Learning Your Music
What's the best way to learn the music for Harmony Brigade?
For you, it's probably your way! But in case it's helpful, here are a couple of suggestions from other Brigaders
Mark Schuldenfrei of the New England Harmony Brigade created a blog in 2018 with a lot of tips for Brigade preparation, and he has kindly given permission to share these with you:
Using Audacity software for learning
The text below and the links are reproduced with the kind permission of Ted Blank of the New England Harmony Brigade.
Many people have found the freeware program "Audacity" to be very helpful in learning your music. Audacity is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.
I have created a document with screen shots showing how to install and use the program along with a YouTube video recording of a live training session where I demonstrated using the program to learn your part.
The YouTube video can be accessed here while the PDF file of the training document can be downloaded right from this webpage.
By loading the part-predominant track into Audacity you can do several things:
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By panning the learning track full left, you can record yourself singing along with only your part, as in a 1-on-1 session with a teacher who knows your part.
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By panning the learning track full right, you can record yourself singing along with the other 3 parts as in a quartet.
Also, after downloading and installing a free mp3 encoder (instructions are contained within Audacity) you can export an mp3 file of your best efforts and send it to someone to review.
Best of luck with your learning efforts!
Ted Blank
Download Ted's guide to using Audacity for learning Brigade songs here: