Competitors at Society contests receive evaluations and feedback from the judging panel following the contest. Each judge may award up to 100 points per song. A brief description of each category appears below, as well as a list of the judges from the Far Western District who are certified in that category.
Administration - Committee
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Ben Porter
VP C&J, DRCJ
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Randy Meyer
Assistant to DRCJ
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Judges
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Administrative Judge
- David Bowen
- Randy Meyer
- Ben Porter
The Administrative Judge is responsible for the orderly management and operation of barbershop competitions under the contest rules of the Society. Accordingly, he must have a full and complete knowledge of the rules. He must communicate effectively both in writing and verbally. He is responsible for ensuring the best possible environments for competitors to perform, for judges to adjudicate the performances, and for audiences to enjoy the performances. He is responsible for providing scoring summaries for the contest, and provides the Society Contest and Judging Committee all necessary paperwork and copies of electronic data produced as a result of the contest.
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Musicality
- Cary Burns
- John Burri
- Rob Campbell
- Mark Hale
- Dr. Dan Wessler
Musicality is defined as the song and arrangement, as performed. The Musicality Category judges the suitability of the material to the barbershop style and the performer’s musicianship in bringing the song and arrangement to life.
The Musicality judge is responsible for adjudicating the musical elements in the performance, judging the extent to which the musical performance displays the hallmarks of the barbershop style and the degree to which the musical performance demonstrates an artistic sensitivity to the music’s primary theme(s).
The sensitive handling of musical elements, such as melody, harmony, and embellishments, demonstrates musicality in a performance. A strong musical performance is one in which everything provided by the composer and arranger is skillfully delivered and effectively integrated in support of the musical theme.
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Performance
- Blair Brown
- Will Lagos
- Gary Steinkamp
- Theresa Weatherbee
These judges evaluate how effectively a performer brings the song to life. They judge the entertainment value of the performance; the art of the performance.
One significant goal of any art form is communication. A barbershop performance refers to how the artist communicates his/her message and vision via the transformation of a song into an entertaining experience for an audience. The performance of a song is the artist’s gift to the audience; whose experiences, memories, and imagination transform that gift into an emotional experience. The performers’ goal is to create a high level of entertainment through the performance. The means to that end are as varied as the personality, abilities and creative skills of the performers.
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Singing
- Matt Fellows
- Alan Gordon
- Chris Hebert
- Adrian Leontovich
In the Singing category we judge artistic singing in the barbershop style – listening holistically for ringing in-tune voices that use a free, beautiful and rich vocal quality, which is wonderfully unified and vocally expressive.
Judges in this category evaluate the degree to which the performer achieves artistic singing in the barbershop style: the production of vibrant, rich, resonant, technically accurate, and highly skilled sound, created both by the individual singer’s use of good vocal techniques, and by the ensemble processes of tuning, balancing, unity of sound and precision. They listen for a sense of precise intonation, a feeling of fullness or expansion of sound, a perception of a high degree of vocal skill, a high level of unity and consistency throughout the performance, and a freedom from apparent effort that allows the full communication of the lyric and song.
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Definition of the Barbershop Style
Barbershop harmony is a style of unaccompanied vocal music characterized by consonant four-part chords for every melody note in a primarily homorhythmic (the same word sounds at the same time) texture. The melody is consistently sung by the lead (second tenor), with the tenor (first tenor) harmonizing above the melody, the bass singing the lowest harmonizing notes, and the baritone completing the chord. Occasional brief passages may be sung by fewer than four voice parts.
Barbershop music features songs with understandable lyrics and easily singable melodies, whose tones clearly define a tonal center and imply major and minor chords and barbershop (dominant and secondary dominant) seventh chords that often resolve around the circle of fifths, while also making use of other resolutions. Barbershop music also features a balanced and symmetrical form, and a standard meter. The basic song and its harmonization are embellished by the arranger to provide appropriate support of the song’s theme and to close the song effectively.
Barbershop singers adjust pitches to achieve perfectly tuned chords (instead of tempered tuning like the piano) in just intonation while remaining true to the established tonal center. Artistic singing in the barbershop style exhibits a fullness or expansion of sound, precise intonation, a high degree of vocal skill, and a high level of unity and consistency within the ensemble. Ideally, these elements are natural, not manufactured, and free from apparent effort.
The performance of barbershop music uses appropriate musical and visual methods to convey the theme of the song and provide the audience with an emotionally satisfying and entertaining experience. Barbershop singers traditionally do not hold sheet music. The musical and visual delivery is from the heart, believable, and sensitive to the song and its arrangement throughout. The most stylistic performance artistically melds together the musical and visual aspects to create and sustain the illusions suggested by the music.
Barbershop can be performed in quartets as well as choirs, and can be found all over the world in male, female, and mixed ensembles.
Far Western District