Nobody cares about your tune up

I had a request over the holidays to cover the "tune up" - that unique piece of technique for a cappella groups, since they can't rely on instruments to get them into the correct starting key (or to keep them in the right key, but that's a whole 'nuther topic...)

[caption id="attachment_1171" align="alignright" width="288" caption="Note the traditional placement of the boom mic, OUT of the picture!"][/caption]

Well if you believe as I do that the purpose of performance is to give the audience an emotional journey, and that the audience has to suspend disbelief, among other things, in order to be ready for that kind of trip, I think you have to do what you can to remove distractions. David Copperfield doesn't let you see the mirrors before he does a magic trick. If you're shooting a movie and the microphone boom gets into the frame, you do another take - it's not even a question.

So the question becomes, is the pitch-taking a part of the performance, or isn't it? Well, 99% of the time it isn't - it's a purely mechanical thing that the audience doesn't care about, that doesn't add anything to the performance. It only reminds everyone that they're watching people on a stage, dealing with real-life, practical issues like tuning up.

I cringe inwardly (maybe even outwardly... I'm not sure) when a barbershop quartet takes the pitch by blowing a pitch pipe with everyone looking at it, then they all look at each other self-consciously and sing the pitch in unison, and then a tonic chord, and then the first chord of the song, and then they finally look at the audience. I mean honestly, if it's SOOO difficult for a group to get in the same key, am I supposed to expect a great performance? More likely I'm going to sit and worry the whole time that one of them will lose the pitch and they won't be able to recover.

Sometimes comedy quartets, who as I've often said before are at least always aware that their purpose is to entertain rather than to "get it right", will incorporate the pitch-taking in a funny way, and that's all good if it works.

So my advice - learn how to take the pitch with some discretion.