My week’s highlights included, singing tags in the atrium of the Embassy Suites, singing tags backstage, sitting with Mary for the Quartet Finals, and working with the quartets and choruses throughout the week.

Lowlights? Flights to and from Salt Lake City!

The 2005 International Champs, Realtime, are really that. The quartet is from Australia, the United States and half from Canada: truly international champs. Their scores got better from round to round and they were pretty clear winners, although Max Q sang well and were close in the scoring. Realtime was seventh last year and Max Q was second.

The surprise of the contest was O.C. Times with Cory Hunt (20 years old last month) singing bass. Last year he had sung baritone in Q, the 20^th place quartet. O.C. Times placed 18^th last year.

The chorus contest went on forever, but the winner was clearly the Masters of Harmony. Their performance was excellent combining great singing, great songs and great presentation. The Toronto Northern Lights mime package was very clever and their ballad was gorgeous

Although long, it was a great contest.

Men In Black, our NED representatives, are 2005 the MBNA CBQC Champions. What great kids they are and what a job they did.

They worked very hard to improve from Prelims to International, and their coach, Kirk Young, can take a large measure of pride from their win.

Well, men, we've come to the end of this five-part, five-week, discourse on vocal technique. If you've been diligently practising these techniques, they have become habitual with you and you're enjoying singing, as you never have before! If you haven't been working, you're still making about the same contribution to the sound of the Island City Chorus that you were four weeks ago. (Shame on you!)

Now, the good news is that it's not too late to put these techniques into action. If you have the past four issues of The Mini-Pitch, you can refer to the ones you missed and BEGIN NOW to improve your enjoyment of this great hobby, and increase your contribution to this great chorus. If you don't have the past issues (you mean you don't bind them in hard covers and store them in your walk-in safe deposit box?), I'm sure your happy editor will gladly to give you a full set. Just let him know.

Well, to recap the steps to good singing and a healthy attitude:

I. Stand up straight. Keep the chest up and expanded with the shoulders down and relaxed (see Part One).

II. Expand the area around the belt line, NOT the chest (it's already up and expanded, remember?) as you inhale (see Part Two).

III. As you inhale, expand and extend the vocal cavity (the mouth and throat) by dropping the jaw, opening the throat, raising the soft palate, placing the tip of the tongue on the inside of the front teeth and extending the lips off the teeth -- Whew! (See Part Three, then see it again!).

IV. As you exhale, keeping the chest elevated and the vocal tract open, support the tone with the lower muscles of the abdomen (the ones you expanded in Part Two) WITHOUT undue tension (see Part Four).

Now for the LAST STEP. Keep the face as involved in the act of singing, as is the rest of the body! You must raise the cheeks slightly (SLIGHTLY) and express the emotion of the song in your face. We call this the "active" face and it is not only essential to your stage presence, it really affects your sound in a positive way, too. I repeat, the facial expression you have is as much a part of vocal technique as is good posture, breathing, or anything else we have discussed. This is the "UP" face :-) as opposed to the "DOWN" face :-( "UP" is better! (Remember to keep the lips off the teeth and shape the mouth in a more "vertical" rather than "horizontal" way. Keep the corners tucked in slightly for all vowels.)

Spend five minutes a day in front of a mirror, singing your part. If you look like a singer, you’ll be a better singer. It’s really that simple. Watch your posture, your inhalation and exhalation techniques, your mouth shape, and YOUR FACE! If we would all spend just FIVE minutes each day for few weeks doing this simple task, the chorus's contest scores (and audience appeal) would SKYROCKET - I MEAN SKYROCKET! Let's really dedicate ourselves to being the best chorus member we can be.

Here is our current repertoire list: [mp3] means that the mp3 file is on the Members' Only web site