It used to be that a 92.3% score was knocking at the door of a gold medal. In this year’s record-setting contest, that was good enough for 4th place for Sound of the Rockies, who presented an amazing military set. Director Darin Drown didn’t get the color of medal he wanted from his troops, but the bari of Storm Front still went home happy with quartet gold.

Beat that caption, PLEASE! The best one gets published in The Harmonizer!

To read the rules, click here to go to the initial post.

Have at it!

While their set was good enough for eighth place, we have to say that Midwest Vocal Express delivered the finest musical presentation of Olympic male synchronized swimming that the city of Philadelphia has ever seen performed in the barbershop style. At minimum, it was the best in recent memory. Above is the star of the winning nation’s team.

Beat that caption, PLEASE! The best one gets published in The Harmonizer!

To read the rules, click here to go to the initial post.

Have at it!

By now, you may have 2-year proposal in the 2-year proposal in the July-Aug 2010 issue of The Harmonizer, concerning the proposal to change the International Chorus Contest to a two-year rotation. If you haven’t read up on the plan, everything is at www.barbershop.org/2year. Perhaps you’ve even taken the poll, where you had a chance to leave anonymous comments.

Here’s the place to make your comments in public. What are your thoughts on the proposed plan? What do you like, what do you not like? Do you like the plan, but you would have tweaked it differently? Or do you see a whole different route to achieve the objectives outlined in The Harmonizer article?

Any and all comments are welcome!

Ed Watson,

CEO, Barbershop Harmony Society

Background for the above photo: When Lunch Break was announced as mic tester for the finals, many folks immediately thought of 2003. In Montreal, yucksters Freestyle decided that no scores meant no rules — many hoped that Lunch Break would deliver an equally wild ride. The audience was not disappointed.

Lunch Break failed to show up on stage after their announcement, eventually being shoved and prodded unwillingly toward the mics the stage hands. Barely acknowledging the audience, they sang through “Make ‘Em Laugh” with the most bored-to-death body language imaginable as they clipped their nails, checked text messages and passive-aggressively shouted what they thought about missing the final round but being required to sing. After a massive ovation, the real fun started.

Shortly into their second song, another semifinalist quartet came through the curtains and pushed Lunch Break away from the microphones, eager for their own moment in the Saturday night spotlight. After a few bars, Lunch Break pushed the quartet aside and continued their second song, only to be pushed aside by another semi-finalist quartet. By the time the second song was over, Lunch Break had bickered with, fought or made fun of all of the other nine semifinalist quartet, each of which got their own shot at the microphone. The above picture shows the final tag.

Beat that caption, PLEASE! The best one gets published in The Harmonizer!

To read the rules, click here to go to the initial post.

Have at it!

Here’s world-famous speed painter Greg Pappas, an extraordinary performing artist who with nothing but a blank canvas and black paint, can create a masterpiece in minutes — all while painting upside-down! He created several masterpieces during contest intermissions, and rarely could the audience guess what he was painting until the art was almost ready to be turned right-side up.

Here he reveals with aplomb his five-minute portrait of 1993 international champ and Hall of Fame quartet The Gas House Gang.

Beat that caption, PLEASE! The best one gets published in The Harmonizer!

To read the rules, click here to go to the initial post.

Have at it!

Here’s 2010 Silver Medalist Old School in the opening round of competition. There are five gold medals in this quartet — and that’s just on the left side! Turns out the veteran power-chorders were in first place after two rounds, but they couldn’t overcome eventual champion Storm Front‘s crazy antics–and Presentation scores–in the final round.

Beat that caption, PLEASE! The best one gets published in The Harmonizer!

To read the rules, click here to go to the initial post.

Have at it!

Here’s the Big Orange Chorus of Jacksonville, Fla. hoisting their ample director, Tony DeRosa, near the end of their set. Tony is quite humorous and self-effacing as the Society’s biggest on-stage ham (in more ways than one), a role where he also shines as director of Tampa’s Sweet Adelines Chorus Toast of Tampa and as lead of 2007 international quartet champ Max Q. The song was about finding a way to get noticed or respect after singing directly after the Westminster Chorus.

Beat that caption, PLEASE! The best one gets published in The Harmonizer!

To read the rules, click here to go to the initial post.

Have at it!

Here’s third-place medalist Ringmasters (the young, skinny vocal dynamos from Sweden) in Philly.

Beat that caption, PLEASE! The best one gets published in The Harmonizer!

To read the rules, click here to go to the initial post.

Have at it!

Here’s the director of The Alliance, Dave Calland, getting CPR during the choruses 6th-place “Geriatric set.” Freebie information if it helps you write a clever caption: Dave is also lead of 5th-place medalist quartet The Allies and president of the Johnny Appleseed District. (Maybe Philly was too much for his heart?)

Beat that caption, PLEASE! The best one gets published in The Harmonizer!

To read the rules, click here to go to the initial post.

Have at it!

Here’s Storm Front yucking it up during their finals “Jukebox Saturday Night” set.

Beat that caption, PLEASE! The best one gets published in The Harmonizer!

To read the rules, click here to go to the initial post.

Have at it!

Want your name and your work in the convention issue of The Harmonizer? Just write something better than my below boring caption for the above photo:

“Voices in Harmony performs “Cruella De Vil” in Philadelphia. The Bay Area, Calif. Chapter chorus, directed by Dr. Greg Lyne, took 7th place.”

Top that! (PLEASE!)

We’ll be adding one new caption contest post EVERY BUSINESS DAY for the next little while — could be a couple of weeks or more. It could be a lot of fun, plus now y’all can get off my back for the … uh … very light posting lately here on the blog.

Each of these photos will appear in the Sept/Oct 2010 issue  (July/August issue is already at the printer, expect it the week after Labor Day). Contest closes when I’m good and ready to wrap up this issue.

Here are the caption contest rules: 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 »

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 »

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.”

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 »

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 »

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!