What’s the difference between an A-level chorus and a C-level chorus?
Posted by Lorin May | Posted in Chorus, Contests & Judging, Leadership, Members | Posted on May 13, 2010, 11:02 AM
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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?
The All Ages Task Force of the Presidents Membership Task Force has almost completed deliberations and are preparing our final report for delivery to the IBOD at their meeting in Philadelphia.
While gathering data for our final report, we noted that there were some chapters that were consumately successful and others that were drifting along or, ever worse, in a death spiral.
Consequently, we took a much closer look at what “magic” ingredients existed in successful chapters that made them that way.
What we found was that there is an atmosphere for success in every successful chapter that was, for the most part, absent in other chapters. We tried to take those successful chapters apart to see what was causing them to be successful.
What that process resulted in was a description of what we found in all successful chapters. The Task Force is making description a portion of our final report.
It will, most likely be released after it has been presented to the IBOD.
Sorry, I can’t release it yet. We are still doing our final compilation and editing.
Blessings to all,
Montana Jack, keeping the faith and keeping it barbershop
This discussion is about scoring in contests, and I certainly don’t have any issues about what has been said about that.
I do have an issue about equating a “successful chapter” totally (or even mostly) with contest scores. Asheville is growing and having FUN. I will put our organization and barbershopping experience up against any other chapter…and we score under 70.
We survey our members about twice a year. Improving our contest scores comes up from fewer than 10% of our members.
I hope the Membership Task Forces do not put much weight on scoring. This Society and “hobby” have much more going for it than that.
First and foremost, the singers must, must, MUST have a handle on the basics. Intonation, matching vowels, good singing and breathing habits. Once that’s achieved and individuals apply the rules ALL THE TIME without thinking about them, they can begin to explore the emotions of the music.
Men have been done a big disservice in being told it’s unmanly to express yourself. How many “deer in the headlights” can we watch without nodding off? For those of us who “get it,” it can be a painful thing to try and pull out of others. When that happens, it makes for meetings that are less than satisfying…
And once you can sing, emote and move, you put it together and step it up.
One MAJOR difference is effective organization. Being an A-level chorus is immensely easier for A-level chapters that handle the boring non-musical business stuff with energy and aplomb.
Staying on schedule and staying on pitch may seem like totally different things, but if you can’t stay on schedule, you won’t have the time you need to squeeze every little bit of improvement out of the chorus. Moreover, being well-organized can help the chapter handle its finances better (saving money for coaching, uniforms and travel!) and book exciting gigs that keep the guys motivated to come back week after week.
David Wright told us once that a chorus that can sing “do-re-mi” exactly right can win a gold medal. His point: get the fundamentals down solid, and you’re set free to reach your artistic potential. The same is true organizationally: if your chapter has the ability to organize a chapter meeting, board meeting or concert with clockwork precision, then your chapter can make the best use of every resource available. And making the best use of what you have is the first step to building more!
Performing at rehearsals and rehearsing at home. Know the music before you get to rehearsal, which means taking time out of your schedule throughout the week to practice the music. Staying focussed at rehearsal. A Chorus director also has a lot to do with it as does a Chapter’s board of directors. I believe a Chorus of 50-60 guys can be an A-level Chorus, but it does take work (look at the Northern Lights as an example). While you can still have fund doing what you’re doing, you have to have the want to to succeed and to press the emotions that try to hold you back.
While I agree with everything said so far… might I add that showing up prepared… learning your words, notes, and presentation BEFORE coming to rehearsal makes a huge difference. I sang with a C level chorus before helping to start a A level one- and one of the founding tenants of the new chorus (2 years old now) was everyone shows up prepared, period. In the C level chorus – there was not the urgency or desire to be word or note perfect. It’s hard to get to the other stuff that really make a difference if you are stopping rehearsal to fix words or notes – or both… or worse, NOT stopping.
I, too, agree with every word that has been said thus far.
And, having had the great opportunity to serve the Society and visit a ton of chapters, I’d like to offer one other “mind set” of the successful chapters (and I stress chapters, because success is not just scoring an A)…
In every successful chapters the vast majority of members know have the innate knowledge that they are personally responsible for the success. They know the goal, they know their part in reaching it and they know the must do their part or the whole fails.
Sadly, members of struggling chapters can readily innumerate all the people who have caused them to be struggling, they can tell you all the “others” that make it difficult for them to succeed, and can tell you all the reasons why “THAT OTHER CHAPTER is a success and we are not.”
Knowing what the goals of the chapter are, knowing what role you play (what your job is to accomplish the goals), committing to doing your part, and successfully completing your tasks will yield success.
Success isn’t given to you, nor does it come to you. It happens because *you* did did something.
Charlie D.
PS – “Yeah, but…” should not be going through your mind right now…
All the comments are valid and may lead a chorus to rise to an A level….but also, along with focus, commitment by the members, and sense of purpose, is another key ingredient. A director who is well versed in the Barbershop style, an energetic and strong leader who can hear all 4 parts and correct the chorus on the spot, and who can TEACH the solid fundamentals.
I can’t tell you how many directors I’ve seen who are merely “arm wavers”, and do not instill in their choruses the desire to be any better, and cannot teach. Happens in both the men’s choruses and the women’s.
This is a great topic and one that I was curious about myself recently. My question is about the score given for contest performance of the A-level singing chorus. If the Chorus receives a 97 score, does that mean each of the individual singers in that group sings at a 97 level? Is it possible to have 160 “97%” singers on stage at that time or is the 97 score a sum of the whole?
One thing that Matt Swann constantly says at SOR rehearsals is when the chorus is at such a high level, errors become much more obvious. I have found this to be more and more truthful as there have been a few times where I have sang a wrong note or two and Darrin Drown knew that it was me.
I think this is a testament to the fact that every singer has to strive to be at the same level as everyone else. I don’t mean to imply that there aren’t some superb singers and mediocre singers within every chorus, but every individual needs to bring just as much energy and vocality as the next.
To me, this is a matter of how much people buy into the concept. I’ll attack it from two different perspectives, both competing and performing.
In the world of competition, the difference between say Ambassadors of Harmony and Northern Lights is all numbers. They are BOTH A-level choruses because they have energetic directors who know what they’re doing. The main point here is that everyone buys into the plan of giving all they’ve got to get better, putting in the extra time outside of rehearsals in the effort to get better.
A C-level chorus can certainly understand these things, and perform just as well as an A-level chorus, but if there is not 100% of the chorus buying into the concept of being their best every time, and getting better from one contest to the next, that will lower your score. If 20 guys out of 40 decide that they’re just fine with working only in rehearsal, kick it up a notch for contest, and score a C-level, that’s their prerogative. The difference between half of the chorus buying in and ALL of the chorus buying in will be marked in the scores.
Now for the performing standpoint. When I say performing, I mean outside of contest. The same concept applies, except the “rules” aren’t quite so demanding. For example, I sing in a chorus that has 30 guys. We have 14 show up to rehearsal most of the time. But the problem with the chorus is that we keep having Rehearsal X. Instead of taking the music home and working between rehearsals (like any contest chorus participant is asked to do weekly), they let the music sit, and don’t retain any of the information that they heard in the prior week’s rehearsal. We will have Rehearsal X again, this time with (most) of the other “half” of the chorus. The lack of progress is frustrating to those who are buying in.
Some (select few) members at this kind of level buy into the concept of making every show the best one they’ve done. Without everyone buying in, it’s a “C-level” compared to an “A-level”. To keep anonymity of a kind, I will not mention the chapter’s name.
The main point that I will make is that the basic difference between a C-level and A-level is the dedication with which EACH individual member puts into it. Should they buy in, and the rest of the chorus also buys in, that will turn out to be an A-level chorus (for all practical purposes). Should less than half buy in that will be C-level.
It’s about personal accountability, responsibility, and the dedication to the craft that will make the difference.
Those are my thoughts on the matter, anyway.
Matthew Seivert
Great stuff, so very many salient points. I would add that all singers who aspire to be A level have a continual and never-ending debt. That debt is to the guy in front, behind and both sides of him – and not only for the Chorus rehearsal night, but every practice night at home. We owe it to every man in the Chorus to take responsibility for our part in the performance. We also owe it to ourselves, so that when we retire at night, we know that we have given exactly what is expected and required of us. Let’s not forget these guys are our buddies, they have chosen to allow us to sing with them – so every time we sing with them let us repay the debt and give to them what they give to us …… a togetherness based on mutual trust and talent.
Some fabulous points here, and what an excellent topic! Great leadership helps…and recruiting passionate people. The passion for excellence is infectious, and the camaderie that results from striving for a common goal is amazing. I’ve sang in a solid “B” level chorus for several years, and that’s been fun. But the “A” level group is an absolute blast. ‘Lookin’ forward to Philly as a first-timer.
The difference is mostly mental. The A level chorus singers have made the mental commitment to sing in a way that supports the production of overtones, rather than preventing the production of overtones.
Sometimes, that might mean that an individual singer has to make the decision to *not* sing a particular note if it is outside their quality envelope.
I’ve been thinking about how the chorus sound is usually greater than the sum of its parts, and how to come up with a formula to describe that.
The A level choruses aren’t necessarily filled with A level individual singers (defined as “people who could be dropped into an A level quartet and produce A level sound”). However, I do think there is an 80/20 rule at work with choruses.
If you have a particular target level in mind, such as a chorus that can score an 85, 80% of the chorus must be made up of individual singers who can sing 80% of your target score. In this example, 80% of your singers would need to be able to sing a 68, as individuals, if you want the chorus to have a shot at getting to an 85.
In a 50 man chorus, 40 men would need to be able to sing individually at a 68 level (or better) for the chorus to have a shot at collectively singing an 85.
The other 20% (10 men) could be below that threshold without necessarily jeopardizing the overall sound, but there is some minimum skill level necessary before the weakest link becomes the limiting factor for the sound of the entire chorus. It is very possible that one singer out of fifty who can only sing at a quality level of, say, 45, could prevent the entire chorus from reaching an A level even if the rest of the singers are at a 65 or better.
If we apply the 80/20 rule recursively to the 20%, 8 of those 10 men would need to sing a 54. I’m not entirely sure yet whether I think that’s valid or not.
If your goal as a chorus is a 70 level (not unreasonable), 80% of your singers would need to be able to sing a 56.
I’d be interested in what others think about this logic.
Wow – I just applied this example to my chorus, inputting our most recent score, and yeah, it seems about right (of course some guys would need coaching to sing to that level in a quartet but their singing in chorus is there).
The 80/20 rule applies so many other places that it seems reasonable that it could apply here. I suspect at the outer limits it may not hold – I love AOH but I’m not sure 80% could sing in a 77 (International qualifying) quartet. But I really don’t know.
There’s something to be said for having smart singers, too. I look at this number game slightly differently…
The way I see it, each singer has the ability to add up to 100 points (arbitrary) to the overall sound by singing well and doing things “right”, but at the same time has the ability to detract somewhere around 10,000 points by doing things wrong. When singers sing poorly or make mistakes, those distractions take away from the overall sound of the ensemble at a much greater magnitude than their ability to add to it. This is why adding a couple great singers to a chorus cannot bolster the chorus sound very much, but adding a few singers making very poor choices can be a huge distraction.
With smart singers, though, singers who know their strengths and play to them, and know their weaknesses and avoid them… well, you end up with a great sounding ensemble. Small choruses that are successful have a high percentage of smart singers if not great singers. This is also why you can’t take any 4 guys off the risers, put them in a quartet, have them sing the contest package and expect them to hit even close to 80% of the chorus’ score. If they’re 4 smart singers, they each may only be putting out bits and pieces of the potential 100 points, so there’d be holes in the sound of the quartet… qualities missing that are covered by having a large number of singers in a chorus.
The more smart singers, the more likely all of the good qualities of a chorus will be achieved, so the individual weaknesses of each singer will not be missed. Even with a very large chorus, though… get a few guys making big mistakes, and there goes the ensemble sound.
Cheers,
Jamie Bedford
To use your numbers and put your point another way (and essentially matches what I’m saying): If you have forty singers singing 100, and five singers singing -10,000, the group’s net quality will be nowhere near 100, despite the fact that the vast majority of the singers in the group are 100s.
There is a threshold that limits the upper bounds of ensemble quality. Sometimes, it only takes one voice.
Interesting topic. It would be nice to speak from the point of having sung with or having heard a large number of A-level choruses live – not a luxury we have here in the UK! I think the points made about the differences between high-end and low-end scores in contest still apply though.
I remember some of our top choruses (Bolton and Cambridge in particular) when they had under 30 men on stage. They have grown in size enormously since then. I can also think of other championship level choruses which have declined almost to the point of extinction.
I don’t think it is as simple as an individual set of points that can be applied as a ‘fix’, though.
There are some factors which may play a role or help towards an increase in standards (in no particular order):
* the club (chapter) needs to be seen as a separate entity from the performing chorus
* the club should have a clear vision of what it wants to achieve and the majority of its members need to buy into that vision
* membership of the performing chorus should not be automatic – members should have to requalify on every new song introduced before being allowed to perform in public
* some members will just want to come to the club once a week and sing for a couple of hours – there needs to be a place for them
* there is a (huge) difference between a musical director and a chorus conductor, the first is vital
* the musical direction of the club does not necessarily have to come from the armwaver, but he/she does need to be capable of conducting the chorus to its best performance at that time
* SONG CHOICE!!!!! Just because XYZ chorus/quartet sang a song and got zillions of points for it, it doesn’t mean that your chorus can do the same. There are A-level arrangements as well as A-level performers….
Although I said it was in no particular order, I do think choice of repertoire has an important impact (maybe the biggest impact) on how the chorus performs generally. If a chorus can’t handle polecat songs and basic arrangements, and sing them in tune with feeling, then they are never going to get beyond C…
Never were there TRUER words than your last paragraph.
Oh, and it’s worth having a read-through the notes from the masterclass that AoH did with Jim Henry at the BABS convention in 2006….
http://www.babs-education.info/babs-education-music/members/handout.pdf