The Art of Barbershop - Step by Step

I have been doing quite a bit of chorus coaching lately and have found myself repeating a couple of concepts over and over so I thought that I would just share them here.

Basically, as an audience member, I am GREEDY. When you are performing a song, if you don’t go above and beyond to express the story to me from every angle, you lose me. I don’t think that I am all that different from most barbershop audience members. Some are like me and are watching very intently to see the expression and emotion that are being portrayed, while others don’t necessarily know what they are looking for, but they definitely know when they don’t see/feel it.

We’ve all been there… you look out into the audience and you can see the people that are engaged in the performance and the ones that are NOT. I wish there were some kind of scientific research that had been done so that I could quote the answer to a question that I often ask…
“Do you know how long it takes to get an audience member back once you’ve lost them?”

I don’t know the EXACT answer, but I do know that whatever it is, it is TOO LONG.

So where does “Deliver +1” come in? This is my basic statement of how to work on emotional involvement and grow it into a full blown production each time that you perform barbershop music and barbershop choreography. Every time that you try to put your best effort into a rehearsal, “Deliver +1”. That way you don’t have to feel like you are being asked to duplicate and triplicate your effort level. Just think to yourself, every time that you perform, to add “+1” to what you did the last time that you performed that song. By the time that song is ready to be performed for an audience, you will have added, and added, and added emotional impact.

The final product will be worth the effort and your GREEDY audience members will thank you AND remember you.