With a career in training and as a father of three children, I love this definition of learning: "Learning has occurred when behavior changes." Our chorus picked up a new song this week (learn the basics at home, come prepared to start rehearsing): Seventy Six Trombones from The Music Man. The first half of the arrangement has the melody in the bass voices, and I was curious to see how it would sound at the first rehearsal. As a bass section, we've heard a lot of instruction about how to sing the melody when we have it: Sing like a Lead, just in a lower range. Keep the placement forward and the quality light, especially in your upper range (sometimes I think the phrase "Just 'cause you can, don't mean you should." was written for barbershop basses). To my great pleasure, we did almost everything we've been taught. We owned the melody but held it freely with an open hand, not a Flintstones club (remember Bam-Bam?). We painted a picture with words, and told a story that an audience would love to hear. Eventually we had to give the melody to our wonderful Lead section and return to our barbershop marching band Bum-ba-Bums, but it was great to experience the moment when we put our learning into action. Also nice to see the smile on our director's face.
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