Imagine that a Society member or Associate was ready to write a million dollar check to Harmony Foundation.  But he or she needs a cause that they are certain would be a great investment.  Would YOU know what to tell them?

I’m pretty sure I already know what Harmony Foundation would tell them. They already gave $450,000 to the Society in 2009  to fund our entire Youth in Harmony program and to help dozens and dozens of chapters improve via Director’s College scholarships. And I know they’re hard at work trying to raise money for additional Society priorities: Read the rest of this entry »

With permission, I’d like to share a personal correspondence from Jeff Selano, whose head is still in the clouds after winning gold while singing tenor with Storm Front:

Look at this photo and it all becomes very clear.  We sat down with our wives after Anaheim and said, win or lose in Philly we have to know that we didn’t leave any stones unturned. And that means likely not being home for most of the next 12 months. Way too many weekends, practicing all day Saturday on shows and then staying late Sunday to practice more!! Our wives had to hold down the fort (all of us with small kids) too many times. Through sicknesses and hospital trips, missed special events etc, our wives gave us 1 year to get this done.  After that we would still compete, but we would have used up all that “extra grace” we had been given for just 1 year.

I think you can see in this Grady Kerr photo how relieved we are.  But it’s not even close to the expression on their faces!!

Just an idea of what goes into these incredible performances we’ve been accustomed to seeing every year. I was amazed by the Four Freshmen in Philly, and I hope I’m taking nothing away from them when I point out that some of our top “amateur” groups are in the same musical league. (The vocal part, anyway. Ain’t nobody but the 4F can sing and play that well!)

How do our best amateurs sing at a professional level? They put in professional-level hours, that’s how. And for putting in that kind of effort on our behalf, for entertaining us as thoroughly as any group on the planet and showing us a level to which we can all aspire, we owe our champs and other competitors a deep debt of gratitude. Read the rest of this entry »

A week from today, barbershop’s best groups will be on display in Philadelphia, starting with the College contest on Tuesday, the quartet quarterfinals and semifinals on Wednesday and Thursday, chorus contest on Friday and finals on Saturday. (Buy tickets and get the schedule of events here. Sign up for the webcast here.)

So who’s going to win these contests? Everyone’s always making their predictions online, but rarely do we ever get a chance to take the next step: Take an ENTIRELY MEANINGLESS, UNSCIENTIFIC POLL online. You know you’ve always wanted the chance. That’s what we’re here for. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the chance to add/subtract or discuss the list on page 13 of the May/June 2010 issue of The Harmonizer. Apologies if you came to this site earlier and didn’t find this post as mentioned in the magazine. I just came back from vacation to find that the printer had managed to mail the issue nearly a week earlier than scheduled — I thought I was going to have a few more days to put this post online!

If you don’t agree with this list, take it up with me — I take full responsibility for it ….

… unless you do like the list, in which case I emphasize that while the words are mine, the concepts didn’t exactly spontaneously pop into my head. Here in Nashville, especially in the last 18 months, we’ve been talking about issues like these A LOT. I’m sure if I checked back into my meeting notes, I’d see some version of most of the below concepts. But I generated this based on little more than a personal brainstorming session and sent it around the office for feedback.

Hate it: MY FAULT. Like it: THANK THE STAFF. Clear?

So how does this list jibe with your experience? Some successful chapters prominently feature traits not listed below, but the idea is to identify traits that pretty much ALWAYS seem to be present in growing, thriving chapters.

Would you add anything? Remove something? Modify something? Your feedback is appreciated!

Read the rest of this entry »

The last of the Collegiate Quartet Preliminary Contests is over, and we’re excited to announce that 29 collegiate quartets qualified for the International CBQC – which will be taking place on Tuesday, June 29 at 6:00pm in Philadelphia!  Read the rest of this entry »

We’ll let the VM’s press release speak for itself:

PHILADELPHIA CONTEST TO BE LAST COMPETITION FOR VOCAL MAJORITY DIRECTOR JIM CLANCY

Dallas, TX (May 18, 2010) — After nearly forty years and an unprecedented eleven gold medals in international competition, Director Jim Clancy has decided to make the 2010 Philadelphia performance his last international contest at the helm of the Vocal Majority Chorus®. He will continue as Musical Director and primary arranger, but will leave preparation and execution for future contests to Jeff Oxley and the rest of his music staff.

Formed in 1972, the Vocal Majority Chorus® won its first gold medal in the 1975 International competition in Indianapolis and is now preparing for competition in Philadelphia. When asked about the upcoming contest, Clancy says, “I’m very excited about our preparation for this upcoming international competition. I believe that the Vocal Majority Chorus® is singing better than ever, and I am honored to lead the men into competition one last time before our wonderful family of barbershoppers.”

The Board of Directors of the Vocal Majority asks that any questions and comments regarding this announcement be directed to:

Todd Roberts

President, Vocal Majority Chorus

Email: TR3336@aol.com

Wow. The man absolutely defined what a barbershop chorus could be–heck, what a men’s chorus could be. The man changed thousands of lives, and not just those among VM members and audiences.

What are your best memories of Jim Clancy and the VM? What do you expect for Philly? How should we remember Jim’s historical legacy?

This question comes from a younger Society member who belongs to 52Eighty, 2010 Youth Chorus Festival Champions and Sound of the Rockies, 2009 international bronze medalist. He was a barbershopper elsewhere before moving to Colorado. We’ll keep him anonymous so he can be blunt. Here’s his question:

Having come from choruses that post scores no higher than a 55% [high C-level], and now singing with a chorus that can sing in the 90s, I can’t put my finger on what exactly makes a chorus strive to do well enough to reach the A-level category [81 or higher].  I know that one of the chorus I sang with in [prior residence] can certainly produce the types of sounds you hear from the Vocal Majority or the Ambassadors of Harmony, but the discipline isn’t there.  Obviously, not all choruses start out like Westminster, in fact most choruses don’t start off as an A-level chorus.  What is needed in order to get the average and below-average choruses to obtain the discipline and work ethic needed to become A level?

Thoughts?

Here it is folks!  Congratulations to ALL quartets!  Read the rest of this entry »

The sun in shining, the nearby Cumberland River crested at 52 feet (12 feet about flood stage) and is receding. No reports of major damage to staff homes, although several staff have been stranded in their neighborhoods and unable to travel. Only a very small puddle in the basement at headquarters — we’re lucky to be on top of a high hill here. Still, we’re at 7th Ave., and the crest of the Cumberland reached as far as 5th Avenue (which is at the bottom of a steep hill).

All the results of 14 inches in two days. Saturday, it was wave after wave of torrential downpour, with eight inches in about 12 hours. The rest came Sunday. Previous two-day record for rain: Just over 6 inches.

I went out on my bike yesterday afternoon with a point and shoot camera. Here are some images from downtown, after all the rain and before the worst of the Cumberland River came last night. Here are some shots, with a little commentary. You can see far more extensive shots of the flooding at The Tennessean.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you’d like some insight into how I select which stories go in The Harmonizer, here it is. Right or wrong, this is how I see my job as editor of the magazine, and this is how I filter through the many submissions and story pitches I receive. The following e-mail exchange shows a quandary that I face in knowing how to talk about ordinary barbershoppers among ordinary barbershoppers.

It started with an e-mail story pitch I just received from a barbershopper who belongs to a 10-year-old registered quartet that doesn’t compete. They perform about 60 times per year, mostly pro bono at hospitals, nursing homes and retirement facilities. He was inquiring about a feature regarding his quartet. The last part of his e-mail resembles several e-mails or conversations I’ve had:

If I must say so, we are very well received and entertain all of or audiences and are well know in our small cosmos. It is quartets like [quartet name] that is the frontline entertainers to the general public and deserve some recognition with an article in the Harmonizer.

How about recognizing the “trench fighters” of our society? It is great to be a top quartet and compete with the “big boys” and get recognition for GREAT singing but there are many more of us representing the society to the general public than “medal” quartets.

The following is my reply. It includes details about my selection process and some rough ideas I’m trying to pursue. Can anyone enlighten me about how we can give “common” quartets, groups and individuals coverage that would be interesting to the average barbershopper? Any critiques on my present thought processes? Anybody you know who would make for an interesting profile? Read the rest of this entry »

A fun discussion developed this morning when some of us staff guys were taking a stroll around the block this morning. Webmaster Eddie Holt mentioned he’s got a picture of the bronze medal won by the Bartlesville Barflies (our first champs in 1939, picture of the medal here) when they competed again in 1942, essentially in the same configuration as the Phillip’s 66 Barflies. It was just the year before when the 1941 champ Chord Busters declared that they saw no reason to compete again now that they’d won, beginning a tradition that years later became a rule: Champs don’t re-compete, and no more than two members of a champion quartet can compete together thereafter. (Thanks for the info, Grady!)

But what if the champs could and would compete in the years after they won? How many championships would the Buffalo Bills (1950) have won had they continued to compete? Based on their singing level through the 1950s, would they have continued to win all the way until the Suntones (1961), or would The Confederates (1955) have stolen a few? Would Dealer’s Choice (1973) been a true novice champ if the quartets ahead of them had still been competing? How many championships would Bluegrass Student Union (1978) had under their belts? Would they have beat Boston Common (1974-1980) in 1980? Read the rest of this entry »

While it truly takes ‘four to tango’, the quartet’s failures and successes overall hinge primarily on the lead’s ability to take command of the ensemble during a performance.

This isn’t to take anything away from all the legendary basses, baritones, and tenors throughout the history of our Society, but when it comes down to it, isn’t it a lead contest?

As a lead who constantly struggles to improve his own feeble skills, I often ask myself, “If I were to step down from my current OR previous quartets and be replaced by one of the legendary leads in their prime, would the net gain be bigger than replacing any other part with comparable talent?” I think yes.

This holds true in secular music as well. Just imagine U2 without Bono… The Stones without Mick… Led Zepplin without Robert Plant. Queen was never the same without Freddie Mercury. And we’ve seen Van Halen without David Lee Roth. Not even Eddie Van Halen’s guitar magic could return the band to its previous heights under Diamond Dave’s tenure.

So to the leads out there, stay strong! And as my hero Mike Slamka says, “Sing it from the heart, or don’t sing at all.”

Guest nights. Handing out flyers. Performing for the local community. All good ways to promote your chapter and barbershop in hopes of garnering interest and possibly gaining a few new members.

Well – is it working? What do you have to show for it? Hopefully these methods are successful as they require a good amount of effort, but maybe you’re hoping for a bit more; more gigs, more people at guest nights, more phone calls asking your chorus to sing at an event, and ultimately, more registered Barbershoppers.

Bob Fichter (from the Midwest Vocal Express), with the help of Montana Jack, has written an article titled, “Social Media for Barbershop Quartets and Choruses” – it explains how to reach more people and target the younger generations. For those who are intimidated by the Internet – have no fear! Bob gives step-by-step instructions – fool proof!

If you’ve used Facebook for the purpose of recruiting new members, advertising a show/meeting, or anything barbershop-related, tell us about your experience. What works best and what doesn’t – let’s hear it!

Chapters are constantly sending me clips and links from news coverage they get, mostly from their local newspapers, and sometimes in local and even national magazines. (The above is a recent clip from NEA Today, the magazine of the National Education Association. They got our membership numbers off by about 6,000, but we and Al appreciate the plug!)

Here’s the deal: What these chapters are doing is awesome, and it turns out they’re only sending us a fraction of what’s out there. But I have no idea what to do with most of these clips or how to share them. We already put some of the best on the front page and news section of barbershop.org and also in Livewire. Is that enough? Read the rest of this entry »

We would like you all to think over a suggested change to our competition schedule, for choruses only. We’re in the early “what if?” stage right now, but the Society is investigating the possibility of switching our international chorus competition to a two-year rotation.

Currently, we allow approximately the 28 best Society choruses from each fall district contest (district champs and wild-cards), in addition to a few international affiliates, to compete at the next international contest, which takes place 8-9 months later. We want to gauge reaction to the idea of a system in which (approximately) the 56 best Society choruses would compete on alternating years (an equal top-down mix of still roughly 28 per year). They would also qualify roughly 20 months before the international contest, to give them more time to financially and artistically prepare.

This PDF is a hypothetical example of how a two-year cycle switch could be implemented.

This Excel spreadsheet shows an example configuration based on 2009 scores. (Please note that the spreadsheet opens to a tab that shows the final results. There are two other tabs at the bottom of the spreadsheet that show how those results were generated.)

Sweet Adelines International has used a two-year rotation since the early 1970s. Initially, they experienced alternating “strong” and “weak” years, but the “second tier” competitors raised their competitive level, and soon all years were strong years. As seen in the above hypotheticals, were the Society to implement a two-year rotation, we would avoid the “weak year” challenge from the outset. Read the rest of this entry »

Yea, I know, who cares?  Right?

BUT…As a competitor, judge, and staff guy, I get around to many contests each year in several different districts and I always find it interesting how varying barbershop audiences can be with the way they welcome the competitors to the stage.  Read the rest of this entry »

*Update: Please note in the original post that “looking at” = “considering,” and nothing more. Also note that cost reduction is one of the reasons we’re looking at a more permanent membership card.*

The above is NOT a proposed membership card — just a very early proof of concept prototype. The point is, based on member feedback, we’re looking at changing our membership cards. No designs yet, but please participate in our poll about what might appear on the card.

We’re looking to create something more colorful and laminated, closer to the thickness of a credit card. It would be durable enough that the ink won’t rub off or stick to anything in your wallet and flashy enough that you may be proud to pull it out of your wallet and show it off. The idea is that this would become your permananent membership card and would not be replaced each year.

As to what information goes on the card, there are several options: Read the rest of this entry »

In reply to an earlier post on this blog, Tom Goldie shared some interesting suggestions regarding copyright laws and how the Society had get music into members’ hands more easily. With his permission, quoted below are Tom’s ideas (in quotes) and responses from Julie Grower, who manages the Music Library and Licensing for the Society.

Tom brings up some interesting possibilities. What do you think?

Julie begins:

Tom,

Thank you so much for taking up an issue which I know many barbershoppers feel strongly about. Your ideas are very positive and forward-looking. We always appreciate hearing about the issues that mean the most to members. I will attempt to address some of the comments below as best I can.

I believe a great place to start would be in copyright issues. An immediate change would be to allow society members the rights to record and post songs to which the Society holds copyright as long as its for non-commercial purposes. This would allow for many more performances to link to on YouTube, and for a lot more “free” distribution of high-quality .mp3s.

Read the rest of this entry »

As opposed to “What did we start doing that we never should have started?”

This one’s for the old-timers, or at least the historically enlightened. It’s the promised follow-up to my last post, “System reboot: If we’d started the Society today, what would be different?” (In retrospect, maybe today’s post should have come first.) In either case, I’m hoping for some insightful answers and discussion.

We’ve had a lot of wise men among us during our Society’s 72 years. Still do. At headquarters, we have access to every copy of The Harmonizer ever printed, going back to 1941. (And we’d love to digitize all those issues and provide them to our members online. Biiiiiiiig scanning project. Any volunteers?) These old Harmonizers record many trends that have come and gone, some things that never change (style debate anyone?), and occasionally a cringe-worthy image or sentiment from a bygone era that has thankfully not survived to the present.

But what about the stuff from our past that should have survived but didn’t? Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s something for all you snowed-in barbershoppers to chew on: How would we have structured things if 30,000 barbershop singers had somehow gotten together just today to form a singing Society? How would we be structured? What would we do that we don’t do now? What would we modify or drop that we are doing?

On balance, we’re far too critical of ourselves as barbershoppers. We’re so intimately aware of our own warts and unrealized hopes that we rarely realize that the outside world is far more impressed with us than we are. Ever heard the “Wow!” from a sharp music professional once he starts to become familiar with our educational system, our contest and judging system, our organizational structure, youth outreach, fraternal culture, etc.? (Maybe that’s a post or Harmonizer article for another time!) So I don’t want this to devolve into a gripe session of “What’s wrong with the Society,” cuz frankly we hear plenty of that already.

That said, organizations can be like computers. After you’ve had one for a while, installed this program, tweaked that, added this data, both a computer and an organization can start become sluggish. There’s really no way to avoid it, but all those necessary tweaks and changes can build up “lint” that can hamper system performance. For all the customizations you can’t live without anymore, you still wish your machine were operating the way it did when it came out of the box. Read the rest of this entry »

The long anticipated release of the 2009 Anaheim Convention DVDs has finally arrived … TWO DAYS prior to our original projected shipping date!

Your HQ staff plus several of our wonderful volunteers worked together to get these out the door to you as quickly as possible.  And I mean quick!  The DVDs arrived to Harmony Hall from the duplicator this morning at 9:15 a.m., and as I write this at about 11 a.m. they are all out the door and in mail streams!

If you haven’t ordered your’s yet, there is still time to do so and receive it in time for Christmas.  But you must act fast.  Visit the Harmony Marketplace online to learn about what shipping options are available for the quickest delivery.  Or call 800-876-7464 and order yours today!

Here we are six weeks away from the Midwinter Convention in Tampa, Fla. (January 28-31, 2010) and we’re headed towards what looks to be our largest attended Midwinter ever. As of this morning we are sitting at 1210 registrations! Last year at this time we were at 893 registrations and by the time everything was said and done we had 1291 folks in Pasadena. Where will Tampa finish? Come on and find out!

As you can imagine, we here at HQ are very excited about this. I am especially excited because quite simply, more barbershoppers in the same place at the same time=FUN. Even now, however, the convention is still somewhat of a “best kept secret” in the Society. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s talk about why your latest Harmonizer is so late and what we’re doing to change that. We ran a Q&A on this subject earlier this summer. I won’t repeat much of what’s there, so if you have any remaining questions, check that post first. For now, here are some basic statements of fact, followed by some details.

Your Harmonizer’s information is not old, it’s just that the cover date has been out of sync.

You’ve still been getting six issues per year, every two months on average, with info that was up to date in the weeks before each issue was sent to the printer. It’s just that ….  (CUE WORLD’S SMALLEST VIOLIN) .. if you’d read the previous Q&A, you already know that the actual schedule slippage occurred several years ago as the result of resource decisions made by officers who haven’t worked on Society staff for a long time. (Hint: It’s not any past editor’s fault.)  Just wanted to point out the difference between “causing the slippage” and “failing to fix it in a timely manner.” (DEFENSIVE CRYBABY ALERT OVER) That said, it’s my mess to clean up, and I acknowledge I haven’t been cleaning it up quickly at all.

I feel your pain.

You think YOU find the out-of-synch cover dates embarrassing? The only question staff ever asks me is, “When is the next issue coming out? We’re getting a lot of calls.” I have permanent indents on my bedroom wall because I wake up every work day, remember the day’s date vs. the cover date I’m working on, and the head-banging commences. If you believe heads need cracking to get this problem fixed, consider my cranium thoroughly knocked. My family can tell you, it ain’t a lack of overtime hours that’s responsible for the slow catch-up! (Oops, just let another whiner statement slip in.) Read the rest of this entry »

God bless the realists, the folks who tell it like it is—who call a spade a spade, who never stick their head in the sand, and who know they aren’t doing anyone any favors in varnishing the truth. The Barbershop Harmony Society needs all the reality it can get. If the preceeding words describe you, this post isn’t directed at you.

On second thought, this post may be ESPECIALLY for you.

What I say next will probably brand me as a blind Pollyanna skipping to the precipice, but oh well:

STOP BEING SO NEGATIVE! YOU’RE ONLY MAKING THINGS WORSE!

Realism is vital, but it is severely overrated. If that last sentence made you cringe, I’ll point out that science is on my side for this one.

It turns out, a large portion of self-described realists are also pessimists. And because they are pessimists, they will not have access to the thoughts and actions that will lead their chapters and our Society to better days. Want proof? Want examples? Keep reading. Read the rest of this entry »

You told us loud and clear in surveys that the convention schedule must change. You wanted fewer overlapping events, fewer awards and more singing, and events that ended early enough that you could get an hour or two of tagging in before bed and still get a decent night’s rest.  Take a look at the Philly convention schedule and you’ll see some exciting changes that will give you more breathing room–more time to convene at barbershop’s international showcase.

But you didn’t want us to drop any of the events that have always packed our week. To give you that more open schedule you want (and not by inviting fewer competitors) we went back to hosting our first major event on Tuesday evening. (As an added bonus, it also helps keep the registration costs as low as possible–we actually reduced it from 2009!)

Here are some highlights from the schedule: Read the rest of this entry »