>In arranging for several voices, when (horizontal) inner voice flow clashes
>with (vertical) harmony, what do you choose?
>c c bb c bb* c db
>g g g gb gb f e
>eb eb eb eb eb d db
>bb bb bb a a* ab g
>"wipe out that full of doubt look......"
>The descending harmony is quite nice, but for the horrible clash between
>the melody bb and the a in the bottom voice. Any solutions?
It is tough to tell how bad this clash is just by viewing the voices without
knowing the rhythmic motion, whether you've set the tune to lead up to this
dissonance or if it is just in passing. Either way, though, it isn't very
dissonant at all - *especially* for the style. As one solution I would
suggest that you just sit on it for a while and give yourself a chance to get
used to this dissonance(provided that the show isn't tomorrow evening).
If you absolutely have to change the voicing, however, and you also need to
keep the bottom note the same I would suggest changing the tenor voice to a
lower pitch. This is where Reed's subs come in handy since you *might* also
need to revoice the previous chord. The way it is set right now the tenor
voice draws more attention to the soprano voice. If it was a c# instead of
an eb it would put more emphasis on the bass voice and take a bit of the
focus off of the dissonance between the two outer voices.
Also, all of this is subjective to wether each voice rearticulates each
note(i.e.: does everyone sing all of the same words throughtout this passage
or do some voices hold over?). If you have the bass voice hold over that "a"
while the other voices rearticulate(sing the next word): problem solved.
Good luck with this. I'm interested to hear how it turns out.
J.