Judges: Music Category - Jean Sutton (JS), Presentation Category - Ron Billard (RB), Singing Category - John Grant (JG)
From Anvil:George Badland, John Brough, Fran Dwane, Liz Garnett, Jonathan Smith
The session opened with Jean introducing herself and the other two judges. She then went on to say she would not spend too much time talking about the music category as Liz could contact her during the week to get more detailed feedback, so she would give the other two judges most of the time. She did give some immediate feedback, though.
"Congratulations on your performance, thrilled that you qualified, good musicality, in tune -most of the time-, accurate -most of the time-, consistency at the level that you are singing, which is a good positive thing from which to move forward. I have a feeling that your intention was a little way ahead of your skills to put across what you wanted to achieve. In other words, the planning that you put into making the theme of the songs effective was there to be seen and there to be heard by everyone, but you didn’t always have the skill, technique, to make it come completely across to us. That’s not to say that we couldn’t see what you were planning to do.
On the negative side there were a few synchronisation problems, which often happens. We need just a little bit more of what you were trying to give us. We could see your dynamic plan, we could hear your dynamic plan in both of the songs, but we want to see a little bit more within the straightforward dynamics. In the overall shape, you need to introduce a little nuance. That when you are speaking you don’t just get louder through a phrase or you don’t just go quieter through a phrase; that there’s an inflection on words, some more word colouring. That’s not to say there wasn’t any there, there were places where I could pick it out for example the word ‘gold’ you did a beautiful effect on that, and you used the word ‘love’ to great effect. I’ve just picked two places. I am saying, go back and look at the whole of the lyric to see what else you can do with it. Don’t just sing me beautifully the odd word. The whole thing will move you a step forward.
Your second song in particular, have a look at the section where you have ‘here comes the bride’ You have a little bit of a problem before that on unity within the parts and then you are having an effect where you are saying ‘here comes the bride!’ Well, we all know that that is the wedding march. But is that appropriate to the sadness, the ‘angst’ in this particular song that you show it quite as strongly as that? That’s a reflective point, but it stood out from the sensitivity that you gave us either side as not being quite appropriate to what you were trying to achieve. There were one or two little bits where there was some ‘sing-speak’. One or two little occasions were there were problems with ‘breath support’ that gave a little problem to some tuning. But take that in the context. I’m going to shut up and pass straight over now to Ron"
"Picking up on what Jean said on more of what you are trying to give. I think you will all be able to give more of this, if the posture improves. There’s a certain amount of singing on the back foot as opposed to being on the balls of the feet. And, get the chest up all of the time. Because seeing this happen, (he sags in his posture) you think ‘it’s not going to work’ and you can’t get the control that Jean is saying you need to have in order to achieve that. So, a bit more attention to postures.
RB "Do you do good warm-ups before you get going"? Unanimous "yes" from Anvil.
RB "Did you do it today"? (Rhetorical and a little sarcastically put)
LG "Did you see us 12 months ago?"
RB "I probably did". (with a nervous laugh)
Continuing, RB said "Good things about the performance: Some of the guys showed a reasonable amount of tenderness in "when the gold turns to grey". Everybody has got to ‘buy into’ the message of the song, but everybody! You’ve all got to be acting. Now I don’t actually care if it’s from your heart or not. What I care about is what I receive. And if you are good actors and can say it is coming from your heart it’s much better than a load of people being sloppy on stage and delivering a sort of noise out there."
(editor: there was some body language indication from the other judges that they disagreed with what Ron was saying)"There’s a difference. I want the message to be crystal clear. In terms of building, moving through the song, you are telling a story so again Jean is saying We’ve got the dynamic shape of everything, each phrase has it’s own dynamic. Each musical section has got a shape, the whole song’s got a shape. So you have got dynamic shapes within dynamic shapes. And they should all be telling the story. So we get one climax in the first song and very often there should be more than one. You get sort of a part climax, then a bit more, then a bit more. But the shape has got to be there."
(editor: Some definite adverse body language from Jean Sutton and John Grant at this stage)RB "I am getting a bit of a grumble from my left" ---- "But there has to be a build up so that you are going in a direction. So it’s got to come up, it’s gonna come up again, perhaps a bit less depending on what it is. But a definite shape there. So, clearly the lyrical theme was there, you had done a lot of planning, that was obvious. We do need to get more facial involvement, more body involvement. Particularly to help you to shape the dynamics. I made a note about a guy with a beard, second row, just towards stage left. I thought he was quite good. If everybody performed like him. "That’s Rick" as one voice from Anvil (laughter) "I know his face was hidden behind all of the ‘fuzz’ but most of the time, that guy was performing very well, very involved in what was happening and if I were you, I would make him an object lesson. Stand him out the front, show these chaps what you want."
LG to us "shall we clone him?" (an aside from someone "that would be insufferable")RB (to Liz) You’re doing a hell of a lot in trying to bring out what should be brought out. You’ve only got, I say, you’ve only... You’ve got this guy in particular who is actually doing it. And he can demonstrate that everybody else can. You’re a chorus director, it’s obvious that you can do it. Us poor guys, we have also to do it. So restatements, a bit of body movement, a few gestures and these sort of things. You can do your own thing by and large. Watch Vocal Majority, they are all doing their own thing unless there is a choreographed move. When it’s choreographed, you have all go to do the same thing. But there’s a lot more physical involvement. I’m being Italian here aren’t I (arms waving about) But you can do that whilst you are singing and it’s what it needs."
RB continued. "I would say on ‘Church Bells’ - I have a ‘Bete noir’ on Church Bells. People sing it as a ‘wrist-slasher’, the end of the world has come and all that stuff. You can actually sing it as a very nice love song. It would go down well as a very nice love song, lot’s of tenderness. You actually love this girl. You are not going to go off and slash your wrists, you just love the thing. OK she’s going to be happy with another person but she’s going to be happy, so you have to live with that. Try it like that friends, just once through for my sake. It’s not a wrist-slasher, it’s not the end of the world. You just love this girl to death. She’s marrying someone else, it’s her day. OK, you’re a bit cut up about it, but by and large you still love her at the end of the day. If you don’t do that, is your anger and hurt greater than the love you felt? I don’t like that. I’m not into that. I don’t think it’s really barbershop to go round hating people and that sort of thing. The love should shine through all of that hurt. Wow, that’s deep. Hard to act but your guy with the beard, he can do that and I think you all can. Show the love. Over to you John"
"Singing judges have remarkable consistency really, the lowest mark that they gave you was 57, the highest mark that they gave you was 64. I gave you both those marks". (chuckles all round) "So there was obviously something between the two performances that was quite different. And the thing was for me, the second song that I marked down at 57, was the unisons between the parts. I don’t know what you do and how you learn your parts. You quite clearly do sections and of course everybody is getting it right in the sectional. It sounds like one voice OK? And then what’s happening is that for some reason when it comes together, there are one ore two people that are ‘cluster toning’ There is the note and they are clustered around it. Causing a troublesome out of tune-ness for me quite a lot of the time in that second song. Duets, do you do duets?"
LG "not so much"
JG "I think I’d like to work on duets"
LG "We work on the cone starting with basses, we add leads, then baritones, then tenors, but don’t necessarily have ‘lead-tenor’, ‘lead-baritone’ duets that much."
JG "Well, I think it might be worth doing. There might be some duets that are worth doing that may not necessarily be apparent. As you say everybody with the lead, that’s fine. Basses and baritones together, that’s fine. Those sorts of duets would be worth doing. But the other thing that I think is worth doing is if you find a parallel pattern within the music itself. If you find that two parts are doing that (signalling moving together) It may only be for a short passage but I actually think that’s worth dueting as well and might help to lock in some of the stuff that’s happening there at the moment.""So that for me was the big difference (between the two songs), it’s a consistency thing. The find of the day for me was "when the gold turns to grey". It’s not a song that I knew, I’ve heard it three times today and I been singing it haven’t I (to the other judges) I’ve been singing it ever since. I just think,-- what a gorgeous song, with everything there. I wasn’t worried so much about the ‘unisons’, they didn’t bother me so much in that song. I am not quite sure why they should be so different in ‘Mary’ but that’s something-----
JG "Can I get back in and talk about something different? --- ‘Harmony support’ That’s about two things for me, one is that I think the harmony parts need to try to sing with a more supported sound and they need to use that supported sound to support whatever is happening within the chorus. So that’s two elements of support there. One is about vocal support and the other is about support in terms of balance and blend. And I felt that in some places when you really wanted them to be there, that they were lacking, they were weak. There was a bass pick-up towards the end of the first song which was weak and you really wanted that to be quite strong and come in there."
LG "It was a focus thing, the break between the songs I think, just fragmented the focus slightly. It’s funny because I walked off stage saying to myself 63 / 58"
JG "64 / 57 yes"
LG "And we were aware that we had in us some really quite good things and some quite ordinary things. We worked within that band. We didn’t sing as badly as we are capable of." (laughter all round) "but the second song could have gone better"
JG "But the whole point is that there were flashes of very nice singing, which if you can take those flashes and just spread them out over the whole of the two songs, then you are actually capable of scoring quite a lot more"
JS butting in: "I think John, part of it was to do with that you had a better sense of song with the first one. That you had all bought into it and quickly bought into the musical ideas that are apparent there. Whereas the second song, you had not all quite bought into them. There were one or two stumbling blocks. One or two places ... on ‘no’ you had a build there then you had a little break"
LG "That’s the one were the sound stopped before I did, isn’t it"
JS "There were few places where that kind of thing happened which began to effect what John is saying. In the first song, you had bought into the whole song, in the second song you had bought into bits of it.
RB getting back in on the act: "I was because it was a mixed interpretation from the emotional point of view" I don’t know if you remember the quartet ‘Harmonix’ doing this two years running. They did it differently. The first time I told them about making it a love song, and it was gorgeous the second time. They still came second though. Yes an emotional theme that everyone can buy into."
RB butting in again. "Sorry, did that happen every time it went quiet, or at least quite often when it went quiet?
JG " What happened when it went quiet is that constriction started to creep into the voice. And I don’t know whether people have quite got the technique of how to sing quiet with energy. It’s the old ‘cold air’ ‘warm air’ thing. Blow cold air on your finger, blow warm air on your finger, sing with warm air. Put lots of space in the mouth, sing with some warm air and you can sing very quietly". (John then demonstrated) "You see you can maintain that energy and that resonance. You don’t get to the point where you say I can’t sing any quieter, I’m falling off the edge. ‘Me my love’ you have a beautiful pp bit there but it didn’t happen, it went tight instead of being sweet and round and beautiful."JG "Some ‘nit picky’ points. Early on in the first song, the word ‘eyes’?"
LG "Yes"
JG "Is someone supposed to be doubling with the leads there? Somebody was. Another thing was the balance on ‘trail’. Is it a major 9th?"
LG "yes"
JG "Work out and have a look at the balance on that. Bottom end bass baritone with that."
LG "Yes, makes sense"
JG "With the lead on the ninth and ..."
LG finishing the point "... and the tenors on the tenth. Yes we didn’t quite get that far on the list of things to do"
JG "But we are talking about taking it up another notch. I’ve got ‘side’ in the second song. Weak no energy. ‘By her side’ Is that the one?"
LG "Yes, the diminuendo was anticipated"
JG "What were they supposed to do? Hit it and cascade down?"
LG "Yes, it ran away from me"
JG "Sing speak to me is when people shorten the vowels too much. The are three reasons for chopping: not connecting the words together, too much accent on the down beat, and the third one is not singing the vowel sound through. So keep the sound running"
LG "That’s a useful list, thank you. It’s a good list".
JS "Thank you for listening to what we had to say"
We said thanks for a very good session
Fran asked a question about hand movements, and how much or how little to do, as he was now on the front row.
The reply from Ron was "You are an actor, do what you feel you have to do. If it’s too much, the chorus director will tell you but I doubt if she will. Just do it. Do what you feel you have to do. Don’t keep your hands down there because that’s a distraction for the audience. This is one of the reasons why people like their hands reasonably high up. When you are actually performing." Some demonstrations then took place.
The session closed after some further congratulations from the team.