2011 Men's International Barbershop Contest - Day 4 Observations

Today was the chorus competition. It was a very long day given the very early start to it and no time to nap if I was going to hear all the choruses. That said, the actual time spent in the audience pretty much flew by. The choruses were an interesting mix of choruses performing their two songs and choruses performing two songs with a theme. Some choruses sang clearly barbershop arrangements and some sang songs that I would struggle to classify as barbershop.

Notes from today:

• The camera people still haven't figured out how to pan the whole chorus or quartet. I'm beginning to think they need another camera or something. They have gotten better as the week has progressed but even in the chorus competition, there were many shots of one person from belly to head and two chins over his shoulders. Had they focused the camera nipples up, they'd have had the heads to go along with the chins. Worst problem in my opinion is that they keep going back to the same faces in the chorus most of the time. Once they'd made you into a head with two chins, they'd do it again later in the song.
• Either mic testers need a job description or someone needs to make sure they actually read it. It's lovely to be chosen as a mic tester but you have a job to do. The sound people are supposed to be using your sound to set levels. If you aren't placed where everyone else will be placed, the sound people can't set the levels. I realize this limits your artistic creativity at times but this should be worked out ahead of time. Perhaps offer mic testers three songs so that one can be off the risers or one that invites quartets 20 through 12 onto the stage ;-) While part of me really enjoys the show, if the mic testers don't do their job, the show starts running late from the very beginning. Often shows have strict times they have to be done before they start to pay overtime to the staff so having to add mic testing time can literally cost the show thousands of dollars.
• BHS has a real push to get everyone singing the older songs. We've had mini-mass sings while after intermissions or as stretch breaks. While I love this idea and wish SAI did more of it, it would be so much easier if they ran the lyrics across the bottom of the TV image with the director on it. It's hard enough to woodshed if you haven't a clue what the melody is but when you don't know the words either, it is nigh onto impossible.
• The men's risers have a constant creak to the point of having a fifth note into virtually every chord. While you can't hear it during the louder parts, the riser squeak was louder than most chorus' quiet moments. I think the person who develops silent risers will make a fortune!
• Most of the choruses are completely hooked on the director during the ballad where the chorus members are clearly trying to create characters and sing directly to me as an audience member. The uptunes are all performance numbers which the director participates in and I get to watch but I am not involved in. At some point, I hope I understand why choruses need a director to talk to me. My comparison was that the chorus was Cyrano writing the poetry and telling the director what to tell me except that all I saw of the director during the ballads was his/her back.
• I like SAI's division of choruses into size categories and I think I wish BHS would have some sort of divisions for its choruses. Whether they use size as the divider or use choral vs. performance or some other criteria, some of the choruses were sufficiently different as to barely be in the same contest. How does a 21 person chorus doing a choral presentation of two songs fairly compete against an 80+ person chorus performing two excerpts from a recent show they put on?

After four days of listening, I begin to really understand why some people are irritated at what they perceive as the lack of barbershop sound in some of the competitors. Westminster sang three songs for their swan song while the judges were compiling results. This was my first time hearing them live and it was a real treat. I did find it very sad that the champion barbershop chorus for 2010 only sang one identifiably barbershop song out of their three. What they sang was amazing but at the same time, I felt sad that the champions who are supposed to be our best barbershop chorus didn't sing much barbershop. I think if I had been singing barbershop since I was knee high, I might be concerned for the longevity of barbershop, too.

Let me be very clear that I do not have the best ears. I'd probably have to say that my ears are pretty bad. One of the things I work at during all the conventions I've been to is to get to the point where I hear the barbershop chords and progressions to the point that I can predict them. I view that as an essential skill if I am going to be a good barbershop singer. I want to get to the point where I may not be able to define barbershop, but I know it when I hear it. I don't have a problem with a cappella music being sung, but I would hope that after listening to 4 days of music at a barbershop convention that I would be pretty good at identifying the barbershop sound, and I'm not sure I can. As someone new to the artform

In SAI, the winning chorus and quartet for each region go to international. In addition, the top 5 scoring quartets and choruses who didn't win their region wildcard into international. SAI adds a little twist as well by offering small choruses (under 30 members) and mid-sized choruses (under 60? members) to compete at Harmony Classic. The top 5 scoring choruses in each category who aren't competing at International get to compete on the international stage with similarly sized choruses.

I think BHS quartets qualify for International by a percentage score which makes it easy to see the relative strength of the various districts. The Johnny Appleseed District is clearly a powerhouse region for men's barbershop. They had 2 collegiate quartets (one of which won), 4 quartets in the quarter-finals (1 is in the top 10) and a chorus at this year's competition. That's not to say other districts aren't as strong; merely that with this sort of a qualifying method, it puts the spotlight on the strongest regions. Since quartets are attempting to be a percentage rather than their fellow competitors, it adds to the camaraderie at the district levels.

2011 Men's International Barbershop Contest - Day 3 Observations

Forgive me for keeping this short. It's past midnight on Day 3 and I need to make sure a certain someone is up, fed and appropriately dressed for the chorus contest tomorrow.

Having now watched the top 20 quartets, I am again amazed at the quality. Quartet scores for quartets 50 up to 21 ranged only 5%. Men's quartets are judged on a percentage basis so it makes it easier to compare quartets who made it through one round with quartets who made it through two or three rounds. In SAI, you need to remember that regional contests have 800 points max, first rounds at international have 1600 and second rounds have 3500? Forgive me, I can never keep the amounts straight. They aren't quite multiples of 800 because international has some amount of "performance" points. In the quartet quarter-finals, the lowest ranking quartet received a 74.8% and the quartet which received 21st place received a score of 80.1%. That's like having the lowest scoring first round quartet at a 1198 and the 11th place only 1282. Talk about your consistency!

Random notes from today (and a few I forgot from yesterday)

• Some of the men's costumes include bling. While the small touches were nice, I hope it doesn't become the norm. I like the tuxes, suits, and dress-casual jeans. Yes there were the lime green suits or bright pink shirts, but mostly the men's quartets managed to look unified even when everyone wasn't wearing the same thing. While I hope that someone(!) clues in some of the men that dress pants do need to fit properly, I envy their ease of costume. Let's face it: many of the quartet and chorus costumes in SAI are downright awful. We're so worried about hiding bumps and bulges that we hide everything with dresses worse than the proverbial mother of the bride drecktitude. While I appreciate some attention being paid to our costuming, the point is to sound good, not to be a contestant in a beauty pageant.
• I love that the husband of the president of Harmony Inc. is called the "First Husband".
• Today had lots of bass solos. I really see the difference it makes when the bass sings like a lead and when the bass merely sings their notes. The melody has to be sung in character and so does the harmony. If I don't have a complete character in mind, I think I would find it hard to add expression to my bass line.
• I know that the men can post for days. It's a shame that they seem to get carved in ice as soon as the post starts. They sacrifice the character they've had the whole song for a post.
• Those audience members who shout out "Yea!" the nanosecond the song is done are turning the wonderful fairy dust into dirt. Give the fairy dust a moment to settle before you give your audible encouragement.
• Yesterday during the quarter-final marathon, the audience was better about starting the clapping once the lights when down. Today, they couldn't seem to figure it out again.
• SAI has it's members fairly well trained to sit as soon as the announcer asks. Virtually every quartet thus far has had to wait for rude audience members to continue to where ever they need to go. When the lights go down, they don't sit at the first available seat. They continue up or down the aisle or stairs. They remain standing in the audience even after the MC has reminded them (again) that they are holding up the show. When you have 52 quartets or even just the 20 from today, those extra minutes add up.
• I think BHS should reduce the rates on its jumbotron ads. While the ads from TNS and Groupanizer are nice, there are barely enough ads to make it through one wait for a quartet - and the judges are fast. When there are probably fewer than 20 ads, it gets repetitive very quickly. At a minimum, BHS should have created some extra ads to throw into the mix.
• While I like the bear charity fundraiser, having heard the spiel well over 8 times yesterday and another 4 times today has made me want to go take the bear I bought and donated so I can drop-kick it from the nearest bridge. If you are MCing 52 quartets (or even 20) you need enough schtick to make it work. So far, there has been about 5 quartets worth of schtick before the MCs resort to bears and other fundraisers. I begin to understand why the audience is so rude with their clapping...
• Most of the quartets are very talented at passing the melody among the parts. It's a pleasure to watch and listen.
• LunchBreak quartet is amazing. I want to see them in a local show. I want the words to "Old MacDonald had a deformed farm". I was in stitches and I can't wait for them to be the mic testers on Saturday.
• If most quartets sang old standards like After Hours does, even I'd listen to a whole show of nothing but standards.
• One quartet's music choices today were barely related to barbershop. Great a cappella music but I couldn't find enough barbershop sound in what they sang. It seemed a poor choice of music for a barbershop contest but great choices for crowd pleasers or a CASA competition. I don't think the arrangements would be legal under SAI since they were mostly lead and the pips arrangements with the pips mostly oohing or dooting.
• Suffice it to say that the AIC show was fabulous. Since I didn't have a clue was AIC stood for (still don't actually), I was unprepared for the fabulousness

2011 Men's International Barbershop Contest - Day 2 Observations

Day two of Men's International brought many hours of the quartet quarter-finals. Once again, a very enjoyable day though the luck of the draw did give me one moment where I would have liked a certain lady's flask to ease the pain... None of the quartets were awful but I did become abundantly aware of just how long I could listen to different "B-level: boring but good" quartets. I begin to understand how difficult it is to put together a show featuring different groups. Not only do you need to vary the talent levels somewhat but you need to do it in such a way that no group follows a group that is significantly better than they are and you need to build up to a finish. Oh, enough about my learning here and on to my observations.

I think it is finally settling in that the men glorify the quartet. Men's International has three days of quartet competing. The first day is 52 qualifying quartets singing their two songs in the quarter-finals. The second day includes the top 20 quartets singing (hopefully different!) two songs in the semi-finals. The quartets get a day of rest while all the choruses compete for their one day before the competition rounds out with final 10 quartets doing their package.  There is no show of champions; the quartet finals _is_ the show everyone is waiting for.

SAI glorifies the chorus and likes the quartet. SAI has a day of all qualifying quartets singing their two songs, then a day where all qualifying choruses compete with their two songs. Next we get a day of  quartet finals where the top 10 quartets do their package followed by the last day where the top 10 choruses compete. Lastly, the women put on a show with their top winners of all the categories.

On the one hand, I like the idea of multiple days of quartet competition. To go from 52 quartets to 10 is a strict job and singing on the international stage must be nerve-wracking. Having the opportunity to have a second chance if you didn't bomb your first attempt would be nice. On the other hand, I don't think I'm looking forward to sitting in the audience for another 4 hours today for the semi-finals after sitting from 10-3 and again from 4:30-9:30 for the second half. If I were listening to choruses today, I think I'd feel better about the sitting.

I think I am going to miss seeing chorus packages. I enjoy the singing but I like a show, too. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Here are my observations from the quartet semi-finals:

• Many, if not most, of the quartets stand somewhat overlapping. The two in the center are rarely shoulder to shoulder but instead overlap. The two end people also overlap the people in the back. This makes the cup closer and probably makes it easier to hear each other.
• This works because there isn't nearly as much planned choreo in the men's quartets as there is in the women's. There is some planned movement but I would say that it is the exception rather than the rule. The men could use a few lessons in choreo that doesn't involve wandering hands. The hands tend to move as the individual parts move which means there is a constant flow of movement. It really distracting from my audience perspective.
• I am particularly tired of the "weighing a woman's breasts" move. Bring the hands up (palms up) to breast level, pause a moment to make the moment special, lift up your hands, smile, and gently lower your hands back to waist level. By the 4th quartet, I was really tired of this particular move. By the 52nd quartet, I just watched with my eyes closed.
• A few quartets did appear to have applied blush. No foundation and the blush was on the cheek hollows rather than the apples. And did I mention that there was no blending or feathering? Just a swash of color the way a 3 year old might do. Yes, the guys need makeup but when they see the results of what they are doing, no wonder they don't want to wear it!
• Many of the quartets had great chords but only the ones where the mouth-shapes matched had any ring that I could hear. I know I've heard this before, but watching 52 quartets ended up being a great way to get the experience I needed to really cement this in my brain. Time to haul out the video camera for my quartet...
• Lots of the quartets came out on stage before they were announced so that they had a shape on stage that contributed to their presentation. It worked for me and it varied the stage entrances to make the contest more interesting.
• Some quartets had the people going to the farthest side of the stage run or job across the stage. Not only did this leave two members with a breath deficit at the beginning of their set, it wasn't necessarily attractive to watch. Not every barbershopper is in great shape and not many people like to see bulky bellies bouncing like a basketball as the person runs across the stage.
• Many of the quartets began their set with the lead singing a solo, then another part joining in on the next phrase, followed by the last two parts on the third phrase. It made for very tender song beginnings but I think that would add immense pressure to the lead. I don't think that sort of thing is legal in SAI but again, it added some nice variety to the 52 quartet march.
• Again, a really nice mix of classic and newer arrangements. BHS is having a "disagreement" at the moment about whether modern songs with modern chording
  
  On the one hand, I understand better now how important those classic songs are. They really do have a different sound and it is the sound I associated with barbershop before I joined AJoy. It is a sound that brings back the feeling of the old times when life was simpler. The chording is easy to harmonize with which makes it much easier to woodshed. If people have a firm foundation in these older, square songs, they'll have a better sense of barbershop chord structure. That has to be beneficial.
  
  On the other hand, the old songs pretty much sound the same because they use the same chords over and over in fairly predictable patterns. Newer songs evoke more recent times and are more entertaining to listen to when there are a lot of them.
  
  Given 52 quartets, if they had all sung modern arrangements, I doubt I'd be able to tell you anything about barbershop other than it is 4 part a cappella harmony. Add in a healthy dose of the more traditional barbershop songs, and I could probably hum a few bars of what I'd call barbershop music. Better yet, I'd be willing to try to harmonize with you if you sang a few bars. If they'd all sung traditional barbershop songs, I'd have left after the 10th quartet to drown my sorrows.

Ok, off to the quartet semi-finals today. Theoretically, Daniel's studs for his tux shirt will arrive today. If not, I get to be creative since the chorus competition is tomorrow.

2011 Men's International Barbershop Contest - Day 1 Observations

Here I am in hot, humid Kansas City attending my first ever men's international barbershop contest. Last night was the opening contest featuring the collegiate contestants, and I have to say, WOW! If this is what the college kids do, I am in for a real treat. I've attended two SAI competitions (Nashville and Seattle) so I thought I'd give my impressions of this contest.

Women
The first thing I noticed is how many women are at this contest. Most of the people manning the ticket booths and sales floor in the merchandising area are women. While this isn't an astounding observation, it means that the men aren't trying to put on the show while preparing to perform.

• While there are men at the SAI competitions, it is mostly the women working to pull the show together as well as keep their heads in the competitive game so they can blast onto the stage. Wouldn't it be nice if the men spent the SAI week doing many of the jobs so that the women could concentrate on the competition itself?

Family
This is a family oriented contest. There is a BarberTots area where people can take their kids and still listen to the show. There are picnics planned. There is a women's breakfast and hospitality suite to make sure that women know they are welcome. There are tons of kids here already. There is a concerted effort to make this a family environment. Women are encouraged to be Associate members so that they can support the BHS and get discounted tickets to contest. (Wish I'd know about that aspect before I paid for my KC tickets though!)

• In contrast, the SAI competition seems to be a women's week away. Not only do I not find it particularly inviting to the male members of my household, the schedules made it hard to find any time to spend with them. I do understand that in the past, if a woman travelled with her husband or her kids, she never stopped being the wife and mother and so couldn't concentrate on the chorus/quartet experience. That's probably still true to some extent today but if we want SAI to continue, we need to figure out ways to encourage it to be supported by the whole family. If  contests aren't family friendly, Sweet Adelines becomes the way the woman spends money and time away from home. As long as the family isn't encouraged to support this hobby, we risk our members having to treat it as a "special" thing rather than a lifetime hobby.

Collegiate and YWIH
There were 21 young quartets last night who did an astounding job. Yes, many of them were nervous but they all did a great job.  There were two or three quartets that presented themselves as comedy quartets which I personally think is great. Music and laughter are both great healers of the soul, and it takes rare skill to combine them well.

The collegiate contest is free and was well advertised on local TV and radio. Daniel and I met some people coming to see the Collegiate show who had never heard of barbershop but were coming because it was free. I think they YWIH show in Seattle was free as well, but I honestly don't remember. This is a great way to get barbershop out into the community.

I think the thing that struck me the most about the Collegiate contest is how well prepared the quartets seemed to be. Yes, some quartets were better than others but only two out of the 21 had me cringing with bad chords. There was only one quartet that had my heart up on stage with them in that Tinkerbell-need of "You can do it! I believe in you!" I contrast that to the YWIH in Seattle where I had Tinkerbell-needs for easily a third of the quartets and some of them had me exhausted because of the work I had to do to find a chord as they sang.

• I attribute some of this to the fact that the collegiate quartets appeared to be fostered and sponsored by the Harmony Foundation which appears to give them $1500 to help cover costs as well as give them access to past Collegiate winners as coaches. Somehow these collegiate quartets are getting access to productive coaching. Most of the YWIH quartets had clearly been coached very well but at least one of them went looking for some sort of local support 4 weeks before the Seattle contest.  From first impressions, the guys are doing a better job of fostering the college kids so that their competition is a success for all involved.
• That said, the YWIH contest included a lot of high school quartets so the women are being exposed earlier. I think local choruses and quartets need to find these girls earlier to give them the coaching and support they need so that their experience is a success. SAI also includes a weekend before competition where local girls are formed into a chorus, taught excellent choreo, and then perform on the international stage during one of the contests. This seems to me to be another great way to encourage the young people to choose barbershop as a way to spend some of their time.
• It's a good thing the Collegiate contestants brought their own cheering sections. The crowd was pretty dead and there weren't that many people in the audience. I'm not sure the YWIH was much different. If we want young people to choose to spend their time and energy in barbershop, we need to be in the audience for them. If the prospect of free entertainment isn't enough to bring in the crowds, we have a major problem.

Judging


I know it takes a lot of time and energy to be a judge, and I sincerely appreciate all the effort it takes to be a judge in either organization. I do wish SAI could figure out a way to speed up the judging process somehow so that our competitions would be more show-like in tempo but I haven't got a clue how to do it. I wish I knew what the men were doing that allows their judging to be so quick so that I would have a better understanding of what the trade-off is.

Random comments

• Can I please be jealous of how well-developed many of the male basses are? As young as they are, they have some great rumble and presence!
• It's time for the men to realize that they are on stage and need to wear stage makeup. Yes, I am aware that I am anti-makeup in just about every other situation, but after watching guys who look ghostly-pale or green under that stage lights, even I recognize that stage makeup is appropriate. At a minimum, many of the collegiate quartets had clearly been up way-too-late the night before and had eye bags half-way down their cheeks. As a mom, I wanted to tuck them into bed and drug them into sleeping for a week. As an audience member, I was cringing looking at the bags on the huge TV screens.
• The camera people have this fascination with the two center people in a quartet, showing three of the four people (often excluding the person currently singing the melody), or showing the four people so that they look like tiny people on a large stage. Could they please occasionally pan the quartet so I could see all 4 faces? Focus on the two wing people sometimes? One quartet had one guy essentially singing a solo with the other three pips singing behind him. Where was the camera focused? On the pips. For the whole 30 seconds of this guy's solo.
• The judging was fast but the crowd didn't think it was fast enough. As soon as the MC came out, they'd start that lovely rhythmic clapping to indicate they wanted the next quartet. I think the MC did a great job staying calm in the face of such offensive rudeness. As an audience member, I apologize to the judges and to the MC for the childish behavior of some of my audience members.
• Twenty-one quartets singing two songs each often means that I hear only 30 or so different songs in SAI. Not here. I think only two songs were repeated at the Collegiate contest. Not only that, but there was a nice variety of old standards and newer songs. There's a lot to be said about singing the old, square barbershop songs as a way of cementing one's sound. Those older arrangements may be "boring" but they offer the quartets an easy way of rocking great chords. As a great woman once told me, "Don't show off what you can't do. Show me what you can do really well." It's a challenge to choose music that your quartet can really ring and that isn't so boring  you tire of working it.
• There's an auction to earn the privilege of being a guest judge. This fundraiser for the Harmony Foundation lets people bid for being a trial scorer at a single event during this contest. Top bidder gets to sit in the judges pit with score sheets and then gets to hang out in the green room with the judges to talk about the experience. What a great fundraiser! What a great way of making judging appear to be a coveted and valued job, too.
• There is advertising by Harmony Inc but none by SAI in the program. How sad that the only barbershop being advertised to the women attending this convention is available primarily in the NE of the United States. A great opportunity to recruit new members has been missed here which is especially bothersome given the January 2012 SAI open houses planned and current membership push. 
• Harmony Marketplace is primarily just stuff by BHS augmented by a few choruses and quartets selling their CDs. I kind of miss the variety of stuff offered at SAI conventions and think the BHS are missing a golden opportunity.
• Another fundraiser being offered here is encouraging the purchase of a teddy bear. Proceeds from the bear purchase go to the Harmony Foundation but you are then encouraged to donate the bear to a local hospital. What a great win-win for all involved! This is yet another way of getting the word out into the community about barbershop.

OK, enough about yesterday. I'll let you know how today goes with the Quartet quarter-finals.