I got time to post a quick note about how the membership rated the repertoire, song-by-song. Like most of the survey questions, we had a lot of opinions, but there are definitely trends that are interesting to see.
Of the fourteen songs in our current repertoire, only three of them are not #1 on at least one member’s list. And every song had at least one “top 3” vote. I also saw comments from folks stating that it was hard to rank them, as they love to sing them all.
Using a similar weighted scoring system to the last time (for priorities), here are the results.
One thing that jumps out at me is that the tunes we classify as Ballads and Up-Tempo dominate the top of the rankings, while Inspirational and Patriotic tend to be lower. Any theories on why this is?
I think it’s because we’ve been singing them the longest. We’re tired of them! With the exception of the Star Spangled Banner, we’ve been singing the top songs for 3-4 years at most. The patriotic and gospel songs we’ve been singing since I joined.
I’m not sure it’s really because we are tired of the songs. “Goodbye World Goodbye is a brand new gospel tune, yet placed lower than the current ones. “Armed Forces Medley” is pretty much a staple, has a specific purpose and works very well for an audience. “Lift Up My Head” was used in Brigade and was sung by the winning quartet. “Gospel Medley” got us a tremendous response at Trinity, and I still think works well for us.
All the songs had to fit somewhere on the list, and we may be able to gain a better understanding of where they really all stand with everyone when we resolve some other issues and are better able to move forward.
A couple we have had in the repertoire for a few years like Sailing. Great song, but I’m ready to learn some new music now that I just finished learning 11 songs for Brigade! The fun thing about singing at other barbershop events is knowing a lot of songs so you can sing with guys from other chapters. It makes the whole barbershop experience bigger. The society has come out with a tremendous amount of new and fun songs ready to be sung to entertain audiences.