Bring back those good ol' days

In the course of "discovering music" today (on the Live635 Barbershop channel), I stumbled upon a barbershop quartet based in Vancouver. Their name is Realtime, and they won the 2005 SPEBSQSA* World Championships. I heard a very interesting arrangement of Loch Lomond from their album, Four Brothers.


Realtime (Barbershop quartet)

This may not surprise many people, but I used to sing barbershop. I started in high school when they did The Music Man, and our quartet stayed together and sang a lot of concerts. It was fun with the four of us singing one to a part. I joined the local barbershop chorus. We sang lots of different shows, wore tuxedos, learned choreography, and competing in contests. (Is this starting to sound like a drug confession?!) I sang in a chorus out of Elyria while I went to school, and tried to convince my fellow music majors of the greatness of barbershop harmony. Heh. Ringing 7th chords, total lack of irony or postmodernism, and trying to move an audience through song. Pretty corny, huh? Maybe. But if you sing and know how all these chords work, and have a large repertoire (in your head), you can spend all night ringing chords and singing your hear out. I miss that sort of community.

* = Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America. (Wait, it's been renamed as something else, the Barbershop Harmony Society. Not as much fun.)