The Chronicles of Harmony-a

last year some time, i had a hankerin' for some barbershop. i don't remember what prompted it, but i went looking for an album to buy online and found "4 Voices" by the quartet Four Voices. it was my first exposure to modern barbershop. up until then, i (falsely, but understandably) assumed it was a genre performed exclusively by guys with big giant mustaches, straw hats and matching red and white striped blazers. and sometimes canes.

after becoming enthralled with with the Four Voices album, i started looking online for more information. the Barbershop Harmony Society website has a bunch of good stuff. that's where Bob found the learning mp3's of "Keep the Whole World Singing"! (the recordings of us singing that are somewhere between awful and terrible...we were just kids then). i also looked on YouTube and found a ton of entertaining stuff...including people who film themselves singing the 4 different parts of Barbershop "tags" and splitting the screen, Brady Bunch style, so you can see them all at once. hilarious. and brilliant. this guy was the first, as far as i can tell. raw and unproduced, which i like. conversely, this guy is the reigning king, but sounds a little too perfect for my tastes. no question he's good, though. i digress.

my plan was to listen closely to the Four Voices version of "Didn't Want to Fall" and record the individual tracks using a keyboard, a computer and a Bass Podxt. i borrowed Matt Wood's keyboard (still have it, in fact) and got the first couple measures done, but then the parts pretty much became indistinguishable. particularly, the Baritone part. wow. what an awesome part! if i were to join a quartet (rather, another quartet) that's the part i would want to be. in my opinion, it's what makes a quartet a barbershop quartet. all these great 3rds and 7ths...

so i had the first measure or so recorded using the keyboard. in addition to sounding like crap, everyone else in the project let me know that it wouldn't be all that useful to them. but i wanted to do it anyway b/c i knew the way my brain works and i would benefit from it. eventually, i got wise and contacted the fine folks at the Barbershop Harmony Society and purchased the sheet music to the original arrangement of the song by Joe Liles. it's slightly different from the Four Voices version, but close. between the two, i figured we could make the version we wanted to perform.

on May 22nd, i gave the music to our resident musicologist, Matt X. and asked if he could record the four parts from the sheet music onto four tracks using a piano. with that, i reasoned, i could tell which part was which and make the minor changes between the 2 versions and record them onto one learning track for us to use. "you don't even have to sync them up", i said, trying to make it easier on him. what i got back was masterful.

he recorded the song, string quartet style, using violin for the tenor and lead, viola for baritone and cello for bass!! it was amazing! and he delivered it in 24 hours! but...it was in the key of F and the Four Voices version is in E. X even asked me before he started if i wanted him to do it in E to match 4V, but i declined. big mistake.

at this point, i had

1. the CD version as done by Four Voices
2. 1/4 of the song done keyboard style
3. the full Matt X. string quartet version in F
4. a live version of Four Voices singing it in E and
5. yet another live version by a quartet called Joker's Wild (in F)

it was getting confusing keeping track of all the different versions and instead of making it easier to learn the song, it was making it much harder for everyone.

we needed a definitive recording people could use to learn their part, myself included. throwing caution to the wind and confronting my insecurities about singing, i began the process of recording myself singing the 4 parts of the song using the same multi track recording program i had used with the failed keyboard project. it's a good thing my studio is so advanced or else it might not have turned out so good: a crappy PC mic that's the size of half a roll of Life-Savers, a mic stand made of a rubber band and a bottle of Windex, and a paper towel, folded in half and stretched between my hands, held in between my mouth and the mic to reduce the popping sound of hard consonants. watch your back, Taylor Roberts! i'm coming for you!!

after getting about half the song done, up to the bridge, i sent it out. the plan was to give it to them incrementally and i would keep working on it until it was done.

the first crack was awful. my technique was to listen to the Four Voices version (and when necessary, the Matt X version, followed by using the keyboard to modulate down from F to E), record 4 or so measures of bass, then go back and do the same for lead, then bari, then tenor. everything was going ok, sort of, until i played the Four Voices version along with mine. i was getting flatter and flatter with each additional recording segment. i was enraged.

without headphones it was hard to really hear what was going on. and being in the apartment, i couldn't turn the speakers up OR really belt it out during recording (those insecurities i mentioned). so i scrapped the whole thing and started again, much to the chagrin of the group. they were like, "no, it's fine, we can use it", but i am stubborn like that. i mean, if i'm gonna record it, i want it to be in key, you know? and i was a little angry...at myself and at Barbershop for being so hard.

but at this point, my confidence was blown and it was much, much harder for me to do the 2nd time around. i couldn't seem to find the pitch and was flat over and over. my blood pressure was rising. i would tell Andrea, "I'm gonna work on the song tonight" and the next day, she'd say, "Did you finish?". finish?? Finish?? HA. i'd just give her 'the look' b/c i had only gotten 4 or 8 measures done in 2 or 3 hours. this period was pretty upsetting. i began to question whether i could even do it or not...and whether we, as a group, could pull it off.

yadda yadda yadda, i got it done all the way to the very end. i had the 50 or so different segments of the song merged into 4 and everybody had a mix of their part, plus multiple combinations (3 parts in the left, your part in the right, bass-bari, bass-lead, bass-tenor, tenor-lead, etc...), but all the mixes were originating from the same 4 tracks, so it wasn't "confusing", per se.

the lead and bass parts were pretty easy to hear and record, but i still couldn't figure out the baritone and tenor parts at the very end of the song. the Four Voices ending is different from the Joe Liles arrangement, and trying to meld the 4V tenor part, which Andrea liked, with the original Bari part (4V does this crazy thing where the Bari takes it up an octave, which we didn't want to use) was tough. so Bob and Andrea were kind of on their own. they came through brilliantly.

barbershoppers like to finish their songs with tags, defined as "...usually the last four to eight bars, and often considered the best chords in the song." during the tag, it's not uncommon for someone to hold out a long note while the other members sing around that note, finally resolving at the end and holding it out for a while. this is called the "post". that was my favorite discovery in my barbershop journey; the first time i heard a post (the double post on the 1st song of the Four Voices album, "It's a Brand New Day". the lead starts it off for 4 bars, then the tenor picks it up and finishes it off. it's extremely sweet). Seth was nervous about the post and was afraid he wouldn't be able to hold it out, etc., but if you were there, you heard with your own hears that he nailed it. he really did a great job. way to go, Seth!

i have since gone back and finished the last 2 parts and the song's done for now. it's funny how the 2nd half is all sloppy compared to the 1st half. when time was getting short, my perfectionist nature gave way to "get it done, already!!!". with better equipment and some spare time, i would like to do it again with fewer track segments, so as to have a more consistent mix from segment to segment. i already have folders on my machine called DWF, DWF2, DWF3, etc... what's a few more??