Multitrack Barbershop Tag: For My Beautiful Lifelong Friends

[wolybuger]

hay BIGO I love it wen you do the tags thay lift my spirit from the ground you are grate keep singing those tages for your fans = )

[southernstruggle]

been lookin at ur videos....ur really a breath of fresh air =)

[murry537]

@jmtc3 lol, that's not a bad idea. I might do some guitar stuff sometime.

[spartanello46857]

i sing bass in a barbershop quartet at my school and i think they would love to sing this one! thanks

[murry537]

@Griffinacb It works either way. And there's tons of variations on just about any tag out there.

[tristancow]

you said you were looking at some sheet music, i was wondering if you could upload it? if you can't that's fine, thanks for great tutorial!

[murry537]

@tristancow It's in the "classic tags" collection. There's pleny of pdfs of it online, just google for classic tags pdf and you'll find it.

[humboldtkind]

Hey murry my name is Doy and I sing in a quartet in northern Cali and need some help in finding parts n a song. I'm not good with music theory. Please help this young Y2 member.

[yuriy54321]

BASS !!!

[DaTMarks]

Dude, this tag is sweet! i love how clear your Ab overtone is. it sounds wonderful. thanks for breaking down these tags. it helps a lot!

[rstrem]

I keyed this in F and taught it to the women's chorus I sing in.

[murry537]

@rstrem Awesome!

[aaronhadalilgoat]

Hey Murry! If i was recording a song what program would you recommend using? I am currently using Audacity and its not working out too well... haha. And i'm not really sure how much reverb i should be adding because i keep getting the settings incorrect, so it always sounds like theres too much.

[murry537]

@aaronhadalilgoat You should watch my other videos. My favorite is Garageband and I've got several tutorial videos.

[iceee1]

AAAH OMG u should teach us mooooooore never stopp pleaaaaaaase!! hahaha =] ur awsome!!<3

[muziklvr1714]

really great job. i love your videos... i think you should work on getting all the videos on the screen at the same time during the tag. i think it just lends a little more to the video if you know what i mean

[murry537]

@muziklvr1714 It all comes down to time. My earlier vids had that, but I stopped doing it because it takes so long to do the post processing that I wasn't getting any vids out.

[muziklvr1714]

@murry537 ehh whatever you wanna do right? anyway thanks for the reply and keep up the great work!

[oneswanaswimming]

Thanks, I found the link. Ladies sing it in D if I've worked it out properly. Sadly no time to learn this tag for tonight (as it is my turn to do warm up sesh) but will prepare for next time and have printed the sheet music. A wonderful find. Thank you so much.

[oneswanaswimming]

Lovely!

[oneswanaswimming]

yes, I heard the overtone on the final note, too! Great, emotional tag. Ladies would be an octave higher, yes? I would sing that last overtone note, being a lady tenor I think. I'm not good at transposing.

[murry537]

Ladies Barbershop is not usually pitched a full octave up I don't think. I don't know enough about it to know for sure though. But there's a version of the tag book I got this from that is arranged for female voice if you'd like the sheet music.

[soundcalcman]

@murry537

Yes, Females usually transpose up a fifth from the men's voicing. Some really low tags are moved up more. Transposing while singing is easy, just start on a different note and read the music normally. If you know the part, that is. Happy singing!

[0000infinity0000]

"Big O's" sounds like a breakfast cereal...

you should make your own line of cereal...

i would eat it, lol

[murry537]

not a bad idea :)

[COMALiteJ]

@0000infinity0000, actually, "Big O" sounds like a giant Japanese anime robot in some future where only one city remains and its inhabitants lost all their memories 40 years ago... ;-)

[EcoLogicality]

Not to be "that" guy, but if you're learning this, the tenor actually goes up the the G, not the F# as when he's demonstrating it.

[murry537]

I like it my way. But that's the great thing about tags. You can sing it however you want!

[EcoLogicality]

@murry537 awesome!

[EcoLogicality]

@murry537 Yeah I love this tag a lot, it always tears me up to sing it with buddies. Hey do you have the sheet music for the entire song? My friend is dying to try and find the whole piece, but it seems to be lost to the commonplace media

[murry537]

I don't. I just got it from a tag book.

[ButAWhimper]

@murry537 thats too bad, it would be super cool if I could find the whole barbershop quartet version of that song. Same guy btw.

[brianisawesom]

Im hearing an overtone on the last note

[Eaarok]

i wanna hear more tags as well

[tragicdeceit]

I must have more tags.....I NEED A FIX

[nuyork77]

Thanks again, thanks again! I posted a video response as well.

[brandonsanime1114]

sweet i can sing the lead part now sweet.

[jontang92]

hey big-o. i finally subscribed to your videos because I just made a youtube account. I listened to a lot of your tags haha. I was wondering, how are you supposed to sing high without seeming like you're screaming it.

[brianisawesom]

wow. your really good. compared to me cuz I suck. :)

[murry537]

Thanks! But you probably just need more practice. Keep pumping out the vids!

[brianisawesom]

you bet!

[brandonsanime1114]

lol man i sang bass in concert choir and bass/baritone in barbershop chours and i'm surprised i can hit the low bass note cus i'm a baritone lol

[ddup911]

your really good at the stuff. keep posting slow tags! you have a beautiful voice! keep making slooow ones. i want to sing them with my troup! thanks big-o!

[boonkilla]

If you next lesson can be the "To Reach the Unreachable Star" that would be amazing. Bairs for life!!

[Linkthe3rd]

No hate here, but the Tenor note on "long" is a half step higher as written than you have it.

[murry537]

You're not the first to say that, but I like it this way. :)

[vanish129]

NICE SOUND MAN!

The Mic sound of the real tag...then the mic of the computer completely threw me off...

what kind of mic do you use!?

[murry537]

It's the same mic for both. One just has eq and reverb and such. This tag was recorded with a Behringer C-1.

[QuartetmanIA]

Great job "Big O"; you and the other multi-trackers (multi-trekkers? lol) on YouTube are doing a service that the BHS hasn't fully appreciated yet. I enjoy reading your comments on the HarmoNet too.

[hardtruck]

OMG Ive been wanting to learn this since forever but ive always had problems picking out the parts but thanks to you.......

[murry537]

That's what I'm here for!

[NocturnalSentinel]

"Big O" is fastly becoming a regular part of my day! My father passed away recently, and our favorite thing to do was watching and singing along to barbershop. Thank you for the wonderful gift you bestowe on all of us. I thoroughly enjoy sing along with you, and think that my father sings with us to. Thanks again,

Your buddy Vik in Tucson, AZ.

[ceegers]

love it as always!

[Partyburner]

It sounds great (as usual) - except for some minor sync problems (as usual ).

And I think it is a good idea to put the mix-down version at the beginning.

[murry537]

Geeze, everyone's getting on me for the sync issues. Fine! Next tag will be tighter than...um...something very extremely tight!

[Partyburner]

You could leave out some hard consonants on a few tracks and sing them louder on the other ones. This way it is much easier to get them in sync.

This trick is even used in some choirs where the choir director selects only a few people with a good feeling for the rhythm to sing these consonants and instructs the other singers to leave them out.

[murry537]

Thanks, but I know HOW to fix it. It's just a matter of taking the time to do it. Usually I don't want to take the time to do a lot of takes, or a lot of editing. That's the whole reason I dropped the quad video panel thing. It just took too much time.

And that's exactly why I say that these are NOT intended to be an impressive performance. The point is that I'm trying to teach people the tags. I don't need to be OC Times to do that.

[DanishCartoonist]

Argh, that previous comment wasn't supposed to be a reply to Josh's comment! I was going to write something else... Bah nevermind!

[bordonthestreet]

Hey man, great tag again! (thanks again!)

Cool moves on the post production! Something that got me was that the intro and the ending both feature the full tag, which is beautiful, but it means we've gotta wait 32 seconds before getting to learning that tag! I think many are used to hearing the final "when you put it all together" at the end rather than the start, and that's part of the coolness to it; that you get to hear what everything sounds like just at the end.

[murry537]

Yeah, I've gone back and forth on that. I thought doing it like this would be easier to rewind it for people who are trying to learn it and need to hear it over and over again.

[CarlyCarlyW]

James Estes has used this same format for a couple of BHS instructional videos, and it DOES make it very easy to rewind to the finished tag.

Here are a few time marks for those who want to listen to particular parts:

Instructional Comments begin at 0:30

Lead at 1:40

Bass at 2:20

Tenor at 2:45

Baritone at 3:15

Final Tag at 0:00 and at 3:40

I've learned so much from watching your videos and from reading the comments. Thanks! :-)

[murry537]

That's a great idea! I'm going to put that in the description. Thanks.

[DanishCartoonist]

Hey, Big-O! Isn't it "TO my beautiful lifelong friends" in the Classic Tags book? :p

A couple of out-of-synch spots, but sounds good, mate! Keep up these learning videos!!

[murry537]

There's more than one version of the tags book floating around. One says "for", another says "to".

Yes, out of sync spots. It was past 1 am when I recorded. I didn't feel like doing any more takes.

Just keep in mind that these videos are NOT intended to be a fantastic performance. The whole point is to teach people stuff. Otherwise I would spend a lot more time on making them sound polished.

[super00fly]

well done good sir

[allanichon]

Dude , your videos are always a great great pleasure to hear. Keep it up, you're simply incredible !

[Delivery07]

i'm glad that there's people out there keeping barbershop alive! being from chicago, there isn't a lot of us, especially those my age! Thanks and kudos!

[propmastaflash]

That was once again.... fantastic! and once again I'll will have to get my quartet to try it out.

[boonkilla]

Hey great job big-o, always a fan of your work. One question, what program you using to record your vocals?

[murry537]

Garageband on a Mac.

[Danielcory]

YAY! I new vid. I cant sing, but i love to watch you anyways.

Keep up the good vids

[captbaritone]

First of all, I am a big fan of your videos. In fact, you have inspired me to make a few teaching videos myself. But just a point of clarity: on beat three of the second complete measure, your tenor voice is singing a Gb when the sheet music calls for a G natural. Possibly this is just a different version of the tag, but I thought I would point it out.

[murry537]

I thought if someone was going to nit-pick about me going off the spots it would be about the fact that I removed two entire chords near the end. I have the lead going solo on "again" but as written there are two 4 part chords in that word. Flatting a single tenor note hardly seems worth mentioning compared to that.

You'll find that some of my other tags aren't completely true to the sheet music either.

[captbaritone]

Haha, well, I guess that shows how my brain works. I didn't even notice the missing chords!

The tradition of tag singing is something of an oral tradition among barbershoppers, and because of that tags evolve. I think that's important, and I am glad that you don't feel overly tied to the written note.

Thanks again.

[murry537]

I agree. I've considered doing a tag video that includes three or four variations of the same tag. Might have to do that sometime.

[BerkleyJL]

That's called artistry. :D

[blynk23]

ha...awesome as usual...as you mention you did take out the best part for the basses in the cadence here. I think it goes to a flat 6 (?) on "again" at the end. Still great stuff, keep em coming (I've pulled these up on my phone to teach guys tags lol).

[murry537]

No, I didn't take that bass part out. It just wasn't in the version I had that I was working from.

[blynk23]

Gotcha...were you using the Classic Tags version?

[murry537]

Yes, but remember there's more than one 'version' of the classic tags version.

[blynk23]

Nevermind, relistened to your video...

A learning tag video with alternate versions would be sweet, it'd be like any great live tag-learning session.

[murry537]

Yup. I definitely want to do that. I'll probably start with Mamselle, as Rick Spenser just taught me a fifth part (!) to that tag. I already knew a few variations, and that one just takes the cake.

[murry537]

Heh. I just listened again and noticed that it was only one chord that I cut out, not two. Shows how much I know.

[CarlyCarlyW]

Thanks for the lesson. I really like this tag.

It's a good one to dedicate to your parents. :-)

[jibcraip]

great one as always ! do you have perfect pitch ??? cos You never take a pitch pipe or something to have the note !

[murry537]

Glad you liked it! No perfect pitch, that's just the magic of video editing.

[jibcraip]

hehe ok then !

[murry537]

When I do these, I get the final tag done first and finish all the mixing and stuff, then I record my talking stuff afterward. By then the pitch is solidly in my mind.

[murry537]

Yeah, it's a LOT easier to do it this way. I'll probably stick to this from now on.

And yes the room IS a wreck. I'm hoping my next tag can be done on a green screen to cover that up. You can see the edge of it peeking out on the right.

[BerkleyJL]

Lighting and video quality are much better than before...the place behind you is a wreck! (LOL)

As always, you sound great.

After doing one of these, I know why you don't try to synch the video segments...that takes forever!