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Unless something unexpected happens very soon, last weekend was my last coaching trip to Germany for 2018. This time I was with the Barberlights in Remseck, near Stuttgart, and we had a full schedule together, starting Friday evening and continuing all day Saturday and most of Sunday too. To say this allowed us to get a lot done together would be an understatement.

It wasn’t just the sheer number of hours we spent together, I’d add, it was the chance to sleep on our experiences together and revisit the next day. In this sense, the session on Friday, though only an hour and a half long, really punched above its weight. Not only did we start Saturday having done some groundwork together, we’d also given our brains the chance to process, sort and embed the work.

Floddy helping at a coaching sessionTen years ago I was wondering what to write in my inaugural blog post, and realising it didn’t really matter at that point as nobody at that stage knew I was writing it. This post, marking the occasion of Helping You Harmonise’s 10th birthday, makes me feel under both more and less pressure than that first one.

More, because I’m reasonably sure this one will be seen and read – it raises the stakes if what you’re doing is witnessed. Less, because I’ve learned that my policy of writing about what I find interesting and trusting that somebody else may find it interesting too usually works. Indeed, not only has blogging brought me into all kinds of interesting conversations over the years with people who share my interests, it has rewarded me with friendships with people from all over the world.

Warm-up action pic

I spent Sunday working with Endeavour, a brand new mixed barbershop chorus. They have been in the planning for some time, but actually sang together for the first time on Saturday, so I had the honour being their first ever visiting coach. Their singers are drawn from barbershop groups in Ireland, the UK and Germany, so their rehearsals take the form of intensive weekends in locations handy for airports.

It is an auditioned chorus, and many of the singers know each other from participating in the various Harmony Brigades. Hence, it is populated with people with considerable experience and skill as singers, and who are accustomed to learning music independently. Their challenge is melding these vocal and musical resources into a coherent ensemble within a short timescale so as to make the most of the artistic potential available.

About to start the warm-up...

Over dinner on Saturday night in Bonn I was informed that in that part of the world, doing something twice made a tradition, and doing something three times created a tradition that goes back to time immemorial. So with this second visit to coach The Rhubarbs had rendered our working together traditional.

This time we had two full days together, which allowed us not only to explore more different themes, but also to work on something one day and revisit after a night’s sleep to see which had embedded overnight, and which needed more work to secure them,

A recurrent theme throughout the weekend was the relationship between breath, support and resonance. Establishing a deep-set breath with bucket-cup-teaspoon exercises at the start of each session set us up to develop the clarity of tone that not only adds brightness to the sound but allows the breath to last longer, as it comes from more efficient contact of the vocal folds. Once you get the voice set up this way, it tends to stay there, only needing occasional reminders to empty the bucket completely before starting to sing to reset any time the tone loses focus.

As I write this title, I realise there’s a pleasant self-referentiality in revisiting this particular subject. Last time I wrote about it, my point was that, instead of getting frustrated with their singers when they find themselves repeating instructions, a director could more usefully consider why their instructions aren’t working and explore different ways to achieve their ends.

Today’s thought shares the point that it is counter-productive for directors to get frustrated by saying the same things week after week, but suggests that this is because sometimes repetition is exactly what is needed.

Or at least, on the name that chord has gone by hitherto. My previous blog post on this got quite a bit of discussion going amongst barbershop arrangers. Not over the new name – most people were as happy to recognise Karri’s suggestion as very fit for purpose as I was – but about the necessity to replace the old one.

There were two types of responses overall. There were the ‘thank goodness, this has been bugging me too,’ type – which I’m not going to dwell on except to acknowledge their existence, as I’ve already written quite a lot to meet those needs. And there were the, ‘this has never struck me as racist so I don’t see the need to change’ ones. These ones need a more detailed response.

The White Rosettes during their monumental mic-cooling set

The last weekend in October is the traditional moment for the Ladies Association of British Barbershop Singers to hold their annual Convention. This year we were back in Harrogate, at the venue in which I experienced my very first one, 21 years ago. The Cheshire Chord Company won the chorus competition on that occasion too.

After the extravangzas of the last two years (the 40th anniversary Convention in 2016, and the European Convention last year), this years’ was always going to feel smaller. But the experience of that was a positive change: it was more intimate, easier to spend quality time with friends, less of a scrummage trying to get round the building.