We chatted to James Kung, former Musical Director of The Scopes, to discuss what makes a great Musical Director and how to tackle some of the challenges that MDs face when leading an a cappella group.
Having contracted the a cappella bug from a chemistry teacher who was a former member of Out Of The Blue, James spent his time at Imperial College London writing arrangements instead of lab reports. As Co-MD of the Scopes, James became known for telling people they were flat as well as inserting extensions into every chord until someone hit him. After a brief hiatus from a cappella where he “started a business”, James returned to the Scopes for his final Summer Ball where he went on stage drunk and nearly cried when the audience chanted his name (true story!).
Aside from his work with the Scopes, James has arranged for other groups around London, including ICCA champions the Techtonics, all-female barbershop group Take Note, and Dan Mailer’s phenomenal new group Lux. He also arranged for, directed and performed in West End Goes A Cappella, a series of performances sadly cut short by the Coronavirus pandemic where theatre performers sang a cappella arrangements of popular showtunes. James remains an active arranger of a wide variety of a cappella music and has a spreadsheet of over 50 arrangements he wants to write but doesn’t quite have the time for.
MDs can have very different responsibilities in different groups. Can you outline for us what your role as an MD involved?
"In the Scopes, the MD has a variety of responsibilities, both weekly and longer-term. On a shorter time scale, my co-MD and I led rehearsals, which mainly consisted of teaching other members new music, working on and polishing existing repertoire, and preparing for upcoming performances, competitions and recording sessions.
Long-term planning was also essential - in the Scopes the MDs (with help from other members of course) decided goals and objectives for the year, whether it was to compete in the ICCAs, to record an EP, or to produce a long-form show for something like the Edinburgh Fringe.
At the end of the day the most essential job of an MD is to know your group - that informs almost every single decision and action you make as a director. Each individual singer’s performance style, range, musical capabilities and personality all play a part in deciding repertoire, arrangers and arrangement style, soloists, choreography, all the way to show design and sound engineering."
How did you go about selecting songs for your group to perform?
"Oftentimes suggestions came from within the group - we did a few Adele arrangements because a couple of the Scopes were big fans. Sometimes arrangements were written of songs that might be popular at that moment - charting songs usually go down well with audiences. Every once in a while inspiration simply struck - I was at Rockaoke with a couple of Scopes and heard my co-MD Doug (hey Doug!) sing the Proclaimers’ "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" in a hilariously atrocious Scottish accent. I wrote an arrangement within the week and that song (with Doug on solo) always went down a storm with audiences, whether busking or at proper gigs.
Whatever the origin of the song choice, we made sure that it fit with the general Scopes style (no death metal sadly), that it was suitable for performance, and that it was possible to arrange it in a way that was accessible for both performers and audiences."
How did you work with your arrangers to bring their vision to life?
"A lot of the time the MDs would arrange the piece ourselves, so that was relatively straightforward. If the arrangement was being written by someone else, whether another member of the group or someone external, we’d make sure they were working within the capabilities of the group.
No matter the arranger, my process generally starts with establishing baselines. For example, how low can the bass sing? At what point do the sopranos start to lose blend? Do you already have a soloist in mind, and do you have to rebalance the other voice parts in response? Once you establish the physical boundaries of any arrangement, you can start building out concepts and ideas which you might want to include, again based on performer skills. For example, how would your singers deal with complex semiquaver runs? Is your vocal percussionist/beatboxer up for doing a solo section? Is your arranger known for a particular style of arranging or for including motifs and rhythms, and how would that work when performed by your group? If you’ve got a large number of parts, would that be very messy in performance?
Once the arrangement takes shape, it’s again a matter of making sure the arrangement works with the group’s style and that it’s not overly challenging to learn but is still interesting for everyone to perform. Depending on the arranger and piece I have made more specific suggestions, for example to tweak chord voicings based on my knowledge of the group’s tuning abilities, or to change scat vowels to adjust the balance of the different parts. For an example where I was on the reverse side of things, for my arrangement of Lux’s Gold Watch I was asked to arrange the song for female trio+backing, which led to Lux’s tenor Bryan swapping often between rhythm and harmony functions to accommodate this. I also made the most of Dan’s extremely low range, put in a fun halftime section for Scott, and managed to insert a very subtle Pitch Perfect reference that you’ll have to find on the recording yourself!"
What's your top priority when beginning rehearsals on a new arrangement?
"Obviously getting to know all the notes is super important, but I’m also a big believer in everyone knowing bits of other people’s parts, or at least the general structure of the piece as a whole. For this reason I prefer that singers rehearse from the full score whenever possible so they can see what other people are doing, even when they’re learning the piece for the first time. Doing this makes it easier for singers to learn where their parts interact with other voices, which greatly aids tuning, blend, phrasing and entries. It might be easier for some performers to only focus on their part and ignore everything else, but that comes at the expense of musicianship and group coherence."
We all know that a good blend can take a group from amateur to pro. What are some of the ways that you work on blending?
"It’s all about paying attention to the other singers. I’ve found in the past that many singers mistake good blending for being in tune with each other - that certainly helps but isn’t the objective here at all! When a group is just starting out learning to blend, I’ve found it useful for people to not only listen to each other, but to watch each other’s mouths and mimic them closely. It’s important to pay close attention to exactly how each singer is producing each vowel, and unify that across all your singers.
Good blend relies on your singers knowing each other well - if you’re singing in harmony with a soloist the only way you blend is by mimicking their accent. If you’re having trouble blending “oohs” and “aahs” it may be helpful for the MD to prescribe a particular vowel shape and everyone else to follow suit."
Good blending might impress your audience but good tuning is absolutely necessary! How do you work on improving your group’s tuning?
"Again, listen like crazy! Take each section as slow as you possibly can, work on individual bars, select particular parts or even individual members. I’ve seen top jazz groups slowly repeat single phrases tens or even hundreds of times until they absolutely nail the harmonies every single time. This is where knowing what the other parts are doing is absolutely crucial - it’s not good enough to know your own horizontal line, you must know what else is happening vertically in the chord to correctly tune yourself. It may be helpful to include chord symbols in your scores - many musicians (myself included) find it easier to tune when you know what the current chord is and your position in it.
P.S. Sing some barbershop standards (polecats) every once in a while - they’re great for learning blend, tuning and musicianship in general. Barbershop is the Kung Fu of a cappella.
P.P.S Don’t forget to take notes on where your tuning is going wrong! Remind yourself to be sharper or flatter, or to listen carefully to another part for your note."
When members are struggling with learning something or taking on direction that you've given, how do you approach the problem to resolve it?
"It depends on the member. Some members might find it easier to have someone sing the part along with them a few times. Some might go away and listen to learning tracks on repeat for days on end. Some people scribble all over their scores to help them remember. Some people actually just need a break for a bit and will get it when they come back with a fresh start. I don’t have a one-size-fits-all solution for this; knowing your group as individuals is the only way to work through this."
When auditioning potential new members, what do you look for in a singer? What impresses you and what doesn’t?
"When auditioning for uni groups, applicants can vary wildly in terms of musical experience and skills. When auditioning for new Scopes members, I appreciated candidates who showed good musicality (even if they didn’t have much musical knowledge or couldn’t even read music), were independent and able to pick things up with minimal instruction, and had versatile voices which were able to blend well with others yet stand out if necessary. I also believe it’s very important that their personalities work well with existing members as well as other candidates likely to become part of the group. For that I relied on callbacks as well as feedback from other members of the group.
I’m always impressed by people willing and able to pick up new skills - for example, any singer who learns vocal percussion/beatboxing is always very useful to me. That said, I’m not very impressed by overt showboating - it’s good to display your talents but you have to consider other members of the group. I’ve fallen foul of that myself in the past, for which I can only apologise to everyone I’ve annoyed."
What kind of tools are most useful to a Musical Director?
"Pencil. Write everything down. Don’t use pen, pens are for people who don’t make mistakes and you definitely make mistakes.
Tuning fork - pitch pipes go out of tune and your singers should learn to get their pitches from a single starting note anyway.
Phone or some other recording device - the more you listen or watch yourselves back the more mistakes you’ll find.
A basic knowledge of notation and audio editing software - make your group learning tracks."
What are some of the biggest mistakes that Musical Directors can make when leading an a cappella group?
"One of the most important lessons I learned in my years directing music is that ordering people around only gets you so far. You may be the director, but that doesn’t give you the right to treat people as anything less than fellow musicians, peers and people. You might get frustrated when something doesn’t work musically, but that’s no reason to treat the people any differently.
At university I found myself MD in second year, leading a group of people who were definitely smarter, wiser and better educated than me. I learned that people have different priorities and things they want to get out of singing a cappella. Some people, like me, are in it for the music. Some are there as a release from work. Some enjoy the social aspects. Usually it’s any combination of the above. It’s important to keep all that in mind when leading rehearsals, arranging pieces, or planning an entire year’s goals.
The biggest mistake that a Musical Director can make is to forget that you’re just another person in the room, surrounded by other people who deserve to be treated with all the respect and care that you would like to be treated."