The Barbershop Style

Basically, barbershop is four part unaccompanid singing with bass, baritone, lead and tenor parts.

The lead part generally takes the tune with the bass singing the lowest harmony, the tenors taking a harmony above the lead with the baritone fitting in, sometimes below and sometimes above the lead to make the chord.

Our tenors are what most singers would defne as alto-tenors because they take quite a high part. The lead is more akin to the classical tenor part.

The baritone part is probably the most complex and is often painful to listen to in the absence of the other parts.

Bass singers usually have deeply set eyes and their knuckles tend to scrape on the floor when walking along.

Barbershop is characterised by many 7th chords which give it its unique sound.

Although most people think of barbershop being sung by four individuals, its often sung in choruses of between 15 and 50 singers (sometimes even more).

The presentation of the music in terms of the expression and movement of the singers is important to our style and, in some cases, songs can be highly choreographed - its not our strongest feature at Coventry, but we have been know to wave the odd hand about.