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

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 »

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 »

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?

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.”

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 »

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 »

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 »

“Some people try to find things in this game that don’t exist, but football is only two things – blocking and tackling.“

— Vince Lombardi, ESPN’s Coach of the Century

Thanks everyone who responded to our Commanders Intent post last month. We discussed how an army commander ensures his forces cannot lose sight of the core objective and then we asked you to fill in the blank, “If a chapter does nothing else, it must _____.” So many insightful answers! If you haven’t read them, click on the above link and please do so.

As promised, we looked at everyone’s comments and discussed them at our Sept. 16 meeting. We’re not done processing and reacting to everything we learned from your participation, but I’ll say this: We didn’t see anything in your feedback that surprised us, and that was great news. I hope the following explains why.

While it might be wise to stick with the military motif for this post, please indulge me in switching to a related analogy: winning football teams and winning chapters. (To be clear, staff doesn’t define winning chapters by competitive scores but by whether a chapter is a exciting and fulfilling place that’s attracting more and more men. High-level performance and a healthy chapter culture often go together, but it’s very common to find one without the other.) However, successful chapters of all types are strong on similar key fundamentals. One goal of the commander’s intent post was to determine whether we’ve identified the same key principles as you have. 80+ insightful responses later, our strategic planning appears to be well in line with what you consider most important.

Now, a few words about arguably the best football coach of all time, and what fundamentals mean to strong barbershop chapters. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m about to launch into what amounts to a pep talk, and I hate pep talks. They don’t work for me. The emotions fade quickly, and then I’m left with the same circumstances and no more solutions than I had before. I’m left even more cynical. Don’t give me a pile of shiny, trite mantras that don’t point me where to go next.

I’m not pretending to have all the answers here, so why am I even writing this? Because I see a lot that makes me feel positive about the future. You choose whether I’m being trite or not. If I get to be dismissive about empty motivational speeches, it’s only fair that I be equally dismissive toward the gloom and doom demotivational speeches many of us have been giving lately, even if unintentionally. Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks for visiting the blog concerning the 33% criterion.  The position paper mentioned on page 24-25 of the July/August 2009 edition of  The Harmonizer is here: 7th Chord Position Paper. A copy of the article in The Harmonizer is here: The Hallmark 7th Chord.

Although this is not technically a change to the definition of the barbershop style, this criterion has been used for almost 40 years in defining the style that we are treating this change as such.  Given that, the process for change is as follows: Read the rest of this entry »

This is a VERY important post—so important that staff will be meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 16 to discuss your replies. It’s a little long, but worth it.

If you can fill in the above blank without hesitation, you probably misunderstood the question. Read on, your answer will require some pondering. Your answers could also help focus staff, Society, district and chapter efforts for years to come. We look forward to some thoughtful discussion! Read the rest of this entry »

Paul Wietlisbach will lead the Society’s education and training programs as the new Director of Education. Having discovered barbershop harmony in 1971, Paul is a past member of four Society choruses and six quartets in four districts. Paul brings years of experience as an accomplished professional educator and creator of multimedia training programs.

“Paul’s past experience in the areas of training and education, as well his long history with the Society, makes him the ideal candidate for the new Director of Education position,” said Society CEO Ed Watson. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve had several questions lately regarding American Harmony and the status of screenings. Below is a detailed description from one of the producers, Allan Webb, that is sure to answer most of the lingering questions out there.

For those that have already registered – thanks for your participation in helping spread barbershop harmony around your community!

Read the rest of this entry »

I received the following email a while back from a member, who appears to be concerned about whether a chorus will inevitably decline if they keep the same musical leadership. Here’s his question and here’s my answer. When you’re done reading this, please comment on the following two questions:

• Was my answer correct?
• Was he asking the right question?

First, the question: Read the rest of this entry »

It’s waaaaaaay to early to see what the Membership Growth Task Force is going to come up with — they are keeping their minds open and their options open while they study the sources of our membership decline and guide us toward remedies. Suffice it to say, we’ve got some really bright minds working on this issue. Read the rest of this entry »

Picture that happening to you. Suddenly, a small group of experienced barbershoppers want to start a new chapter in a neighboring city. SINKING GUT FEELING #1. “What will we ever do?”  This is a totally factual story (as best as my memory and our records might provide). You might be surprised by the result. Read the rest of this entry »

Society President Bill Biffle has announced the appointment of a task force to create an overall strategy to achieve sustained growth of the organization.  Chaired by Immediate Past President Noah Funderburg, the task force consists of eight committed barbershoppers of varying ages, length of Society membership, and personal background. Read the rest of this entry »

Society Music Specialist Mike O’Neill, has submitted a short compilation of great tips for selling more tickets to your annual show:

Is your annual chapter show a sellout every year?  Is there someone in your chapter that is a wizard at selling 50-100 tickets without breaking a sweat? What are the tricks of the barbershop ticket selling trade?  Discuss some of your success stories and help others around the world of barbershop have successful tickets sales to their annual shows.

Below are two examples of proven methods from the Nashville, TN chapter:

Read the rest of this entry »

Recently I sent an email to all the men who joined the Society in the first quarter of 2008, asking for comments about their first year in barbershopping. The following is one of many replies. Read the rest of this entry »

So far registration numbers are ABOVE last year at this time but we can always use more help in getting the word out.  Please tell your chorus mates, local music teachers, friends in the Sweet Adelines and Harmony Incorporated organizations, or pretty much anyone that you meet that Harmony University is THE place to be July 26-August 2 this summer.  Let’s work together to make this year’s event the most fun and exciting HU yet!

 If you haven’t registered or decided on your final schedule yet here are few class titles you should consider.  Read the rest of this entry »

I am writing an article (probably for the Harmonizer) about choruses that have some sort of private voice instruction (PVIs) included either in their weekly meeting or available for their members outside the meeting night.  I would appreciate any feedback you can offer about this topic.  Here are a few questions that may guide you: Read the rest of this entry »

Here are the raw facts:
Last year, January 1, 2008 to April 15, 2008 we recruited 473 new members into the Society

This year, January 1, 2009 to April 15, 2009 we recruited 647 new members.

Everyone say Hazzah! Read the rest of this entry »

Current membership rules (Society Statement of Policy, Rule 2. Membership, section e)) require that permission be granted by one chapter to allow the “transfer” of one of their members to another chapter. This is problematic on several fronts.

Read the rest of this entry »

On a guest night in a past chapter, I was asked to take the guests downstairs and show the “Singing is Life” video. It had been a few years since I’d first seen it as a Society employee. As I watched the faces of the men in the room, I wondered whether we perhaps should have had some outside focus groups look at that script before we committed it to celluloid. Read the rest of this entry »