Date: February 7, 2000 "Are you a Valentine Quartetter?"

CJAD and The Island City Chorus. Since Monday, January 31, advertisements have been broadcast on CJAD 800 AM for our Singing Valentine program. Key of Eh? appeared on Terry DiMonte's show on Friday, February 4 at 6:40 am. Great job guys. While the rest of the chorus was in their afternoon classes, 4 Tonight Only were on CJAD with Olga and Lori, who were broadcasting from the Boat Show. Andrew did a great job in his first public quartet appearance and was interviewed extensively. Way to go guys!!!!!!!

Now we need to make sure we have the "horses" to deliver the product. If you can make yourself available for any period between Saturday morning, February 12 and Monday night, February 14, please do so. Pick-up quartets will be used to deliver Valentines, and you will have a real blast.

WOW!!!! What a School! The school was a success! What a great coaching session with Steve Armstrong. There will be reminders of what Steve worked on in later issues of the pitch. Aside from a rocky start in the morning with the facility itself, everything ran very smoothly. Steve and Joan Ross made it home safely yesterday and, although very tired, are doing okay. MARQUIS want to thank everyone for a great time. After the school MARQUIS and Blue Champagne visited Murray Phillips in the hospital. They sang Let There Be Piece On Earth . Then Blue Champagne sang to Daphne Everett from Montreal Harmony Inc. who is in the same room. There were a few more songs and photos and we were off again. This may have been the last chance for you to hear MARQUIS live.

How to Sing Better. (by Ron Schurman) In Chris Arnold's 'HOW TO SING BETTER' class Saturday, I took notes on most of the things discussed. The following men were in the class too, and can flesh out these rather clinical notes: Ray Watkins, John Hatfield, Allan Kenley, Stan Kido, Tom McKeown, Rudi Flaig, Oryst Gudz, Fred Tabah, and myself. (Hershel was there too!)

The class was an excellent one. Chris asked us all to suggest topics that might be discussed, most of them problems we have as barbershop singers. We soon filled the chalkboard with 12 or 15 subjects, many

of them related to one another.

Good posture. Knees slightly flexed and feet shoulder-width apart. Place an imaginary milk bottle on your head and keep it in place while performing. This establishes the correct posture.

Diaphragmatic breathing. The pelvic tilt. Place fingers on breastbone to remind you to keep that "chest - high" feeling.

Always be well hydrated. Drink lots of water. Not just before a performance but every day, all day.

More air. (Where have we heard this before) You can't sing without air support. Always make sure you have enough air. Take sneak breaths if necessary while continuing to mouth the words. Use all the air in your lungs. Expel unused air before tanking up. (Some useful illustrations were drawn on the board. Ask about the pendulum, & diaphragm).

Sing with HOT air. Fog up mirror. Turn on the Gas!

Practise falsetto singing. Try to eliminate the "break" between regular voice and falsetto.

Avoid glottal attacks. Sing silent H if necessary before the opening vowel.

Don't let consonants get in the way of vowels. Visualize a knife cutting through a stream of water.

Sing the singable consonants. A little emphasis must be placed on M's and N's, for example.

The ONLY vowel sounds are: ee-ih-eh-a-ah-oh-oo (as in book)- oo (as in moon)-uh (as in girl) and uh (as in love).

Smiling. Smile with your eyes. Cover the lower half of your face to see if your eyes reveal a smile.

Bubbling. Like the proverbial raspberry. To make it easier push in corners of your lips. This is a good warm-up exercise. To help relax, roll the shoulders. This is a very good relaxer.

Try warming up before getting to rehearsal or a performance.

Duets are an excellent ways of correcting tuning problems.

Know the story of the song. Every member must agree on the scenario to give a unison projection.

Get your tickets and sell advertising for our Annual Show/Concert. Our show for 2000, "Beginning to See the Light," will be on Saturday, May 20 in Salle Claude Champagne at Université de Montréal and will feature PLATINUM, the 1999 Silver Medallist Quartet and the 1998 Harmony, Inc. International Champion quartet, Blue Champagne. This will be Blue Champagne's final performance.

Reminder 1: Rob Mance is offering Music Theory Lessons. If you are interested, please let him know.

Reminder 2: Criteria for Division Contest. Over the next few weeks Rob Mance will be asking each of us, individually, to work with him for 5 to 10 minutes so that he can get an idea of how we are doing with our competition repertoire. He will then give us some suggestions on things we need to work on, and possibly set-up another time to meet with him. This should help him to see the level each of us has achieved and for us to find out what areas we need to work on in order to make the chorus as a whole progress to that next level.

Practice is something we do at home, every day, between rehearsals!

Rehearsal is where we reinforce what we have been practising every day!