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BABS is a charitable organisation with music education as its goal.
To this end, the Education and Music Services Directorate is charged
with providing the services and facilities necessary to fulfil this
aim. The Directorate has put together a number of building blocks
aimed at improving the quality of the individual singer and assisting
their choruses and quartets to -
- Improve their musical organisation and activity.
- Raise their standards of performance.
The currently active initiatives are:
The Chorus Director is at the forefront of all our activities and
is responsible for the week on week encouragement and training of
our members. Directors' College in January 2004 was the fourth annual
event and was held in Coventry. Open to all, this college teaches
the importance of good directing skills, analytical listening and
musicality. The Chorus Director's
web site provides details.
Chorus Directors Workshop Initiative. Set up on the basis of the
hugely successful Society
model, chorus directors get specific training in overcoming
their individual problems with a high trainer to director ratio.
The Chorus Director's web site
provides details.
These workshops, which bring education regionally to our members,
have been expanded from the original Harpenden event ( now in its
12th anniversary year ) to the recent one at Bolton. If your club
is interested to run such an event please contact Mike
Lofthouse.
Encouragement of UK arrangers to improve the supply and continuity
of arrangements to sing and perform for all age groups. One arrangement
by a UK arranger is being published each month. In addition, an
'unpublished' list
of arrangements is available for all members to supplement the
extensive range available from the Society.
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The Guild is an important resource
for BABS. Our judges are recognised experts in the main aspects
of barbershop, namely singing, music and performance. They undertake
bi-annual training at specialist seminars to be able to judge our
choruses and quartets in competition. They have offered their services
to clubs to attend and assist with areas that the clubs have highlighted.
Contact Mike Lofthouse for more details.
By the time of this years Harmony College, we hope to have in place
an organised approach to coaching for clubs and quartets. Following
that we will be putting together plans to encourage the development
of new coaches in the Association.
BABS is assembling resource materials to enable clubs to more
effectively educate their members. It is hoped that these can start
to be rolled out within a few months.
The first of these, based on the Society Top Gun Schools, was run in February 2003.
Two top quartet coaches worked with the top seven BABS quartets to help raise the
standards to a higher level. Seven British coaches worked alongside the two Americans
to augment their coaching skills. We will run this again as demand dictates.
Last, but by no means least, is
Harmony College. The flagship of our Educational activities,
the August ( in both meanings of the word ) event is a valuable
tool in training chorus and quartet members as well as enabling
people to become more skilful in specific areas like singing, presentation,
music, chorus directing and management.
All of the above should bring benefits to all Barbershoppers whether
they are taking advantage of the training events or whether they
see the result at the club and quartet level.
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