Eight-Part Barbershop Tag In Parallel Fifths

Feb 4

Barbershop 2 Comments

I have recently observed, on Youtube, a very interesting method of turning any barbershop tag into a jazzy eight part tag: simply double each part a perfect fifth higher. Or, said another way, have a second quartet simultaneously sing the same tag a fifth above.

Despite everything I was taught in college, I have been curious to try this myself. However, due to sound bleed-through from my upstairs neighbors, I can’t really record in my apartment these days. So I multitracked this one tonight in my car on my Zoom H4. Although I am sure I looked quite suspicious, I think it was worth it.

You can hear the original four part arrangement here.

I present to you “In Dixie Land Where I Was Born” from David Wright’s collection: Classic Tags for Men’s Voices in parallel fifths:

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Download

Update: I have typeset the complete octet in the key of “C” as a pdf file and also generated a midi file.

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2 Comments

  1. lamby
    Nov 15, 2009 @ 05:15:57

    Heh, it almost works :) Great sound as usual though.

    Reply

  2. Lisa
    Nov 21, 2009 @ 22:44:43

    Oh yea!
    Don’t ever let those heavy beasts above get you down.
    xM

    Reply

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