Here are some Barbershop definitions
(some serious, some not so serious)
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A & R - Analysis and Recommendation, often called Aggravation and Ridicule. Afterglow - A cast party after a show.
AHSOW - Ancient Harmonious Society Of Woodshedders.
AHSOWHAT - Ancient Harmonious Society Of Woodshedders Harboring Apathetic Tendancies....just kidding!
Ambigesturous - The ability to perform the choreography from either side of the risers.
Barbershop Brats - Children of barbershoppers, which often become members, a precious commodity.
Barbershop Squat - a physical stance at the end of a song that looks amatuerish and hokey.
Barbershop Widow/Widower - The spouse of a very active barbershopper, who doesn't enjoy the hobby themselves.
Barberteens - Teenaged children of barbershoppers, the smartest of all.
Barbertots - Young children of barbershoppers, also a precious commodity.
Bell Chord - notes sung on successive beats as in "Bye Bye Blues" by the Suntones.
Belt - Sing loudly.
Big Fat Duck - A lot of resonance.
Bipartite/Tripartite - Able to sing multiple voice parts.
Bisectional - A person that can sing more than one voice part... hopefully, not simultaneously.
Blead - A fifth voice part consisting of part lead and part baritone, usually sung by a member who has been absent for a
while.
Borneo Barbershop - An exercise where the bass is sung an octave high and the tenor an octave low.
Breathing Dips - Singers who breathe where they are not supposed to.
Bust a Chord - Same as peeling paint.
Cascade - A musical device where a unison note spreads to form a chord, also called "waterfall".
Chestnut -
Chinese Seventh - The 2nd inversion of a 7th chord, where the tenor note is under the lead note.
Chordgasm/Chordasm - The climax of musical stimulation often resulting in goosebumps and raised hairs. See Eargasm.
Chorditorium - A convention afterglow where non-qualifying quartets can strut their stuff.
Chordus Interruptus - When the director stops the chorus just before a paint-peeling tag.
Chordworship - Holding a chord longer that necessary just to enjoy it.
Chorus Dips - Singers who do exactly the opposite of what the director asks.
Cookie - a pitchpipe.
Crank - Sing loudly.
Crow - A self-confessed non-singer who performs mundane chores nobody else wants to do. See Invaluable.
Diction Dips - Singers who exaggerate the hard consonants.
Diphthong Dips - Singers who over-emphasize the diphthongs.
Duck - Resonance.
Eagles - A politically correct term for "Crows".
Ear Candy - An audible overtone or harmonic.
Eargasm - The climax of musical stimulation often resulting in goosebumps and raised hairs. See Chordgasm.
Energy Cube - A teaching device used by Mr. Larry Ajer, to focus sound and energy in response to an interpretive plan.
Everglow - A smaller, more private party that takes place after an afterglow.
Fifth Wheel - Singing along with/near a quartet, but not one of the foursome.
Float - Blending a part into a chord gracefully, usually tenor.
Gang Singing - A collection of singers that are not an organized unit.
Garbage Part - A negative term for the baritone part.
Glimmer - An after,after,afterglow.
Going for the bird - Producing overtones.
Green Gas - A vapor that forms when a situation gets too intense.
Grigger - John Devine's word for an Eargasm.
Groaner - A bad joke, story, or pun.
Grundy - Same as Scissors Movement.
Gut-Buster - A robust uptune.
Hang Ten - Standing on the risers with ten toes over the edge.
Harmonasties - Harmonet posters who incite conflict.
Harmony Hair - The use of wiglets, falls, and excessive lacquer products, to achieve that "Unit" look.
Headlights Up! - An instruction by a director (SAI) to prepare one instrument for singing. (Primarily the chest)
Helmet Hair - Too much hairspray, akin to "Harmony Hair".
Honker - a person who sings loudly and/or in a garish manner, often a bass singer. (See also Laser Lungs)
Hospitality Room - A party room at a convention for informal entertainment, socializing, and stale pretzels.
Hum Spot - The placement of one's voice that makes the mask resonate.
Intonationally Challenged - A Rashleighism for a poor vocalist.
Kibber - An endearing term for a barbershopper that prefers to Keep It Barbershop!.
Kipp-It - An instruction to a tenor to belt out a note in full voice.
Laser Lungs - a singer, usually a tenor, who sings high notes very loudly and out of balance.
Lead Dodging - The art of woodshedding the baritone part, also called Lead Avoidance.
Leaner - a person that does not have the courage or ability to sing on his/her own, or is not well rehearsed in the music.
Mike Testers - A quartet or chorus which sings at the beginning of a contest to ensure the sound systems performance.
Oh Yeah - An utterance from the chorus, when the director says "for the 2000th time, you're supposed to get soft here".
Oh Yeah Song - A song with an unfamiliar verse and a very familiar chorus.
Onion Skin - A minute adjustment in pitch.
Opus Interruptus - When the hotel security guard stops you in the middle of a song, usually at 3am, sunday morning.
Overtone - a harmonic produced by proper intonation, tuning, and vowel formation.
Patter - A verbose variation on the theme of a refrain as in "Down Our Way", also jokes and stuff between songs.
Peeling Paint - Locking and ringing a chord.
Pick-up Quartet - any four singers, not an established quartet, singing a song they commonly know. I.E. Barberpole Cat
song.
Ping - Focused, bright ringing sound.
Pitch It Higher and Sing It Louder - A sarcastic phrase directed to a foursome who are already singing too high and too
loud.
Post - a note, long in duration, sung usually by a lead singer, around which a tag is formed.
Push-out Quartet - Four guys start a song and you replace a given singer with yourself.
Rip Face - Imagining a handle on the face of your audience and ripping their faces off. Yuck!
Riser Rat - any chorus member who is not in the front row.
Round Robin - An activity wherein four or more woodshedders sit in a circle and progressively rotate voice parts.
S.P. - Old judging category called Stage Presence and/or a term for choreography.
Scissors Movement - Two voice parts that cross each other, while the other two voice sustain, leading to an inversion of
the chord.
Shoulder-Raiser - A listeners physical reaction to a singer who doesn't quite reach his/her note.
Singlish - A method of singing a song as if one was speaking the part, phonetically connective.
Skunk Song - A melody essentially useless for woodshedding purposes, because of an existing familiar arrangement.
Slab - to sing slowly through a measure chord by chord, also called blocking.
Sleeping Around - Secretly singing with three other people in order to establish a new/better quartet.
Spank - Great vocal execution as in "Boy that lead spanks!"
Sweet Spot - the optimum range in one vocal range.
Tag - The ending of a song, too often over-arranged.
Tag Quartet - Four singers begin a song and one by one are replaced by a new singer, tagged out if you will.
Tear-jerker - A tender, sentimental ballad that evokes emotion.
Tiddly - a musical embellishment usually by a baritone.
Toe-Tapper - An uptune with great rhythmic pulse.
Train Wreck - when one or more parts sings a wrong note, the resulting chord sounds like railway calamity.
Transsectional - Same as Bisectional.
Tune Bucket - A vessel which some people cannot carry.
VLQ - Very large quartet or mini-chorus, if you will.
Wall of Sound - Seamless, continuous vocalization.
Whomp-Squeak Ratio - The ratio of resonance to ping in the voice.
Woodshed - To improvise your part in a song, hopefully not melody.
Yawner - A very boring and poor performance a song.
Yodel-Chord - A phenomenon in woodshedding, where two voices land on the same note and simultaneously move to
the missing part.
Yodeling - an attempt to find one proper note, see woodshedding
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