Edit: Most of the explanation I came up with for this turns out to be wrong. I will update when I understand more thoroughly.
I recently had a conversation with my dad regarding “overtones” (a note that can be heard in a chord that is not acutally being sung). He informed me that what we in the barbershop community call overtones can be more accurately called sum tones, or as wikipedia calls them combination tones. The explination is that all tones, or sounds that we percieve as a single note, are actually comprised of that note, and an infinite number of notes above it (overtones). These notes are arranged according to the harmonic series: the root and octave above, the fifth above that, the root above that, the third above that, and so on with the intervals between these notes getting smaller as we More
Chelsea and I have been dating a year and six months as of today. If she had been dating a real singer, he probably would have written her a sweet love song by now. But, for reasons I still don’t understand, she chose me instead. So instead of a whole love song, she just gets a barbershop love tag.
I love you Chelsea. Thanks for putting up with me and my nerdy ways for a whole year and a half.
Written and recorded for Chelsea:
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For a long time the hill on the south side of the City College had a collection of boards on it that were arranged to spell “LOVE IS THE ANSWER.” more recently, vandals/artists have started rearranging those boards to spell different things. Almost every time I walk from Chelsea‘s house to the bus, it has changed. For a while I thought it would make a cool art project to photgraph all the different things it says, but I have no camera. Today I had a great idea: I could tweet them! So from now on, you can find out what the hill is currently saying here: https://twitter.com/sfcchill (updated every time I pass it).
Due to a rehearsal, I am not going to be able to see my Mama on Mother’s Day, so I am celebrating it with her a day early. My acquaintance/idol/current-ipod-favorite H.P. Mendoza, and a girl at 16th and Mission Poetry who read a poem about her mom, reminded me that being an artist is pointless if you can’t use your art form to express yourself. So for Mother’s Day I made my mom an audio/barbershop Hallmark greeting card multi-tracked in a noisy practice room at school.
Happy Mother’s Day Lisa:
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Last semester, when I was still a member of the SFSU Chamber Singers, I was asked to read a translation before one of our songs. In my effort to have the words be understood, I ended up reading it very lifelessly. So lifelessly that it became the butt of jokes. Following the old adage “If you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em” Paul Kim and I teamed up to perform the ultimate parody, which we assaulted our conductor Josh Habermann with on the bus. It was not recorded, so today I sat down and multi-tracked a recreation of that fine moment.
The song I was translating is the first in this set:
‘Vita de la vita mia’ translation as read by a robot:
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When I was taking Vocal Literature from Dr. Alissa Deeter, she mentioned that for some reason when she thought of the song “Widmung” by Robert Schumann, she always thought of it being sung by the Chipmunks. It took me some time, but about a year ago, I got around to making her crazy thoughts a reality, and recorded just that: a Chipmunk’s Widmung. I then emailed her telling her I “found it.” I have been told she did not realize I had made it until she played it for her class, who gave up the secret.
Here, it is for your enjoyment:
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Inspired by theseYoutubevideos, I taught my friends the Cry tag, by Brian Beck, from the ubiquitous tag book (number 14). This tag is especially fun because it works in almost any key, high or low. Here is my multi-track version in G#-ish. I am thinking of calling my multi-track quartet “Jortet”!
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