Top:

Annual Singing Convention in Seattle's Sunset Hill
Community Center. Members of Singings
in other Washington and Oregon cities join the
Seattle Singing for this 2-day convention of singing
every year. Other Singings and conventions are
listed at the national website http://www.fasola.org.

Middle:

Traditional "Hollow Square" seating arrangement
with "Treble" singers (left photo) facing the Bass
singers (right photo) and Tenors facing camera
and Altos in the center photo. The singers take
turns as Leader in the center of the Hollow Square.

Bottom:

Connie, Jan and Idy singing in Tenor section;
Guest Teacher Stanley Smith of the Sacred Harp
Book Company;
Idy singing with her sister Reed.

(Click the collage to enlarge it.)

"Shaped Note Singing" or "Sacred Harp Singing" is considered
a folk art form from the Southern U.S. in the 1800s.
The songs are hymns from editions of the Scared Harp song books
and are sung loudly and without accompaniment.
Before the first verse, tradition requires that the notes be sung with
the Fa, Sol, La and Mi note names instead of words.
The music notation in the song books uses different shapes for
different notes. Fa is a triangle(flag), Sol is a circle(sun),
La is a square(2 Ls make a square) and Mi is a diamond
(diamonds for me).

Brief Singing Videos
Click each of the 3 videos below:

• FaSoLa...
  (5 seconds) 120KB Download

• "Lord, Revive us"
  (32 seconds) 728KB Download

• Echoing Fugue Example
  (43 seconds) 960KB Download

Note - The last two longer videos are very large.
You may need to try 2 or 3 times to get the complete files.
But after they are fully downloaded, you can play them again
immediately and repeatedly.