Editing Southern Harmony (section)

== The music and its notation ==
{{See also|shape note}}[[File:New Britain Southern Harmony Amazing Grace.jpg|thumb|250px|alt=Original long hymnal with shape note music notation of a tune titled "New Britain" set to Newton's first verse, with four subsequent verses printed below. Underneath is another hymn titled "Cookham".|An 1847 publication of ''Southern Harmony'', showing the title "New Britain" ("[[Amazing Grace]]") and [[shape note]] music. {{audio|New Britain Southern Harmony Amazing Grace.mid|Play}}]]

The roots of ''Southern Harmony'' singing, like the [[Sacred Harp]], are found in the American colonial era, when [[singing school]]s convened to provide instruction in choral singing, especially for use in [[church service]]s. This practice remained popular with [[Baptist]]s in the [[Southern United States|South]] long after it fell from use in other regions.

In 1801, a book called ''[[The Easy Instructor]]''{{Efn |''The Easy Instructor, Part II'' (1803) attributes the invention of shape notes to 'J. Conly of Philadelphia'.}} by William Smith and William Little was published for the use of this movement; its distinguishing feature was [[Shape note|the use of four separate shapes]] that indicated the notes according to the rules of [[solfege]].  A triangle indicated ''fa'', a circle ''sol'', a square ''la'' and a diamond, ''mi.''  To avoid proliferating shapes excessively, each shape (and its associated syllable) except for ''mi'' was assigned to two notes of the musical scale.  A major scale in the system would be noted ''Fa – Sol – La – Fa – Sol – La – Mi – Fa'', and a minor scale would be ''La – Mi – Fa – Sol – La – Fa – Sol – La.''