February 2024

Soapbox: Inclusiveness, and how not to do it

Published by Liz Garnett at Helping You Harmonise on Thursday 29th February 2024

I wrote this post last September, in the midst of an eventful period in the British barbershop community, but a wise friend talked me down from posting it at the time. She may continue to have her doubts about the wisdom of posting it, indeed, which I can understand, but I’m choosing to do so anyway for two reasons.

First, because whilst the immediate crisis has passed, the issues it deals with have not gone away and there are some points here I’ve not seen in the public debates (though they have circulated to a degree in private ones I think).

Second, as a record of the experience of the events at the point they happened. Looking back at the post, the tone carries considerably more heat than I usually bring to this blog, and I did consider rewriting it before posting to de-escalate the language. But the strength of the reaction is testament to the impact of the events, and whilst the grown-up thing is often to minimise one’s public displays of emotional response in order to maintain diplomatic relations, there is a risk thereby of pretending the damage didn’t happen. So, I’m saying, calmly, this is how uncalm it felt 6 months ago.

A Champion Day

Published by Liz Garnett at Helping You Harmonise on Friday 23rd February 2024

I spent Saturday with my friends at Bristol A Cappella, working with them on music they will be performing as outgoing Mixed Chorus Champions at BABS Convention in May. What with their mic-warming duties, swan-song set and show spot, there’s a good deal more music to prepare for the event than you ever have to bring as a competitor, so we had a busy time. Fortunately, the groups who are faced with this packed schedule are the ones who have demonstrated skills that will win a contest so are up for the extra challenge.

Practical Aesthetics and Emotional Triggers

Published by Liz Garnett at Helping You Harmonise on Sunday 18th February 2024

I mentioned at the start of my recent post on Theo Hicks’s session on Philosophies of Musical Enjoyment that I had been spurred into getting it written and posted by a conversation with a director who hadn’t been there, but might, I hypothesised, find the ideas useful. That post got too long to move onto how he might do so, so I’m coming back to address his particular circumstance separately.

The particular challenge he was facing was working on a song with his chorus that is particularly poignant, and might touch some his singers a bit too closely for comfort as it referenced in its later stages themes of bereavement and loss. Indeed, he found it quite personally challenging himself even without specific recent life events that might be even more triggering.

Obviously, I pointed him towards my post from last year that address this question directly. But after hearing Theo’s session, it occurred to me to wonder whether the different modes of musical engagement he discussed might give a more purposeful and strategic way to manage this.

Theo Hicks on Practical Aesthetics

Published by Liz Garnett at Helping You Harmonise on Wednesday 14th February 2024

The final plenary session at January’s LABBS/BABS Directors Weekend was led by Theo Hicks on the topic, ‘Philosophies of Musical Enjoyment: Listening for the Singers’ Joy’. It produced lots of things I wanted to reflect on, and because I kept getting them tangled up I have been procrastinating trying to organise my notes. But a recent conversation with another director who wasn’t there had me wanting to refer to it and so it’s time to try and untangle the thoughts to render them shareable.

The first thing to note the effect that having that title on the schedule had on the weekend’s overall agenda. It put the word ‘joy’ into our common lexicon in all kinds of contexts before any of us know exactly what Theo was going to talk about.

On Getting Out of the Way

Published by Liz Garnett at Helping You Harmonise on Wednesday 7th February 2024

Sometimes you find a common theme emerging in a variety of different parts of your life, and it’s interesting to reflect on how the same principle plays out in different contexts.

While arranging

I’m looking at the most recent one first, as it was this that made me notice a pattern. I was working on an arrangement for barbershop contest, and was getting bogged down in chord choice. Everything sounded a bit mannered and awkward.

Eventually I thought to ask myself: if I were just arranging this as a song with no thought of style requirements, what would I do? And the natural chord choice revealed itself immediately. For sure, it was one of those permitted-but-less-conspicuously-ringy chords that the style guidelines discourage in excess, but it just sounded so much better than any of the other engineered solutions I had been playing with. And the right chord for the moment will always ring better on the voices in real time than a choice that is theoretically ringier but expressively counter-intuitive.

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