At the Area 2 contest and Convention the women of the Montreal City Voices qualified for International in Jacksonville FL, placing 5^th in an excellent contest. The Capital Chordettes of Ottawa placed first.

We saw the energy and finesse that MCV brought to the stage at the Karnak Temple, so we can appreciate the quality of the contest. They were every bit as good on Saturday. Congratulations to our friends in Harmony, Inc.

Philippe Bourque visited us last week. He is quite different than most guests. He was looking at our style and us to see if there was a match. Welcome Philippe!

Talk to somebody about barbershop this week! Our target for members this year is for a 7 member NET INCREASE by the end if 2006.

Remember: If you recruit 5 members this year, your International, District and Chapter dues for 2007 are 100% fully paid!

This has been seen in the Mini-Pitch/The Pitch before, but this time it is becoming urgent. The Phillips mansion is on the market, and when it goes, your editor goes against the flow and "goes East, old man."

Before that happens, it is important to the Chapter to have a willing volunteer to publish a newsletter for the Chapter on a regular basis. Weekly is best, but every two weeks would be fine, even monthly would be great.

Interested? Talk to Murray or Bert Brossoit, soon!

This years show is only 5 weeks away! Tickets are available, and Bert Brossoit is the ticket manager. This is the time to tell people we are once again the Small Chorus Champs of the Mountain Division, and that our guest quartet is going into International ranked as #2. Try to sell all your tickets by May 15, 2006 or see Bert to reassess the value of the tickets you still have.

We have budgeted to make a profit on this year’s show – something we haven’t done for the past four years. One way we can do that is to sell enough advertising that we pay for the costs of the show. Flyers are available online.

It can be done, and there is no time like the present to start. See Murray or Steve! Talk up our show with your friends and acquaintances. The price of the tickets is $25.00 CDN or $21.00 US.

Let's start out simple. Octaves represent a doubling of the sound frequency. So there is A - 220 Hertz, A - 440 Hertz, A - 880 Hertz, A - 1760 Hertz. (Hertz used to be cycles per second). Then there is the fifth interval which is like five white keys up, E - 330 Hertz, E - 660 Hertz, E - 1320 Hertz. This is seven semitones (each semitone is one twelfth of an octave) above the root tone. And the octave is then 5 more semitones up. These are all approximate because the fifth that we sing is about 0.1% above the piano fifth. The thirds we sing are 4 semitones up from the root, but not quite. We try to convince everybody that they are higher, but in reality they are about 0.8% low from the piano key tone. The seventh tone that we sing most often is the flat seventh, and is 3 semitone above the fifth, but not really since it is sung about 1.8% flat compared to the keyboard.

A chart for one set of frequencies is below. Note that everything changes with a different root tone except the piano keyboard where the tones are always the twelfth root of two multiplier (5.9463%) between half tones.

Ringing chords is simple trying to get the frequency multiples to be exactly the same, and then create overtones that also match. The sound we make contains many frequencies that are called harmonics. Harmonics are 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc. times the basic sung frequency and give the voice character. For example to lock a chord, the third harmonic of the root tone sung by the bass should match the second harmonic of the fifth tone sung by the baritone, creating a greater emphasis on that tone than natural. That is a simple look at lock and ring.

The Barbershop Wiki is a new project and can be found at http://www.barbershopwiki.org/index.cgi

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

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

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

Our Chapter was 56 years old on March 13, 2006!

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