Setting up your music group by vocal part (Soprano, Alto, Tenor)

In a duo, usually one singer will sing in the high key while the other sings in the low. For larger groups such as trios, quartets, choirs etc., you will need at least three parts for harmony.  In order to produce harmony, you will need soprano, alto and tenor. Soprano is the highest vocal range. Alto is the medium vocal range. Tenor is the deeper range. The traditional way of organizing a choir/group is to have the soprano on the left, tenor in the middle, and alto on the right. If the choir director is left handed, then you will usually have the soprano and alto switch positions. Within the soprano, alto and tenor, there are high soprano which the voice range is higher than of the low or second soprano. The high or first soprano is usually able to hit higher notes and contain finer voice texture than second soprano. There is also high or first alto, and low or second alto. There is lower range after that called "contralto which is the very lowest alto between alto and tenor. Next is the tenor which also identifies high tenor and low tenor. The high tenor, countertenor  are often able to sing high as the alto,  some synonymous with soprano using falsetto, but technically still considered tenor.  Men are usually tenors, and often many instructors do not identified them with sopranos or altos technically. Although some men are able to sing in high keys and have enormous range, once they reached past the puberty and the vocal chords have expanded, they are identified with tenor or lower. On the flipside, young boys can be identified with soprano and alto. Extra vocal parts of a choir are the baritone, and bass. Although some choirs do not have the baritone, it the actually the most common voice part for male.  The baritone is the step lower than the tenor. Bass is a step lower than baritone. The bass synonymously identifies uniquely in tone to the that of the bass guitar.

The soprano is the first melody, alto is the harmony, and tenor is the second melody. Usually in a choir the hardest to detect is the alto part because it is exactly the harmony that is the middle. Sometimes when you are able to sing or recall a song, you will sing it in the soprano or tenor melody. Some choir/group songs will be sung in unison of the melody. Often times for this procedure  the low will be sung by all the males utilizing the same note,  and the females utilizing one note.

 Often time in gospel choir songs you will have a low harmony at the beginning, then a sudden transition to high by the end of the song. This usually adds motion or hype to the song, to keep it from being needless to say static or some describe as boring.  Usually in this inverting procedure, the soprano will move up a higher note, then the alto will move up to the last note held by the soprano, and the tenor will move up to the last note held by the alto. It is the inverting of the note with the sudden transition from low to high. When this takes place in the songs of depends on a variety of things with the composition the song.  The inverting may be done after the  bridge,  after a selected number of times repeating the main chorus, or sometimes at the vamp of the song.