Barbershop Harmony: Transferable Pedagogy for Brass Students

This thesis explores how contemporary barbershop quartet practices can be
translated into effective learning objectives and rehearsal tools for brass ensembles.
Brass and band pedagogy often emphasizes repertoire-based musicianship and
chorale-style exercises, which develop essential skills such as blend, phrasing, and
part independence. However, these materials do not explicitly train several aural
and ensemble competencies that barbershop performers cultivate as routine
practice such as just-intonation tuning for overtone alignment, frequent functional
use of dominant-seventh harmony, and sustained attention to close, high-density
vertical sonorities.

Grounded in analysis of barbershop musical and performance practices, this
thesis identifies key ensemble skill principles that shape the genre’s “iconic” sound:
expanded sound (“bell tones”) achieved through relational tuning toward resonant
intervals, cone-based balance strategies that distribute volume and timbre to
reinforce foundational tones, and synchronized vowel alignment that stabilizes
overtone production during attacks and releases. The study further examines
barbershop chord categories and progressional behaviors, including the central role
of guide-tone relationships and the use of tags as concentrated rehearsal contexts
for breath management, sustained tuning, and expressive ensemble coordination.

The major contribution of this work is the development of transferable
pedagogical applications for brass teachers, including practical warm-ups designed
to strengthen students’ intonation, inner-voice awareness, balance and blending,
and small-ensemble chamber performance skills. By integrating barbershop-based
listening and tuning strategies into brass instruction, the thesis argues that
ensemble sound becomes more acoustically unified, thus improving harmonic
literacy and deepening students’ understanding of the overtone series that is
necessary in both vocal and brass resonance.