thesoutherntiersmen

Rehearsal Recap 6/14

chriscarmentiberius — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 06:10:20 +0000

Tonight was a very interesting night. Toby Lyons took on a position to assist in moving the flow of rehearsal. The chorus started off the night with a great warm up. We moved into rehearsing for a couple of our summer venues. As of today these will be July 19 Highland Park and July 28, 2011 Chenango Bridge Park sing at 7:00 pm. After that we had a Bass/Tenor Bari/ Lead section rehearsal. We worked on Sweet Georgia Brown and Stars Fell on Alabama. We had three guests tonight. They were John Argiros, Dave Lewis, and Carl Riley. Dave Scott received his 27 year membership card. We finished up the night working on a couple more songs for the summer venues.

Interchapter Night

chriscarmentiberius — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 01:00:30 +0000

Tonight was the annual interchapter night in Montrose, PA. The Southerntiersmen hosted members and guests from various parts of New York and Pennsylvania including the Painted Post, Tunkhannock, and Wilkes-Barre chapters. We also had a notable appearance from out District President Pete Carentz. Our director Dave Scott warmed up the group showing several of the exercises the Southerntiersmen use. Director Emeritus followed up with teaching the group a couple tags entitled “Show Me Where the Good Times Are,” “My Friend My Buddy My Pal (AKA Adrian’s tag) ,” and “Sunshine is Bidding the Day Goodbye.” Tunkhannock, Painted Post and Binghamton chapters performed. There were 6 randomly selected pick-up quartets that sang. There were also 5 other quartets that performed. These quartets included 4 past midnight, The Troubadours, 4 For Him, and Anything Goes. We wrapped up the night with a song accompanied by a ventriloquist. Please check out our Facebook for pictures relating to this event.

Rehearsal Recap 5/23

chriscarmentiberius — Wed, 25 May 2011 00:24:45 +0000

Today was a very productive rehearsal we began our warm ups and briefly worked on an open throat exercise. The purpose of this is to relax the muscles in the throat to produce a free, relaxed sound. Jerry worked with the chorus doing an exercise first using “Heart of my Heart” and then “Sentimental Gentleman from Georgia.” In this exercise he used two direction signals. One was with his hands parallel to the ground with closed fist. When they were closed we were supposed to mouth the words. The other his hands were open flat perpendicular to the floor. When they were open we were supposed to sing. While there were some mistakes folksinger Jerry’s direction, the songs sounded fantastic.
After the exercise was finished Jerry asked the chorus what we thought the purpose was. Some responses were to “keep it in your head,” “watch the director,” and “keep the tonal center.” Jerry informed us it was for four reasons, to help with intonation, audiation, concentration, and focus. We worked on “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and “Sentimental Journey.” both made great improvements. We did a circle session singing “If the Lord be Willin’” followed by a quick sectional

To close the evening we had a sectional rehearsal for “Stars Fell on Alabama.” we finished learning the choreography to “Sweet Georgia Brown.” To end the night we did “The Star Spangled Banner.” All in all it was a very good night.

Rehearsal Recap 5/17

thesoutherntiersmen — Fri, 20 May 2011 12:43:20 +0000

This week rehearsal was more sparsely attended than previous weeks with only 28 members. We started with an excellent warm up exercise by Jerry Schmidt then we went to the breakout sessions.There continues to be a very positive feeling about the singing and presentation breakout sessions. The guys really like the small group attention and find it to be very helpful. In the enrichment session Jim Holder discussed music theory (identification of key signatures. We then worked on the new songs: Nevertheless, Stars Fell on Alabama, and Sweet Georgia Brown. We reviewed the stage presence plan for Sweet Georgia Brown and then towards the end we reviewed Stardust and When There’s Love at Home.

Rehearsal Recap 5/10

thesoutherntiersmen — Wed, 11 May 2011 14:30:50 +0000

Rehearsal was very exciting yesterday. Jerry Schmidt (our director emeritus) and Dave Andre (one of our assistant directors) prepared an “A” level presentation package for our song “Sweet Georgia Brown.” You can see more pictures of this on our Facebook page. In addition to this, we worked out some of the note problems on this song. We did a breakout session early on in the rehearsal and broke up into singing, presentation, and enrichment. The enrichment session worked on a tag that Webb Comfort (one of our assistant directors) taught to us. After that, the chorus members in enrichment who wanted to sing in a pickup quartet put their names in a hat to be selected. Everyone appeared to have a lot of fun. We did a small group sing through including everyone who knew the song “Stars Fell on Alabama.” Overall people seemed to have a great time.

Chris Scott

chriscarmentiberius — Mon, 09 May 2011 12:30:42 +0000

My name is Chris Scott. This past October I got married to my wife, Carmen. I have been in and out of the barbershop doors for about 15 years. I graduated from SUNY Fredonia with my B.A. in Psychology a year ago. Since then, I have been working at The Family Foundation School in various capacities including the Joint Commission compliance officer and Director of Human Resources. I have two brothers who are both involved in barbershop. My mother sings with the Carousel Harmony Chorus (the Sweet Adeline chorus in Binghamton). I have the great honor to sing as a lead in The Southerntiersmen under the direction of my dad. As of this year, I have been granted the opportunity to serve as the Vice President for chapter development for The Southerntiersmen chorus. I am writing the script for our annual show in October and serving as the show director. I am singing in a quartet with my dad and two other Southerntiersmen members. In my free time, I have been training my dog, Tiberius, to be a certified therapy dog with Therapy Dogs International. He has a couple more months to go but is progressing quite well. I am also training him to find various forms of contraband at the school. I hope you enjoy the content, and please check out our facebook and our home page.

New Categories

chriscarmentiberius — Sat, 07 May 2011 16:56:49 +0000

We have added several categories to make your searching pleasure more efficient. As we get started posting, we thought you would like to get to know our contributors. The “About Me” section has a little bit of all of our life stories. In the “Barbershop World” section you can read about our impressions. This will have information on our chapter, other chapters, and quartets. “Rehearsal Recap” is a brief overview of what we did at rehearsal. “Vocal Techniques” will share some information on the new techniques. Feel free to check out some of these postings.

Hello world!

thesoutherntiersmen — Fri, 06 May 2011 16:14:51 +0000

Hello Everyone,

The Southerntiersmen is stepping into the social media. We are very new at this. Our hope is to provide our followers with interesting information in the world of barbershop, vocal performance techniques, fun anecdotal experiences that occur, and many other exciting topics. Please check us out on facebook or look at our homepage. We hope you find this a regular fountain of knowledge. We encourage you to post comments on our articles. We hope you enjoy the site and remember Keep the Whole World Singing.