Richard Sparks

John Goldsmith is a terrific musician, directs the Heinz Chapel Choir at the University of Pittsburg, and teaches the musicianship courses for the Music Department. He was a member of Chanticleer and sang with Robert Shaw in France. If you wish to reach him directly about his workshops, contact him through his email address at […]

  A few other vocal issues to consider in terms of intonation: Extremes of range – moving to the top of any singer’s range will be a challenge–vocally and therefore for intonation as well. This is an area that needs the kind of long-term vocal work that I’ve already described: vocalizes that help singers learn […]

While I haven't exhausted the topic of voice and vowel, another area that intersects with intonation is that of rhythm/ensemble. As I mentioned early on, poor (or excellent) intonation has many potential causes. That's why we have to diagnose correctly what the underlying problem is and help the singers solve it, rather than just saying, […]

I talked last time about vowels. So, a bit more about voice training with your choir.   All of you have choirs at a different levels, from a choir (of any age group) with no vocal training whatsoever to perhaps a university or professional choir of trained singers. While one has to deal with vocal […]

So, away from tuning systems for a bit!   If you read Mike O'Neil's excellent guest post, you'll notice he talked about vocal production and vowels as barbershoppers are taught to work on both tuning and blend.   The basic principles are no different, no matter what the style and level of choir you conduct: […]

Here’s a guest blog post on barbershop tuning from Mike O’Neil, who taught high school for five years before becoming a music educator for the Barbershop Harmony Society (formerly known as SPEBSQA). He wrote to me offering a guest post and I happily accepted. Incredibly helpful and useful information. He included a couple examples of exercises […]