My phone rang at 3:07 this morning. It was the guy delivering the luggage. Surprise, surprise, he was having trouble figuring out where he should go on campus to drop off the luggage. I went outside to meet him. He grilled me to try to discover the secret place where he should deliver the luggage of two other people whose names I didn't know. ( Read more... )

ddmerillat and I played with our audition today. The learning CD has one track per voice part. The predominant part is on the left and the other three are on the right. We ripped the disc to Dave's laptop, then imported the tracks into Audacity. The tenor, lead and bari lined up perfectly. We were able to play back just the bari and lead while I ( Read more... )

ddmerillat and I are both auditioning for the Honors Chorus at Harmony College this Summer. They mailed us a song as sheet music and a learning CD. We have to record about two pages of the song and mail them the recording by May 15. They'll let us know two weeks later if we made the cut. They wanted to do an Honors Chorus last year, but they canceled it ( Read more... )

The quartet placed eighth tonight, which means we'll be the mic testers for tomorrow night's quartet contest. You may recall that this is our third contest in a row making it to Saturday night in one form or another. Woo hoo! We had a flubbed tune-up on our second song, but judges in all three categories praised our swift recovery. Our overall ( Read more... )

The lead of my quartet gave a presentation at a medical convention this weekend. The presenter before him managed to crash the computer. When Dick took the stage, there was no way to project his slides. He joked for a bit about his lost luggage to stall for time, but the computer still wasn't cooperating. He taught the audience the clapping ( Read more... )

( About the Jingle Bell Award )

A few weeks ago, I started a Skill of the Month Program. This was an effort to bring the fundamentals of barbershopping back to rehearsals. Finesse is wonderful, but only if the foundation is there. A lot of our newer members had missed out on the years during which the rest of us learned the fundamentals, and I wanted to do something about it ( Read more... )

Baritone is the most difficult part in barbershopping. Basses get the root or the fifth, the lead gets the melody, and the tenor is usually about a third above the lead. Baritones get whatever's left over! One guy was practicing his quartet part at home. His wife yelled from the next room that he'd missed a note. She was right, but how could ( Read more... )

Through the end of November, I get a special parking space and I get to wear a ludicrously-sized, red-and-white stripy vest. I think I even get free drinks at the bar after rehearsal.

*beams*

We'll see how they like me next week after I've rolled out the Skill of the Month program. Mua ha ha ha!

Going into the contest, Bob and I had dissected the list of competing quartets. We both estimated our placement at about tenth or eleventh out of twenty-three. With so many quartets competing in the Friday night semifinals, ten quartets would advance to the finals, with eleventh place serving as Saturday's mic testers. You may recall that we ( Read more... )