A Cappella

Whilst I write up all my full-day or full-evening coaching sessions and workshops here (for the combined purpose of reflecting on them for myself and the enesembles, and for sharing what we learned), I don't always write up shorter sessions. An hour by Skype has a different rhythm to it from a 2-hour+ intensive. It tends to be more about sorting out details and consolidating partly-grasped areas of development than breaking new ground.

But sometimes one of these sessions will throw up something that is really asking to be written about, either for the practical techniques involved, or for what it can teach us about how people think musically. Or, in this case, both.

Reasonably often, I get emails from people who have just started a new barbershop quartet (or, less frequently, chorus), asking for advice on finding music to sing. So I'm writing this so I can do a thorough reply which I can send out repeatedly, rather than writing a new sketchy reply to each new request.

So, the first thing to say is, if you wanted someone to say, 'Here, you should sing this, this and this,' you are asking the wrong person. I just don't store large lists of songs in my head like some people do, I have research skills instead. But I'm not going to spend hours doing song research for you, since you could do that yourself and cut out the middle man.

The title of this post is one of those that would be reasonably opaque unless you are familiar with the argot of barbershop. For a barbershopper, a ‘polecat’ is a standard song that everybody in your world knows the parts to, and therefore suitable singing at any social occasion where you are meeting barbershoppers you don’t normally hang out with.

For people in the Barbershop Harmony Society, the repertoire is defined by the songs published in a set of books entitled the ‘Barber Pole Cat Program’ (and I imagine that’s where the abbreviation derives from). These have traditionally been ‘old songs’ – classic barbershop standards of the type that the founders of the society in the 1930s were nostalgic about from their youth.

The weekend took me over to Minden in Germany, to work with a capella ensemble Oriana in advance of their Advent concert on December 2nd. They are preparing a selection of repertoire that is strongly themed in terms of text, but very varied in style and origin - from Renaissance counterpoint to spirituals.

Consequently, one of the primary areas we worked on was mood-set. The group had previously identified the starts of pieces as an area that would benefit attention - like many ensembles they had found that it sometimes took them a bar or two to really get into the flow of a piece. And a programme that propels you into a new musical and emotional world every few minutes is going to make particular demands on this dimension of your performance.

After my day with Rhapsody in Peterborough, I had a day in Essex coaching Flame quartet in the morning and Chorus Iceni in the afternoon. Flame is a new quartet, though its members bring a considerable breadth and depth of previous experience to the party, while Chorus Iceni are fresh back from achieving their best results ever (by a considerable margin) at LABBS Convention last month. So there was a good sense of momentum in both sessions, if for different reasons.

With Flame, we spent a good deal of time using a new coaching technique I had actually devised the day before with Rhapsody. I have been advocating slow practice as a way to get into the detail and give yourself time really to hear the harmonies for a good long time. But this has usually been an analytical process with a technical focus, rather than serving artistic goals.

The new convention venueThe weekend saw the Ladies Association of British Barbershop Singers assemble at the Telford International Centre for their 36th Annual Convention. This was the first convention at this venue and, while in some ways it wasn't ideal (such as the limited availability of hotel space in walking distance), it did provide a very kind and honest stage for the singers to perform on. All the ensembles sounded like they were able to produce what they had prepared there without distraction and everyone I spoke to confirmed they had experienced it as a good performance environment. The team running the sound system deserve to feel very pleased with their work over the weekend.

Wednesday took me back to Windsor for a second visit to the Royal Harmonics. In some ways it feel like no time at all since I was last with them, but I couldn't help but notice that it was light when I arrived for my previous visit, but this time night had already fallen.

It was a pleasingly productive evening's work, with focused attention on several different pieces covering a wide range of musical and vocal issues. Their director, John Palmer, had some very clear agenda items for the songs he had picked to work on, but at the same time balanced his areas of interest with an openness for my diagnoses of a song's highest priorities for work. Sometimes the areas I picked up as the most important for attention were the same as the ones he had ear-marked to work on, whilst sometimes I brought up things that had not particularly been on his radar; either case was useful and interesting.

My coaching trip to Ireland continued with a day’s work near Dublin with Nota Bene quartet. They have formed under this name relatively recently, though three of them competed last year in Galway under a different name, and two have sung together in quartet for nearly five years now. This kind of profile offers both specific challenges such as adjusting existing vocal relationships to take account of the new singers’ voices and ways of feeling music, and specific advantages, with the know-how of the more experienced quartet singers supporting the newer additions.