The Fredösphere

Ian Moss has a new blog, with an emphasis on arts management to go along with the composing.

Dark Roasted Blend has one of its gallaries of gorgeous retro-future art.  This time the subject is cities.  (Hat tip Gravity Lens.)

I've been looking for a good video of the Four Bettys for a while now.  I found one with them singing "So Happy Together," but they really deserve something with better sound quality.  Meanwhile, enjoy.  Female barbershop quartets use a two-staff system with treble clef on the top for the tenor and lead and bass clef (transposed up an octave) for the baritone and bass.  This way, arrangements for men's groups can be adopted effortlessly by women's groups, and vice versa.  One more factoid:  as best I can tell, the term "beauty shop quartet" has become moribund; perhaps stillborn is the better metaphor.  One is inclined to be impressed by the female bass (really, a female with something like the range of a male tenor) but don't overlook the difficulty of singing the soprano part, which can get very high, but must always stay under the lead in terms of volume.  Unlike with men's groups, there's no falsetto to solve that problem.

Labels: BarbershopHarmony, Composer, Futurism