For the Longest Time

So remember that time that we began a group, and posted about our progress frequently to keep our followers in the loop, and then just stopped? That was bad, so here is an update.

New Member!
Steve has left us to go to basic training for the Air Force, he will be gone for approximately 6 months! Tragic, I know! What are we to do? Find a substitute! We posted on Craig's LIst since that seemed to have gotten us the most attention before, we said we were looking for a tenor to be amazing and dedicate his voice and soul to the greatest and upcoming vocal band in the world (we may not have phrased it like that, for ego-less purposes). Through these advertisements, we found some auditioners, including Samuel. Needless to say, Sam rocked out on his audition and blended very well with us, so he is now a member of Love Note Sentiment.

New Rep
We have begun working on Ryan's arrangement of "Wonderwall" originally performed by Oasis, and it is about 85% ready for performance. We also have worked on my arrangement of Renegade, which is coming along nicely, it is quite the challenge, though. Hopefully in a few more rehearsals we will have it. Also, we have been working on "The Modern Man" originally performed by the Real Group, it sounds really good, we just need to get comfortable with it and memorize it.

New Concepts
Through discussion and criticism (yes, we actually accept and listen to criticism, which is key for improvement) from our members on how we can improve this group. We have begun adding in more harmonic focused warm-ups to our rehearsals, which truly develop our blend and let us know who sounds better with who. Now we also have more specifically scheduled rehearsals with time limits for each piece we work on, which has greatly approved our focus and progress. A new rule has been implemented into our rehearsals: Everyone shuts off their phones and gives them to Ryan at the beginning and we get them back at the end. This eliminated a large amount of distraction amongst the group. One final thing we are trying out is learning songs by rote - We listen to a song a few times and then try to sing along with it, picking out our own parts and making it happen with our own sound. This makes things difficult because it takes us out of our comfort zone of sheet music and keyboard, but the result is rather positive once we adjust. We have begun using this technique to work on "The General" by Dispatch. The harmonies are locking in and the song is coming together.

Vocal Biz
This past Saturday, I went to go see Michael Bublé (I know, you're jealous), and his opening act, Naturally 7. If you do not know who Naturally 7 is, google them an enjoy. They are a phenomenal group who have been around for 10 years now and they recently cam out with a CD "Vocalplay" which is comprised of original music! After the show, Naturally 7 was signing autographs and greeting people. I waited until the crowd dies down significantly and then went over and congratulated them for an awesome show, and let them know I was in Love Note Sentiment. Since Naturally 7 is based out of New York, I mentioned that we are in contact with Blue Jupiter and The Red States, figuring they would be familiar with one of them (they were). They told me to keep up with singing and that they would look us up. Figuring they would forget, as many celebrities do, I made sure to send them an e-mail the next morning once agin congratulating them on their stellar show and then asking them if they had any advice for an up and coming group. This is my attempt to further our connections in the Aca-World. Hopefully we will get a response and get our name out even more.

That is all for now, folks. Hopefully more frequent updates to come!

-Chris

Business Cards

Vocal Biz
So I went out and made us all business cards, and they look amazing. Each member has 100 cards with their name, the band name, band logo, and contact info (lovenotesentiment@gmail.com). Each card has a glossy finish and rounded edges, they look gorgeous and I can not wait to hand them out at rehearsal tomorrow. The cards were made at Overnightprints.com. They were not free, but they were reliable and customizable, which were pertinent to what we wanted. Luckily, the website was having a sale and I ended up saving about 15 dollars on the whole purchase, which is pretty big for 500 cards altogether. I am adding their site to our Resources list. Check them out if you want to do business cards, posters, postcards, magnets, or any other cool stationary projects you want going on.

What is up?
So I decided to go back and make some changes to Renegade, I threw in some barbershop chords in it, but only in two sections of the song. I did it late at night, so I need to listen back to it and see if I truly like it or not. Worst case, I run it by the band and see what they think about it.

-Chris

SingStrong!!!

Last night Love Note Sentiment just got back from SingStrong, hosted by Blue Jupiter! The trip took almost 7 hours each way, and although it was tough having 5 guys packed into a volvo, it was such an incredible trip. The trip itself created strong bonds within our young group and actually acted as a retreat for us. Plenty of inside jokes came into fruition over the weekend, which is exactly what we needed, on top of rehearsal time and singing.

We got there Friday night, registered at the desk and got into the auditorium within minutes of the first concert, Aca Idol, beginning. It was an incredible show that featured groups like Red States, Juxtaposition, Snow Day and Classic Sound (who won the event AND were the audience favorite). After the concert, we mingled with some of these groups, making a few connections, and joined everyone afterwards at a local restaurant.

Saturday we woke up and got ready for a day filled with workshops and we split up most of the time and managed to see almost every one. We took tons of notes that we are going to use to further advance our group. I learned that we still have so much to do to get Love Note Sentiment on the map, I will expound on these later in the post. Saturday Night was the Main Event concert. LNS of course, showed up as the classiest looking audience members. We saw the likes of Messai Electro (whom we rode on the shuttle bus with and struck up great conversation), Fii, Blue Jupiter, Ball in the House, Zulal, and NOTA!!!!

After the show, we made sure to get pictures with all these amazing groups and make connections with these people. We were given a few offers to actually go out to New York (where most of these groups are from) and perform with some. Then we joined everyone at another local restaurant for the afterglow. At the afterglow, they had an a cappella open mic, in which all the groups there offered a song or two to entertain the whole place. Since Blue Jupiter had supported us and sent us such personal and caring invitations to this event, we decided we needed to let them hear how we sound, even though we are not even two months old yet. We stepped outside and ran "Sherry" twice and went back in and signed up. We were placed to go on after Messai Electro, and yes, it was intimidating. We introduced ourselves, informed the world that this was our public debut, wesang, we moved, we smiled. They danced and clapped along. Almost like wolves, everyone in the place turned to watch this new group, seemingly as if they were to judge us, and the danced and grooved with us. We received a lot of compliments for our performance. Right after us, Fii and Nota teamed up to put on a rocking performance. Long story short, we opened for Nota.

Sunday morning we all got a professional coaching from Wes Carroll, originally from Five O'Clock Shadow. He gave us some pertinent feedback and tweaked our sound and totally improved our vocal performance. Thank you, Wes! We then went to a few more workshops, and then the final concert, which was closed by Classic Sound, who brought the house down with Jazz and Doo Wop!!!

Overall, the weekend was incredible and provided us with tons of connections, friends, information, new goals, and ideas. We are definitely going back next year and competing in Aca Idol.

The Vocal Biz!

One of the major things I realized was during a workshop hosted by David Brown. We need a website, business cards, a facebook page, and so much more. I will be spending the next two weeks working on these with Ryan.

LNS The Group / SingStrong, NING?

Hey guys,

So I realize it has been awhile since we have updated this blog but I promise there is reason behind the delay. So in our last post we shared a little of how we ran our auditions and the general process behind our audition process. I must say in the end we came out with a truly amazing group of individuals and Chris and myself are both extremely excited for what is to come in the future of Love Note Sentiment. We have brought some of the songs we spoke about in some of our older posts to the table and the group has really taken them enthusiastically and really started to make them our own. The two pieces we have predominantly been working on have been Sherry by Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons and Billie Jean by none other than Michael Jackson. Both of these songs have very simple arrangements and we have gotten through the basic notes and parts and are now working on the total sound package for these two pieces.

Chris and I are also looking forward to SingStrong on the weekend of March 5th, 6th, and 7th. As we have mentioned before SingStrong is a huge a cappella extravaganza where there will be many different pro groups as well as collegiate and high school groups, who will all take part in a series of concerts, workshops, and just general a cappella goodness. Unfortunately the tickets are for the most part sold out for this year but if you or your group are interested in the event itself perhaps for next year we will be keeping you all updated on this blog and will hopefully come back with many experiences to share! That being said Chris and myself are hoping to have the two pieces we've been working on as well as one or two others ready to perform for when we get down to VA for SingStrong in the next two weeks!

THE VOCAL BIZ:

Now one of the things that I want to share with you all out there in the a cappella world is a very useful resource not only for social networking within your group but also perhaps with learning the music itself outside of the rehearsal space. If you have never heard of Ning then you should all go and check it out for yourself at http://www.ning.com/. This is a truly great resource for anyone from groups just starting out to groups hoping to network and keep in touch with other groups they have met along their journeys. It's also a great site for any non a cappella groups out there. Without going into too much detail by creating your own Ning you can set up a social network in which you can either control who is invited or even leave it open to all who are interested. Some of the valuable aspects of ning.com that I have found as a co-director of Love Note Sentiment are an open discussion board in which members can discuss anything they so choose. I myself have used it to post pdf files of our sheet music so that it is always available to members as long as they have a computer nearby. Also the possibility of having a music player on the main page in which any user can post Mp3s has been especially useful as well. I have used it to post both the original recordings of songs that Love Note Sentiment may be working on as well as posting voice tracks that I extract from finale files of the very sheet music that's posted in the discussion board. So any member can simply print of the pdf sheet music off the discussion board and almost instantly play a voice part track and sing along at any time. Some other cool useful features are the option of posting videos and pictures for everyone in the group to see. Also each member has the ability to personalize their own pages within the Ning which in and of itself is a great feature.

So that's about it for this post if you all have any questions regarding ning.com or SingStrong or even the first month of Love Note Sentiment please feel free to respond to this post and ask whatever you want. Thanks again for reading!

Ryan

Craigslist and a great day of auditions!

Hey everyone,

So I realize that it has been awhile since either of us has posted an update on the journey of Love Note Sentiment and the steps we have taken leading up to what was a great day of auditions yesterday. A few posts ago I mentioned our use of Facebook advertising in order to get the word out about our auditions. However, while I'm sure that this form of advertising is a great asset to many different groups and organizations it honestly didn't really help Chris and myself with the process of sparking interest in auditions for our group. There was another tool which we used that was simple and put simply got the job done for us.

The Vocal Biz:
I was surfing Craigslist one day looking for furniture for my apartment and used records to add to my collection when the an idea came to me. Why not post an ad for auditions and for Love Note Sentiment on Craigslist and see what happens. I realized that while we had attempted to advertise in other ways these simply were not working and it wouldn't hurt to at least try it. I would just like to say that if it weren't for the wonderful Craigslist auditions would probably not have happened at all. The great things about posting an add for auditions on Craigslist are first that it is a simple way to get the message out to anyone who happens to be surfing the net and stumbles upon it. Another great thing about it is that if someone is interested you provide an email for them to contact you at right on the page where the ad has been posted. So rather than see the add and then call or look up more information anyone interested can just shoot you an email right from the ad itself. I highly recommend this resource to everyone especially those who may be having trouble finding a way to get the word out.

So as for auditions let me just say that at the beginning of the day Chris and myself were both anxious and nervous at the same time but I feel like the day couldn't have gone any better than it did. We met a bunch of really great guys with a lot of talent and looking at the group that we have put together we're both extremely excited for what's going to come next. Perhaps it might be of interest to those reading the way in which we conducted our auditions so I will make a short list of how and why we did what we did.

1. Upon arrival we had the auditionees fill out a sheet with basic contact information as well as their particular musical skills, their voice part, and also their availability during the week. I feel that this may be a no-brainer to some but it was great because we had contact numbers and emails, we had schedules to look at so we could start planning rehearsals after we picked members, and the voice part also helped us in a later point in the audition.
2. We then had each auditionee sing a song which they had prepared for the audition, surely another no-brainer. The great thing about this is that you get to see what the singer is comfortable with musically, where there voice sounds the best within their range, and also what kind of music they're into themselves.
3. This next section of the audition was Chris' idea and I think that it worked even better than we planned. For the third section we had each auditionee sing a barbershop tag with Chris and myself. For those who do not know what a barbershop tag is it is the end of a barbershop song in which there are many moving parts and blend is very important, if you want more information on this please feel free to comment on this post and we will explain further. The great thing about these tags is that in one excericise we were able to judge each persons tonal memory, and their blend.
4. Our next section of auditions was definitely an experimental one and it may not be useful to all groups that are holding auditions however it was a very important one for us and our group. At this point of the audition we had each auditionee simply improv with us based on their voice part. For instance if the auditionee was a tenor or baritone Chris would sing a 12 bar blues bass line and myself and the person auditioning would simply improv or in a way scat over Chris' bassline. If the audtionee is a bass or may specialize in vocal percussion we would simply switch things around so that they can show off their abilities on the spot. We had a lot of fun with this because it showed us personality, creativity, and just the comfort that each individual had withing a creative setting.
5. Finally we ended the audition with questions and answers. Before we asked any questions however we decided it would be better to let those auditioning ask the questions first for two reasons. The first is that the answers they recieved from us may help them answer the questions we would ask them. The second and more important reason was that we felt if they asked questions first it would help them to relax and make our questioning a little easier to manage. As for questions to ask those auditioning my suggestion is to have some questions you ask everyone and some which you have prepared to ask the individual singers themselves.

That got to be a little longer than I had originally planned but I hope that it was helpful to anyone out there reading this blog or those who may need help with either audition structure or even a way to advertise auditions.

Ryan

Concern/Idea

Hey folks!

Chris here, and I realized that its been about a month since either of us updated. So here is some up-to-date stuff.

-I officially have a degree in Music Education, which is nice to accomplish in the music world.
-Auditions are less than a week away. Ryan and I have posted at local music stores, sent facebook messages, talked to local music directors/instructors, and even posted on Craig's list. We haven't heard too much, but we are keeping our fingers crossed!
-I haven't had a voice in three weeks. It started as a sinus infection, and now I can breathe again, just not talk. I think it may be laryngitis. I am calling my otolaryngologist on Monday. For those of you that don't know, an otolaryngologist is the super official person to go to about your voice. Especially as a singer, its important to know one.

I Should Arrange That

So I had a recent idea that I think would be awesome. Yet again, another mash-up of two songs, which seems to be my addiction.
"Handlebars" by the Flobots mixed with "Cry Me a River" by Justin Timberlake. I think that the rhythmic feel and the chord progressions of the two can blend together very well. At least have "Handlebars" with a reference of "Cry Me a River" thrown in during the chorus or something. It would be sweet.


More updates to come, especially after auditions.
Later Days,
Chris