first two chords each share a single common tone with the following chord in the chain: D#7 and B7 both contain D#, and B7 and C#7 both contain B. While these chords do not progress according to the Circle of Fifths, their shared tones help convince the ear that the chords are related enough to make the progression acceptable. (If the Circle of Fifths fails, any string of Dominant 7 chords tends to sound “good enough for government work.”)
🌟 New topic: Add9 chords
The penultimate chord of our re-harmonization is an E Major Triad against an F# melody note, giving us what’s known as an add9 chord.
The add9 chord is comprised of scale degrees 1, 3, 5, and 9; often compacted as 1, 2, 3, and 5. It enjoys all the stability of the Major Triad, but it also adds a most delicate ripple of Major-2nd dissonance thanks to the added diatonic pitch between 1 and 3, giving the chord a sense of placid beauty that no other 3- or 4-part chord captures quite as effortlessly.
A couple pedantic things to note about add9 chords:
- Categorization. A “9th chord” is actually a five-part chord consisting of scale degrees 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9. Add9 chords by definition do not contain a seventh, so referring to them as a “9th chord” is technically incorrect. “Add9” is the proper term.
- Inversions. Add9 chords are technically composed of scale degrees 1, 3, 5, and the 9 above. Thus, an add9 in first inversion has 3 as the root, an add9 in second inversion has 5 as the root, and an add9 chord in third inversion has the 9 as the root. This is unintuitive when the chord is written in collapsed form as in the video above, with the 9 written on scale degree 2.
Back to the penultimate chord
An add9 chord is actually a wonderful choice for the penultimate measure of the phrase. Although using an add9 chord for the entire measure slows harmonic rhythm a bit much, the Eadd9 chord manages to harmonize every melody note in the measure—F#, G# and B—while adding that infallibly loving harmonic embrace that only the add9 chord can provide. Further, if we put the F# in the Bass part in measure 7 and the E in the Tenor, we’ll have the same F#–E exoskeleton as F#7, which does well to convince the ear that the chord merits resolving to B.
3b. Juicier re-harmonization (e.g., for Verse 2)
We’ve translated chords to voicings enough times now that we can leave the arrangement for Verse 1 to you as an exercise. Of interest for the remainder of this post will be how we can mix things up in Verse 2.
🌟 New topic: Development
Development is the process of adding variety to keep the audience engaged throughout a musical work. Christian hymnals are full of arrangements that ask the congregation to repeat themselves four, five, or even six times over with different words—perhaps with small variations to sing unisons and descants on the opening and closing verses. This helps congregations find their footing in the music so that they can focus on the text rather than the notes, but it can also make the music feel rote after a while.
In Barbershop, repeating the same chords and voicings across verses is a cardinal sin. A Twainian approach is preferred: harmonizations shouldn’t repeat themselves; rather, they should rhyme. Simply put, each verse should have the same bones so that they fit together, but each one should introduce clear differences—whether with respect to chord choices, rhythms, text, or voicings. The most masterful arrangements use variation to take the audience on an emotional journey, with the arranging choices constantly re-framing the text in the audience’s mind. Ideally, every verse should be artistically defensible and give the audience reason to say, “That verse was awesome.”
Harmonizing Verse 2
For “I’ll Be Here,” the common thread between each verse will be the pair of back-to-back IV → V7 → I progressions in the opening phrases. The arrangement dances a bit within this progression for each verse, but the progression itself is ever-present.
For this song, the back half of the verses presents a better opportunity for harmonic variety. As we just saw, Verse 1 took a more convivial approach, opting for a string of cheery Dominant 7 chords (from 1:43 in the video: “When you lose your light in the naked night, I’ll be here, I’ll be here”).
Given a relatively constant sequence of melody pitches, we have a puzzle on our hands: how do we find a new harmonization that is not only different, but also equally valid and, ideally, capable of making the audience feel something new?
Here’s one approach, with new chords expressed in red in the video below:
- Unchanged:
E (IV) → F#7 (V7) → B (I) → D#7 (III7) - Unchanged:
E (IV) → F#7 (V7) → B (I) → D#7 (III7) G#m (vi) → D#ø7 (iiiø7) → EM7 (IVM7) → C#m7 (II7) → G (bVI) → C#ø7 (iiø7)(B, implicit) (I) → Eadd9 (IVadd9) → B (I)
Let’s make sense of this:
- D#ø7. The G#m chord in m. 5 is unchanged, but we now progress to a D#ø7 chord, built on the local dominant of G#m. Due to the flutter between C# and B in the melody, this Half-Diminished 7 chord functions as a B7 chord with a suspended root.
- EM7. This B7-ish chord progresses along the Circle of Fifths to a gorgeously jazzy EM7 chord on “end,” with the melody serving as scale degree 7. (As discussed in Part 4, we’ve finally used the Major 7 chord in a devastating, tear-jerking fashion!)
- C#m7. The melody 7 resolves down to scale degree 6, forming a C#m7 chord. In practice, this will likely be voiced by leaving the harmony parts as is, with the E as the root; thus, this will really have more of an E6 quality, effectively keeping the harmony in the E-major chord area for the whole measure despite changing the sonority of the chord.
- G. We now arrive at the big-money chord, a borrowed G-Major Triad that seemingly has no place in the B Major scale. This chord is powerful in context, both for its surprise and its sudden triadic stability—like a reassuring spirit that crystallizes for just a moment before diffusing into the mist again. In fact, this is the first of two chords in a canonical bVI → bVII → I progression back to B.
- C#ø7. We then move to a Half-Diminished 7 composed of C#, E, G, and B—sharing two pitches with the prior G triad. If we imagine resolving the B down to an A, the C#ø7 chord will convert into an A7, the bVII7 chord in B Major. Even without the A, C#ø7 contains the same tritone as A7, so it can imply the same resolution as A7. We thus have a bVI → bVII7 → I progression on our hands, with the bVII7 slightly disguised. In a more literal sense, the C#ø7 is a Half-Diminished 7 functioning as a cadential “Barbershop Amen” chord here (see Part 6 for a review).
- (B). After a pensive rest, we re-emerge on an implied B Major triad, lightly spelled by the melody’s D#→F# sequence. This will eventually become a unison entrance that will allow us to peel off into an exciting cadence.
4. Parts
Now that we have a dramatic new chord progression for Verse 2, let’s assign it to our Barbershop voice parts. We’ll skip the tactical details since we’ve covered them enough in past posts, but recall the basics:
- Notate the melody in the Lead part.
- Notate the chord roots in the Bass part (or fifths if the root is taken).
- Notate the Tenor slightly above the lead, adjusting the Bass to improve voice leading if needed.
- Notate the Baritone on leftover notes, adjusting the Tenor and Bass to improve voice leading if needed.
With those heuristics in mind, here is a first stab at some basic parts:
While we skipped the details, there are a few interesting things to observe:
- The lead goes quite low in m. 2, resulting in a low third with the Bass and a Tenor on a relatively low root above them. We’ll probably want to rework this chord to avoid muddiness in the lower range.
- We have some augmented chords in ms. 2 and 4! As in “If You Love Me, Really Love Me,” they resolve immediately to the Dominant 7 built on the same root.
- How we identify the D#ø7 chord in m. 5 affects which note we deem to be the fifth of the chord and, in turn, which note we assign to the Bass. Here, we’ve treated the chord as D#ø7, but the result is weak. Treating it as B7 with a suspended root would probably be both clearer and more stable.
- In m. 6, we’ve avoided a divorced tenor voicing by placing the Tenor below the Lead. This improves voice leading and highlights scale degree 7 in the chord, particularly as it resolves downward.
- In m. 7, we’ve spelled the G-Major triad in second inversion rather than root position. This avoids awkward jump in the Bass, allowing the chord to instead emerge from the previous chord with only the slightest of adjustments. Furthermore, the Bass and Tenor now have opposing motion into the next chord, making the progression feel more intentional overall.
- Finally, in m. 9, we’ve spelled the final beat of the Eadd9 in third inversion, with the 9 in the Bass and the 3 in the Tenor. As previously mentioned, this creates an F#7 feel that more effectively guides the ear back into B.
5. Motion
Now that we have a basic voicing for Verse 2, it’s evident that we may need to raise the stakes toward the beginning, where the harmony is identical to what it was in Verse 1. Again, we want to keep the IV → V7 → I harmony fairly constant across verses, so we’ll instead explore how to develop the verse by adding motion. We can apply a similar treatment to the penultimate measure, which currently languishes for three beats before finally moving on.
We have two primary methods of adding motion:
- Arpeggiation. In which a harmony part hops between pitches from the current chord in sequence (e.g. if the current chord is C, the part could hop between C-natural, E-natural, and G-natural).
- Passing tones. In which a harmony part moves one scale degree at a time toward a note in the following pillar chord. In classical music, passing tones needn’t fit a particular chord, but in Barbershop, they should.
Here’s an example of how we could add motion in Verse 2, as well as address some of our spelling concerns. New, emergent chords are highlighted in red:
Here’s an explanation of what’s happening:
- m. 1: The parts enter in sequence, with the Bass hopping between the fifth and third of the E Major Triad. This is arpeggiation. To add even more zest, the Bass never sings the root of the E Major Triad; rather, the Bass skips between the fifth and third to keep the chords inverted.
- m. 2: (A bit of a secondary concern) The Bass steals the last three notes of the melody on “will soothe you” to avoid a low, muddy chord. Now, the Tenor and Bass are poised for the motion that follows.
- m. 3: The Bass and Tenor move in parallel through passing tones toward their destinations in F#7. They spell out G#m7 and C#m7 chords, which creates a small Circle of Fifths progression into the following F#7. This motion requires both parts to start on higher pitches, which is doable thanks to the chord re-spelling in m. 2.
- m. 5: The Lead taps the B natural to plant the seed in the listener’s ear that the following chord is a B7 with a suspended root. The Bass in turn drops to F#, the fifth of the B7 chord.
- m. 6: The Bass and Baritone are now primed to step down to the low root and fifth of the EM7 chord. They then immediately swipe through second inversion (Bass on the fifth) via parallel, arpeggiated motion, before arriving at the next chord an octave up from where they’d been. This keeps the slower part still contemplative, yet a bit more interesting.
- m. 9: All parts enter in unison before splitting outward via passing tones into an Eadd9 feel, then a four-part EM7 chord. We abandon the melody to make this motion work, but the ears welcome the tradeoff and sense the original melody well enough despite its absence. Finally, we have the bass pass through E# to create an E# Half-Diminished 7, before resolving cleverly into an Eadd9 that retains two shared tones (G# and B). The misaligned lyric between the Bass and top trio also adds interest.
6. Embellishments
We’ve now arrived at an arrangement that nearly matches the final product that Westminster put on stage, but Miller went the extra mile before adding his final stamp of approval on the chart. This is where the classical embellishments and jazzy chords really come to the fore.
🌟 New topic: Melodic embellishments
An embellishment is a small musical ornament that adds interest to a line by adding non-essential extra notes to it, often non-chord tones. Crucially, the line works structurally without them, but the line can come to life with them.
Embellishments appear widely in melodic lines in classical music. There are around a dozen types of embellishments that composers commonly use. Here are a few of them, together with the shorthand code we might use to label them within a score analysis:
- Passing Tone (PT). A non-chord tone approached and exited via stepwise motion. In the example above, the circled D is the passing tone, because it doesn’t fit in the implied C Major chord.
- Suspension (SUS). The prolongation of a previous note while the underlying chord changes, creating a non-chord tone. The note then resolves downward via stepwise motion.
- Appoggiatura (APP). An ascending jump that lands on a non-chord tone above the target pitch as the underlying chord changes. The non-chord tone then resolves downward to the target pitch via stepwise motion.
- Anticipation (ANT). The resolution to the target pitch slightly before the chord changes. The target pitch is typically re-articulated when the chord finally changes.
🌟 New topic: Higher-order chords
Aside from melodic embellishments, “I’ll Be Here” also makes use of jazzy, higher-order chords like ninths, elevenths, and thirteenths.
Unlike an Add9, which omits scale degree 7, a true ninth chord is constructed from five scale degrees: 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 (i.e., 2 an octave up). Likewise, a true eleventh chord consists of six pitches: all pitches from the ninth chord, plus scale degree 11 (i.e., 4 an octave up). And a true thirteenth chord consists of seven pitches: all pitches from the eleventh chord, plus scale degree 13 (i.e., 6 an octave up)—in other words, the thirteenth chords includes every distinct scale degree, 1 through 7.
As with the seventh chord, we can modify any pitch above the root with an accidental to adjust the flavor of any of these chords. The result is a whole new harmonic language that embraces dissonance and wrings it with gusto.
Use in barbershop
Both embellishments and higher-order chords are unfortunately difficult to achieve in Barbershop. Embellishments are typically applied to the Lead line alone; integrating them into non-Lead lines makes the harmonization less clear and thus tends to degrade the integrity of the harmony parts.
Higher-order chords are challenging because there simply aren’t enough voice parts in Barbershop to sing all the constituent scale degrees in the chords. However, Barbershop arrangers have managed to integrate higher-order chords by singing an “outline” of the chord amidst the four voice parts, omitting notes that are less defining of the chord’s sonority. They even do this with seventh chords at times, when voice leading doesn’t permit a particular pitch within the chord to be approached or exited elegantly!
Ninth chords are particularly relevant in this arrangement. To sing ninth chords with four voices, we omit scale degree 5. We need the root (scale degree 1), we need tritone intact between scale degrees 3 and 7, and we need the 9 by definition to make it a ninth chord. The 5th doesn’t add much in comparison.
Use in “I’ll Be Here”
Of course, we discuss both embellishments and higher order chords because Miller has found a way to incorporate both as a final layer of varnish in his arrangement of “I’ll Be Here.” Let’s take a listen; again, changes are highlighted in red:
This is the final version that Westminster sang on stage. Now that we’ve heard it, let’s discuss what changed:
- m. 1: Tenor anticipation (ANT) of the F#. Anticipations nominally introduce non-chord tones, but here, the F# happens to be scale degree 9 of the E Major Triad below, creating a momentary Eadd9 chord. Note that Miller has been careful to include each of scale degrees 1, 3, 5, and 9 in the four voice parts, which work together to form a complete Eadd9.
- m. 2: Bass passing tone (PT) through E, with other parts re-harmonizing above to create a passing C#m7 (ii7). The Bass has the melody on “will soothe you,” so the introduction of this passing tone constitutes an explicit change to the melody. This is perfectly fine for an arranger to do if it better serves the arrangement! In this case, the change shortens the time that we spend sitting idly in the stability of our I chord, the B-Major Triad. Less stagnation is typically a good thing in the middle of a phrase.
- m. 2: Baritone appoggiatura (APP) from F# up to C# down to B, while other parts sustain. This same pattern appears in the original saxophone accompaniment of the song (0:42), and it is just too alluring not to include in the Barbershop rendition as well. This appoggiatura keeps the motion alive through the otherwise tension-free B-Major Triad, especially given that it starts right as the harmony lands on the triad in the first place.
- m. 3: Dominant Ninth chord on “no,” with the Baritone singing the 9. Built on the Bass’s F# root, this chord has the same tritone and thus the same tension as the F#7 chord—in the tritone between the A# and E. (A Dominant Ninth is a type of ninth chord in which the seventh is flatted, as in the Dominant Seventh). A curious property of Dominant Ninth chords is that the upper four scale degrees, 3, 5, flat-7, and 9, form a Half-Diminished 7—namely, the one that we’d get by suspending scale degree 1 from the Dominant 7 chord built on the same root. Thus, on top of the exciting jazzy feel of this chord, we feel a suspension and expect a resolution.
- m. 3: Multi-part anticipation (ANT). That resolution comes on the next chord, the last of the measure. The Baritone G#—the 9 from the F#9 chord—resolves down to an F# as in many Half-Diminished 7 resolutions we’ve seen before, though that F# is actually sung by the Lead instead of the Baritone. On top of that, the Tenor resolves downward from E to D# an eighth early, resolving the tritone from the F#9 chord and anticipating the 3rd of the B-Major Triad that follows. This creates a V9 → iii → I resolution, which is highly unusual in Barbershop. But the ear accepts it, since the tension(s) from the F#9 nevertheless resolve in an intuitive way!
- m. 4: Multi-part appoggiatura (APP). The next motion is a bit tricky to characterize. It’s clear that we’ve introduced the feel of a suspension resulting in an add9 chord on Beat 1, but there are some problems. The non-chord tone lurks in a middle part so is difficult to classify as appoggiatura, which is normally a feature of the highest voice. It isn’t a holdover from the previous chord, so it isn’t technically a suspension. The Lead and Tenor cross here, making the correct label even trickier to pinpoint. Ultimately, the second-highest pitch (originally the Lead and then the Tenor) approaches the C# via a jump from the previous low F#, so we effectively have a kind of appoggiatura that adds a beautiful, sparkly motion that enhances this B-Major landing, too. In plain terms, it just sounds cool. sometimes it’s much easier to simply make a choice as an arranger than to classify what you’ve done after the fact!
- m. 9: Resolution from Eadd9 to F#7. Finally, in the penultimate measure, Miller modifies the melody yet again to improve the harmonic footprint, by having the Lead sing a passing tone through A-sharp. This allows the Baritone to follow suit from B through C#, effectively retrofitting our “poor man’s dominant” of the Eadd9 in second inversion, into a proper F#7 chord just before settling into the final B Major Triad. A V7 → I resolution snatched from the jaws of defeat!
Reflection
Clearly, there’s a lot going on in this arrangement—and we’ve only discussed two staves from it! At risk of scaring budding arrangers away, rest assured that arranging from scratch typically isn’t as complicated or verbose as analyzing after the fact. Once a harmonic structure is in place, it’s perfectly common to simply follow your intuition for what sounds reasonable or good. What matters most is that you make deliberate choices about the character you wish for your arrangement to have, and that your arrangement honors the source material. Justin Miller opted to permit progressive add9 textures, jazzy higher-order chords, and classical embellishments throughout. The result is a product that feels consistent from beginning to end.
Next: Epilogue
Full guide: Barbershop Arranging: A Modern Guide
