When they started in barbershop they thought they could do
it all by reading the music. After all, they thought, we’re all classically
trained musicians with long experience in sight reading. What they found was
that they needed learning tracks – they use Tim Tracks – to get the feeling and
subtlety of the music. I found this really surprising.
When they began competing they were nervous and
uncomfortable onstage. But they continued to compete at every opportunity, and
they think that continuing competition was critical in helping them improve.
They think it's important to take advantage of every opportunity to be onstage.
The most important thing they eventually learned was that
they had to be completely open with each other. They had to recognize that
someone wasn’t criticizing them because he was being mean but because he was
trying to help the quartet be better. They had to learn both to give effective
feedback and to suppress their egos and be accepting of feedback from each
other. It took “years” to achieve that comfort level.
They expect everyone to come to practice already warmed up.
Their practices last from 90 minutes to three hours. If someone is not warmed
up they waste part of that time and the others are “annoyed.”
They “work really hard” on a small section of music.
Typically they work on one page a day(!) and then build on that the next
day. What they do with much of their practice time is sing duets and trios. As
the bass explained, “If all the duets sound good then the overall sound will be
great.” They use every combination except tenor with bari.
They provided a demonstration of this approach. The bari and bass sang 20 seconds of what they would sing later that
evening as their swan song after the quartet finals. Then the lead and tenor
told them what they had heard and what could be done differently to improve the
sound. They sang the same music again and the changes were noticeable. (Of
course it had sounded great the first time!) Sure, it was a dramatization, but
it provided an interesting illustration of how they work together.
Initially they didn't think about their strengths and weaknesses but just sang every song that appealed to them. That helped them learn their boundaries. Now they “make choices that benefit their abilities,” both in their selection of music and in the way they sing it. It’s apparent that their view isn’t just “It’s a song, we know it – it’s in our repertoire.” For example, the bass said he’s great in the low bass range but is weaker on the high bass notes. Because of that they pick songs that emphasize the low notes “for the judges,” (and, of course, by extension the "judges" would include all of their audiences.)
They also adjust the parts they sing to match the music to
their vocal ranges. For example, if the bari’s
notes are near the limit of his full-voice range the tenor might sing those
notes and the bari
would take the tenor notes in falsetto.
A final technical note: They make sure that what they sing
matches the venue and the microphone situation. They’ve found, for example, that
they can’t sing doo-wop songs or songs with a “low rolling bass” in large
venues unless they have microphones. They want the mics to be something that
invisibly helps them reach the audience and not be the focus of their
attention; they never cluster around the mic and sing to it.
The hour that we and a hundred or more other people spent with Ringmasters during this Harmony University session was extremely rewarding for us. It and two additional HU sessions we attended earlier that day made us regret skipping HU sessions during previous conventions and made us resolve to attend as many as possible at Las Vegas next year.
