But any hobby, if it is to be sustained, takes work, effort, and a desire to improve. Barbershop singing is no different.

Here are two great definitions of the word hobby:

• An activity or interest pursued outside one’s regular occupation and engaged in primarily for pleasure.
• A diversion that occupies one’s time and thoughts, usually pleasantly.

There is, however, no pleasure for either participant (the singer) or recipient (the audience) in bad singing. So obviously, this hobby needs the conscious effort of the singer to make it enjoyable for all.

Inconsistency

The bane of most, if not all, directors is inconsistency. Inconsistency in singing can take many forms. Here are just three.

• Lazy or unconscious singing
• Improper breath support
• Forgotten song elements

Let’s look at each one in more depth.

Lazy or unconscious singing

Here, the singer makes very little or no effort to focus on what he or she is doing. The word “autopilot” comes to mind. There is a blank stare, no energy in the voice, no attempt to shape the vowels properly. In short, there is no effort to change what they’re doing or always have done.

I very fortunately had a great mentor in Paul Graham, the baritone of the 1968 International Quartet Champion “The Western Continentals.” Unknown to him, I modeled my singing and performance style after him. From Paul, I learned how to properly sing my baritone part in relation to the other parts. I learned how to enunciate difficult words so that the audience doesn’t have to figure out what is being sung. To this day, I still articulate the word “I’ll” as “aisle.” It’s deeply embedded in my brain.

Every time you sing, whether on a contest stage, in a show, in a pickup quartet, or woodshedding on a bus, your brain and your energy must be engaged. Always sing that “e” vowel properly and the same way. Make every effort to blend your voice with others instead of plowing through a song with no regard for your fellow singers.

Improper breath support

Diaphragmatic breathing has been taught for a very long time. We run through exercises during warm-up sessions to focus on proper breathing. We see it demonstrated. We try it ourselves. But then in rehearsal or on a performance, we don’t think about it at all.

The only time you don’t have to think about how you are breathing is when you have truly mastered the technique. For most of us, that is next to never.

When our voices crack or we can’t hold that note as long as we used to, look to the breath. Focus (there’s that word again) on your posture and your breathing. If you are sitting, sit up straight with your back away from the chair back. Keep both feet on the floor. Be attentive. Your power comes from your breath and your center.

Forgotten song elements

When your director has to stop a song in mid-stream, it’s usually because something did not go as planned. Here are some examples:

• The chorus wasn’t ready to start when the director gave the downbeat.
• The director didn’t hear the proper pickup, or the execution was sloppy.
• The chorus took a breath at a spot where they were instructed not to breathe.
• An instruction has to be voiced over and over and over again.

All of these things, and more, indicate again that the brain is not engaged in the process. Getting the brain engaged takes work. It takes effort. It takes consciousness. But this awareness is essential if you are going to grow in your hobby and enjoy it for a lifetime.

It really is up to you.

Musical potholes

Musical potholes are the little things in a song — note intervals, lyrics, word combinations, consonants — that make understanding the song a challenge to the listener.

Our job as singers is not as easy as we might think. We have to do extra work so that the audience doesn’t have to. What do I mean?

How often have you heard a song on the radio or elsewhere, and wondered: “What did they say?” Once you saw the lyrics printed out, or had someone else tell you what that line was, only then did you say: “Oh, now I understand!”

We must work extra hard to make the lyrics understandable so that the audience members don’t have to wonder what we just sang. Let me give you some examples from the music my chorus is doing on St. Patrick’s Day.

Examples

In the song At the End of a Cobblestone Road is the lyric: “from my Ireland, far over the sea.” If the singer doesn’t take the extra effort to pronounce the “r” in Ireland, the line sounds like: “from my island, far over the sea.”

The introduction to It’s a Great Day for the Irish contains another pothole. “March 17″ is difficult to sing because of the “ch” on the end of the first word, and the “s” sound on the beginning of the next word. The singer must put out the extra effort to pronounce the “ch” sound in the word March before singing the next word. It takes thoughtfulness to do this right.

Here are some other lyrical potholes to avoid:

• Sing hour whenever you see the word our — otherwise, it comes across as are.
• Sing your and you’re like it rhymes with sewer. Without that effort, it can sound like yore.
• Sing aisle whenever you come across the work I’ll — otherwise, the word sounds like ahl.
• Sing difficult words, like there’ll, with the extra effort that it takes to pronounce all the syllables.

There are other potholes that are hidden in our music. I’d like to hear from you about the others that you have come across, and how you avoid them.

Bottom line

The bottom line is this: Singing well is more than just learning the notes, the words, the choreography, and the dynamics. You must also make the conscious effort to find those potholes and do what it takes to smooth over them so that your audience doesn’t have a bumpy ride.

Barbershoppers know: Give me a B flat and I can sing most songs. But why are “The Old Songs,” “My Wild Irish Rose,” “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” or any of a hundred other songs not written in the key of C? After all, C is easier with no sharps or flats, and is only two semitones (half steps) higher than B flat.

When listening to a song in the key of C that my chorus recorded, I discovered that after sixteen measures, we had flatted one semitone to the key of B. Exactly sixteen measures later they had flatted one more semitone. After that second slip, they stayed on pitch in B flat for the rest of the song.

While flatting is not an acceptable practice, I found it interesting. Maybe they wanted to get back to their comfort zone to a key that feels “right” to them. Maybe we are familiar with what a B flat song sounds like in our heads. This is speculation, but I wonder.

Whatever the reason, scientists are letting us know what we barbershoppers around the world have already figured out: Just give me a B flat and I’m in tune with the universe!

To be honest, I think singers often throw their music into the back seat of the car after rehearsal and then forget about it until the next rehearsal. I can tell which singers do this because I have to remind them of the same issues week after week. What singers fail to realize is that people around them know when you haven’t memorized your music. The audience knows, too.

Muddied sound

In many instances, there’s a split second time lag when the singer, who didn’t take the time to learn the music, leans on the singer who did. The result is a muddied sound. In extreme circumstances, a section or the entire chorus can forget the correct notes and words on stage. It’s as if a school of fish spontaneously turns in unison and goes in a different direction. I refer to this as a brain fart, and the few seconds that it takes to recover are excruciating. Nobody, especially the director, feels good about that.

It occurs to me that singers don’t instinctively know how to get off the music. I asked the MountainAires Music and Performance Committee for suggestions, and here is what some of them said.

• Use the “one hour” rule – Take at least ten minutes a day, six days a week, to study your music.
• Write out the words either on paper or on a computer. Writing out the words can reveal some patterns in the lyrics that can make memorization easier.
• Set expectations for each song. When a song is introduced, set a realistic date in the future when that music must be committed to memory.
• Let the singers know what you expect of them, and then “act as if . . . until.”

This last bullet point is difficult for a lot of volunteer singers. I once left a community choir because the music director wasted precious rehearsal time going over the same material covered in previous weeks. When I asked why, he said he didn’t want to set expectations because members of an all-volunteer choir might revolt if pushed too hard. What he failed to realize is that, by not setting expectations and following through on them, those who work on their music feel held back by those who don’t. Managing to the lowest common denominator is not always the best approach, and can be detrimental to the vitality of the group.

But how do you strike the proper balance between pushing too hard or not at all? What is the middle path? If you have some suggestions, please add a comment to this post. You’ll need to register to make a comment as a means to minimize blog spam, but I’ll approve your registration quickly. We all could benefit from your experience and ideas.

So the accuracy is down, you are singing with confidence and energy, you have understood the interpretive plan of the song. The only thing that is left is the performance of the song. That is the T in our word puzzle.

Putting it all together

The T in ACE IT stands for the total package or total performance of the song. It is where you put the many hours of preparation into practice. It is where you realize the potential of the song.

We have all heard it, and perhaps even experienced it first hand. You know you are “in the groove” when time seems to stop. Nothing else matters right then. You are focused completely on the song, the emotion, the message. I recall such a moment when, in finishing a tender ballad that I and everyone else was engaged in, there was no applause from the audience for what seemed to be hours. Then there was a collective inhale and sigh from the audience before they burst into applause. They got it.

That moment would not have been possible without all of the preceeding steps. I knew my notes. I was confident in my knowledge. I had the energy to do what was in the interpretive plan. In the final analysis, it was the total effort there on stage that produced that emotional reaction from the audience. And this was just one song!

Performance process

Everyone is counting on you. Your fellow singers depend on you to be consistent. It takes time. It takes your willingness to go through the performance process one step at a time. That’s what this is. It is not so much a learning process of a song we are going through, but a performance process. We all are learning how best to perform a piece of music. Go to your chapter or quartet rehearsals now with a new attitude, a new insight. You’re not just learning the music, you are learning how to perform the music.

So there you have it. I hope that this helps you “ace” your next performance.