TRAX

    I have been involved with music since 6th grade, where I began playing the
trombone. I took off on trombone, performing in ISSMA competitions and
heritage music festivals, earning several gold medals and awards for performance
and musicianship. While in high school I found an interest in singing, so, for my 2006 May term I joined a class called "Barbershop Harmony" where I learned of the barbershop style and instantly was intrigued by it. The idea of singing with no instruments, just raw vocals excited me.

     Through this May term class, a barbershop quartet by the name of "City Limits" came to visit all of us high school students and show us what barbershop harmony was...live and in your face, not just a recording like we've been listening to in the class. The minute they started there first song I was hooked, the whole room seemed to fill with sound, and I knew right then, I found something I'd have for the rest of my life. After their performance they wanted to sing with us and I was so eager, I volunteered to sing a tag with them. I can't even remember the tag, but I do remember what it felt like to sing those harmonies and from that moment one I was bit by that barbershop bug.

 

     Through "City Limits" and my "Barbershop Harmony" May term class I learned of the Barbershop Harmony Society. I was shocked to find out that there were actually thousands of other people who sing this type of music, not only that, but that about 40 of them meet on Tuesdat nights right in my home town of Muncie, IN! I knew where I had to be every Tuesday night from now on. The summer of 2006 had to be one of my best summers I've ever had, I was discovering this new hobby and loving every minute of it! After a few months of singing with the Magic City Music Men, the Muncie, IN Barbershop Harmony Society chapter, I decided it was time for me to join up and become a full blown member.

 

      A year goes by and my chorus wants to send me to the Cardinal Districts Harmony Explosion camp, which is a youth barbershop camp for boys and girls from Indiana and Kentucky that goes on for about 4 days, with rigorous rehearsals, and ends with an awesome show of both boy and girl choruses performing their songs, then coming together for one final number as one large boy and girl chorus. The year I went was 2007 and subsequently the first year the Cardinal District started up the Harmony Explosion program again, and because it was a big deal to be starting up again, Dr. Jim Henry, of the Ambassadors of Harmony, was the clinician, and Vocal Spectrum, still fresh from their 2006 win was the guest quartet for the show! If I wasn't bitten before, this made my love for barbershop a million times more strong.

 

     After I came back from camp having learned so much on vocal technique from Dr. Henry, I started to implement it and work hard on my voice, wanting to be the best I could be. That work paid off in 2009 with me becoming tenor section leader of my Muncie, IN chapter. Soon after, the chorus director noticed my tags I've been recording for fun and wondered if I could make the chorus a learning track for the Kevin Keller arrangement of Come Fly With Me, as performed by OC Times. I was a little nervous never having tackled a whole song before, but I obliged and got to work. Never havng recorded a whole song through me for a loop, I was literally flying blind not having any clue on what I was doing. I made it work though, and the chorus kept coming back for more. Time went by and I kept getting better and better, started improving equipment and techniques, both vocally and through sound engineering.

 

      Now here I am, having been in the society for 7 years now and counting, having formed a quartet of my own that competes in the Cardinal District fall contest, and now also forming a collegiate quartet to hopefully go onto the BHS collegiate quartet contest one day. Barbershop has really changed my life and nothing makes me happier than to bring that into someone's life, which is why I make learning tracks, nothing makes singing barbershop more fun than singing it with all the right notes! I do this service for a simple donation that you, your quartet, or your chorus see fit. I do hope to hear from you soon and hope I can help you keep the whole world singing!