Barbershop Stories

Stories from Barbershop, Sweet Adelines, and other harmony singers and chorus groups using Sing & See

If you would like to contribute something please add your own story here


Helping a rank amateur

Posted on January 19th, 2017 by Guest

I’m 72 and took up singing by joining a local Barbershop Chorus a little over a year ago with no experience or training.  (Something to do in retirement!) Being a long time techie guy, I loaded myself down with all the appropriate tech tools I could find in despartion.  Sing & See was one of those.  Progress has been slow, but they haven’t kicked me out yet, so I guess that means something.  Anyway, I have found that Sing & See is the program I use most frequently – usually in conjuction with other programs.  It’s the only one I have found that is able to record my efforts visually with any degree of usefulness. It has helped me to at least be acceptible.  Pavarotti need not rise from the grave to defend his status, but Tiny Tim definity would. While there are some improvements I would like to see, it is worth the $. I know it seems relatively expensive, but I’m of the old school – you get what you pay for. I have no complaints on that score (pun intended).
By: Bill Nott

Using Sing & See in Barbershop

Posted on February 3rd, 2012 by admin

As I’m sure you know, the barbershop style of music, and especially the “ringing” of chords, demands that each member of the quartet be on the same pitch and have the same vowel sound.

I use Sing and See to check my pitch on songs while practicing my part alone, especially on those songs where I have a bass pickup notes, to ensure that I am exactly on pitch. The visual feedback helps tremendously in establishing the correct pitches into my brain muscle memory, much more so than trying to match a pitch pipe.

I also use the spectrogram to check the vowel matching of the quartet. We can easily see when the chord is ringing by the explosion of color all the way up the spectrum.

Thanks for a great product and look forward to continue to using it to help our quartet.

Walt Lammert