Experienced singers
Barbershop Harmony Society Members
If you are BHS members and experienced singers, you already know how much fun we have with this hobby. You might be looking to get back into barbershopping or you might just be looking for some opportunities to sing. We would love to give you the opportunity to do what you love - sing!
Low Key, Low Pressure
We encourage our guests to have fun and enjoy the experience of singing four-part harmonies and chords with us. This should be about you having a positive and rewarding experience and not feeling any pressure from us. We’ll love it if you sound fantastic but we want you to come back because you enjoyed your singing experience. It’s important to us that guests feel warmly welcomed. If you decide we’re not the ensemble for you, that’s not a problem.
Singers with Experience
We do value our experienced singers. We love when guys show up and they understand our hobby and can already sing well. If you’ve been in a barbershop Chorus, Quartet, or Choir, hallelujah that’s awesome! You’ll fit right in with the Tidelanders.
Beginning Singers
If you don’t have a lot of experience but you have a good voice, that counts! Examples include: singing in a choir in a church or at church services, in a show choir or a band, in the car, or at home. People with confidence that are willing to work hard will find great success with the Tidelanders. At our core, we are performers and provide multiple opportunities for our members to take the stage throughout the year. We can help beginning singers.
To Sight Read or Not
Even though it helps, you don’t need to be able to sight read. We provide learning tracks as well as access to our sheet music. The evolution of using the learning tracks as teaching tools can help you learn both the words and the notes you need to sing. If you can’t sight read, don’t worry about it. You can sing softly until you know the music well enough to sing with the same volume as your section.
Would you like to learn how to sight-read? Read our article on How to Improve Sight-Reading Skills.
Singing Techniques
Our chorus provides many tools to our men in order to help them learn proper singing techniques. We provide guest books, access to sheet music and learning tracks. Furthermore, section leads and current members can help you learn to sing and develop your singing voice.
Our Director and Leads help us work on many technical aspects involved in singing to help us improve our performances. We sometimes bring in professional coaches to give us Private Vocal Instruction (PVI).
Singing Tools
Our members use tools like TE Tuner, AudioStretch, and others to measure pitch, slow learning tracks down, and help sing the right notes.
Technique and Music Theory
If you already have training and/or education in music theory or experience singing in a choir in church, that’s great but it’s also not required. In the event that you have musical training or knowledge, you’ll easily understand our terminology and techniques.
You can learn more technical aspects of our hobby by reading articles on various subjects that we’ve wrtten, including:
Relative Pitch (reprinted with permission from the BHS)
Relative Pitch Part Two: Relative Pitch vs. Perfect Pitch
Basics of Barbershopping Explained
Tuning Concepts to the Rescue!
Basics of Music Theory Explained