The Sussex Barbershop Singers were formed in 2005 from members of The Sussex Harmonisers and the Crawley Barbershop Harmony Club who wanted to train and develop their singing to competition standard. Our principal objective is to generate the fun and enjoyment which can be found in singing within a chorus committed to working together as a team.
All our members belong to The British Association of Barbershop Singers (BABS) and also have automatic membership of The Sussex Harmonisers Barbershop chorus.
Although we are principally concerned with singing in competition, we also undertake singing engagements often with, or as part of, The Sussex Harmonisers. As a result our weekly rehearsals are sometimes combined with the Harmonisers (on Tuesdays between 19.30 and 22.00 at our shared venue at St Paul's Catholic College, Burgess Hill, RH15 8GA) and we learn their repertoire which is regularly revised.
All our singing is in unaccompanied four voice parts - lead, tenor, baritone and bass.
The songs
We concentrate mainly on our competition reportoire although some of our repertoire is also learnt and rehearsed with The Sussex Harmonisers at their weekly rehearsals.
The music
Comes from a variety of backgrounds: specially written barbershop songs, arrangements of popular songs from today and yesterday, folk songs, songs from shows and music hall songs to give but a few examples. Whatever the type of music there is probably a barbershop version somewhere.
Learning methods
CDs and, more often these days, files in mp3 format are available for the songs we sing. All have your part loud (or on one channel if you have stereo), and the other three parts softer (or on the other channel). Some recordings are sung but others are played on the keyboard and therefore do not include the words. These latter are useful to check note accuracy once you have learnt the song.
