Education Class with Melodeers

This morning's education class was with Jim Arns and the Melodeers, last year's champions (and four times before that as well).

We were in the Grand Ballroom of the Renaissance Hotel, next to the Convention Centre. It was a bit hard to see from where we were sitting, but I took lots of notes.

We started with physical warmups: mostly arm waving, as that's all we could see. It reminded me of Michaela's warmup exercises for CKC.

Then Renee Porzel (I think) led a session to emphasise the similarities of everyone in Sweet Adelines. It was "raise your hands if you ...". The Melodeers are similar to everyone else in the proportion of old and new members, members who travel distances, members with children and grandchildren.

The theme for this class was "the common thread - it's all about the music"

Choosing Personal Responsibility

The Melodeers make it as simple as possible, and everything is based on the music. They create rehearsals that people want to attend, and so they've got rid of a lot of rules about things like attendance records. They believe in Choosing Personal Responsibility. This means that each member is in charge of what she gets out of rehearsal and what she contributes. For example, they don't provide learning tracks for new songs. For one thing, Jim keeps changing the arrangement and interpretation. Members learn however they can. Many members make their own recordings of rehearsals. If they miss a rehearsal, it's up to them to ask a riser buddy to tape it for them so they can catch up. People will also make their own video recording of choreo, or arrange to get a copy of someone else's recording.

There is a lot of internal peer pressure from other members that motivates people. There is also a lot of help available from Section Leaders and the Visual Team. Jim teaches at the level of the fastest learners, and he teaches the members who are at rehearsal (not those who've missed rehearsals).

Renee says this all carries over to her personal life as well: she found her 7 year old son phoning Dominos to order pizza because on rehearsal nights, he knows they have pizza for dinner.

What they don't do
Julie has been a member of the Melodeers for 40 years and has 5 international first place medals to show for it. She says they don't do much admin business at rehearsals, they trust their leaders to do it behind the scenes. Since 1976 they have not had attendance requirements, because it bogged things down. She says you can't legislate enthusiasm, and perfect attendance doesn't win points from the judges. Members don't want to miss a minute of rehearsals. They want to give Jim all the time he needs.

Vocal Production
Jim talks about their approach to vocal production.

Unity means a common approach to whatever we do. He refers to the 5 principles: posture, breathing, phonation, resonation, articulation.

About posture: "the finest instrument on the globe has a human around it" - the voice is different from other musical instruments because it is not fixed in place. The chorus demonstrates monkey vs person vs champion singer.

About resonance: Jim talks about the 'living room' vs the 'bathroom'. In the living room, we want to get the sound absorbing soft bits out of the way to produce a rich, warm, lush sound. In the bathroom we use the hard surfaces of the hard palate and teeth to produce ring. We change the internal shapes and surfaces of the vocal instrument to produce sound.

Jim talks about the living room vowels: ah oh aw; and the bathroom vowels: ee, eh , (and others I didn't write down), the schizo vowels oo and eugh (roadkill oo), and the ugly child a. I might not have these exactly right.

(I'll finish this later, the quartet finals are starting in 10 minutes).

Jim gets the Melodeers to demonstrate various kinds of disunity by singing Love Letters Straight to Your Heart: Vowel matching disunity, placement disunity, resonance disunity. We can hear the difference, even though the notes and words are correct.

Our knowledge and expectations have increased over the years, we're all still learning.

Artistry and Expression
Renee says the lyrics of most of our barbershop ballads are beautiful, they're often about love and other emotions. Each member of the Melodeers is asked to create their own story that means something to them, based on their own life experiences, to help them feel and communicate the emotions of the song.

Renee says as a judge she looks across the faces of a chorus and can see lightbulbs either on or off (on, on, off, on). The Melodeers demonstrate with the baris off and the rest on: we can pick the baris. Then the whole chorus demonstrates off, on, off. Faces also affect the sound.

Physical movement
Telling everyone to move on the breath is a basic way of getting everyone moving, but it looks pretty funny (the Melodeers demonstrate) when it doesn't match the lyrics. It's better to move in a real and genuine way, and this also helps phrase endings and makes dynamics easier.

New member
Alison has been a member for 2 years. She is a professor of communication in her other life and says you can apply a 'transactional model of communication" to singing: it's about sending and receiving messages. Music, emotion and individual messages are all simultaneously communicated. She says Melodeers rehearsals are fun, action packed and never dull.

Demo
Jim uses Time After Time to demonstrate what it sounds like when each part does something different; then one voice sticking out; then baris over-emoting. He says if everyone is emotionally connected, there's unity. By the way, Renee says the rule for the chorus is no hands above the waist.

Then they demonstrate singing with a steady flow of air, and how this prevents choppiness.

The Melodeers sing Why Did I Choose You.

Administration
Donna is Team Manager. She explains how administration has been streamlined, and that "it's all about the music". The Management Team meets once a month for an hour before rehearsal. They circulate all reports before the meeting, and any questions and clarification is done by email beforehand. Financial decisions are based on "does it help the singing?" Dues are $365 a year and have not been increased for 4 years. The role of the Management Team is to support Jim's vision. Rehearsals are for singing.

Inflection
Jim says in speech inflection is the rise and fall of pitch in the voice to add meaning and emphasis. In singing we also use inflection on some words to add character. They demonstrate using Ring Out the Bells in Dixieland to contrast with inflection, without inflection.

Renee says the visual plan matches the music. They demonstrate using small hands vs big hands for the big bell on "ding dong ding dong". A visual mismatch affects the music too because it feels wrong for the singers.

Questions
How do you get rid of 's'?
Sing vowel to vowel eg ki-ssme, not kiss me. In uptunes the tempo tells us where the vowels go, so it's easier than ballads. Watch the Director: often stray 's's are human error. Jim is not a big fan of having some people leave off the 's': it's a cheap short cut that makes it harder for singers to express meaning ("ki me"?)

Does Jim sing, and if so what part?
No, but if he did it would be bass.

How do you indoctrinate new members?
Melodeers don't provide learning tapes, because Jim is always making changes and learning tapes would become out of date very quickly. New members are thrown in the deep end. They do their own taping and recording and they show up every week so they don't miss out.

How to achieve those long held notes at the end of a song?
Good breathing skills. Or, if necessary, stagger breathing but do it artistically: make sure you exit and enter on whatever vowel the rest of the chorus is singing.

How big is your Music Team and how often do they meet?
Jim introduces the Music Team: Associate Directors, Director's Resource Coordinator, Section Leaders, Tape Evaluations. There are quite a lot of them. They meet whenever they need to - not necessarily all together.

How often do you have Section rehearsals?
Section rehearsals are always on chorus nights, because of the distances people have to travel and the other demands on their time. Also, if some people didn't come to Section rehearsals they would be unproductive.
They don't have extra rehearsals leading up to contest. They do have geographic groups that meet separately sometimes.

Does Front row learn choreo separately? And do they sing as well as dance?
There are no outside rehearsals for front row, and they do sing. Jim demonstrates how the chorus sounds when the front row doesn't sing. The choreo plan is taught during normal rehearsals: 90% is the same as the chorus anyway. It's never about the front row: they are a minority.

What are qualifying requirements?
Vocal requirement is 0 0 0: zero mistakes on words, notes or breathing. The vocal qualification check is done over two weeks: if they don't pass the first week, they work on it during the week and then resubmit the second week. The deadline is firm, and some people don't go to contest because they haven't qualified. It happens about 10-12 weeks before contest.

Once they have passed the vocal requirement, they do a visual qualification on the risers during a rehearsal. It's done by the Visual Team, who assign scores. They must achieve a pass.

Qualification is only required for contest, not for all repertoire. It's not punitive, because lots of help is offered to get people through it.

How can a small chorus sound as good as the Melodeers?
Jim demonstrates what it sounds like when just one row of the Melodeers sing.

Do you have auditions for front row?
There is ongoing evaluation during rehearsals. Front row auditions are held a year and a half before International contest.

Melodeers have got over being told individually when they make mistakes. Jim says "there is no crying in barbershop" - we are musicians, and like all musicians we can take critique.

How do new members learn the repertoire?
They do get a CD with the two audition songs (contest songs) on them. They get a list of current repertoire, and learn the rest of the repertoire the same way as everyone else. They are told who they can go to to ask them to record their part for them during rehearsal. They can buy Melodeers CDs! They are required to audition in a quartet in front of the Music Staff, about 4-6 weeks after they start.