Style Guide-Barbershop
Barbershop originated in the U.S. between 1890 and the 1920s, and was revived beginning in 1938 by US-based Barbershop Harmony Society (formerly SPEBSQSA).
Barbershop always has four parts (tenor, lead, baritone & bass). There are well-defined rules about what is and isn't barbershop:
- the melody is almost always in the lead;
- songs have easy-to-sing melodies, wholesome themes and heart-felt emotions;
- harmonies are marked by barbershop seventh chords (at least 30%)...
- ... and resolve around the circle of fifths.
For the most part all the singers sing all the words together ("homophonic"), with occasional stylistic echoes and tags.
Starting as an all-male quartet style, barbershop is now sung by all-women and mixed quartets and choruses as well.
Barbershop organizations in North America have about 30,000 men and 30,000 women members. The men's barbershop competition ends in a convention with about 10,000 people gathering around the Fourth of July.
Quartets and choruses typically mix in songs outside the strict barbershop style (such as "barberjazz") in their repertoire. The top groups benefit from sophisticated arranging, intensive coaching and the barbershop organizations' well-developed educational techniques that assist in overtone production, precise tuning ("just intonation"), vowel modification, blend and balance.
Popular groups include Acoustix,
Ambiance and
The Vocal Majority.
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