The Fredösphere

The Church of the Holy Cross must be in a rough neighborhood, since its signage exhorts visitors to eschew nudity and weapons.  Well, no, it's not in a neighborhood; it's in Second Life.

Meanwhile, aworks noticed that Pandora now supports classical music.

Last Saturday, my ad hoc quartet sang a set of barbershop classics and "My Antonia," my new barbershop composition.  (Hopefully to become a contestable barbershop composition.)  I don't recall having more truly mixed feelings from a performance experience, although I'd give it an overall highly positive rating.  My unhappiness stems from my attempts to get the group organized and rehearsing early, which were frustrated in multiple ways.  In the end, we had to scramble around, recruiting a student from U-M (John Hummel is his name) and over-rehearsing the last few days, which wore out some of the voices.  My voice was one of the casualties, partly because I was experimenting with the high tenor part performed in my falsetto.  Is my falsetto technique fundamentally flawed, or did I simply try for more volume than was reasonable?  I'm not sure, but I'm told barbershop tenors frequently resort to falsetto, so somebody must know how to make it work.

It will take me a while to rework "My Antonia" and get it recorded, but you'll hear it here eventually, I promise.  Meanwhile, hear Max Q sing "You Can Fly."  The sound quality is marginal, but the tag ending is crazily ornamental even by the standards of the genre.

Labels: BarbershopHarmony