Despite the sheer brilliance of shape notes as a musical notation, teachers don’t teach them because nothing is written in them. Nothing is written in them because teachers don’t teach them. There’s quite a bit of Christian church hymns written in shape notes, and quite a bit of what I'm linking to here are more hymns I found in round notes and transcribed to shape notes. It’s not out of any religious conviction that I posted more church hymns, but they are beautiful and rather easy to sing. If you sing all the parts in four-part a cappella, you get a big bang for your little buck of effort. However, to make this something that those outside of certain obscure religious groups can benefit from, I’m looking for more secular songs to transcribe and add to a shape-note collection at the MuseScore website. I’m particular to songs from the era when most shape-note music was written, that is, the 1800s and early 1900s, mainly because they lend themselves so well to communal singing. But if anyone has anything else they’d like to see in shape notes, please let me know.
On sharing the gift of unaccompanied four-part harmony with the world
