Competition time is upon us! And with competition comes the
dreaded score sheets and comment sheets.
For a sensitive introvert like myself, I approach reading
these comment sheets with the same amount of dread and fear as sticking a
red-hot poker in my eye. The internal pain of getting a bad comment is just as
bad as the external pain would be of burning out my eye socket.
So I developed a system, one which separates the subjective
from the objective. Ever since I developed that system, reading comment sheets
are much less damaging to the soul and much more educationally beneficial. Here
is my process:
Step 1- Know your judges
As a judge of the ICCA and ICHSA, I know first hand that
every judge looks for something different. I approach my comments from a choral
director perspective, whereas someone who has no choral directing experience
might judge based on a professional experience with recorded music. Really,
it’s a crap shoot, and unless you understand the mind-set of every judge, you
won’t truly understand where their comments are coming from. So once you know
who the judges are (and they are always listed in the program), make sure you do a quick Google search to get a sense of their background. Only then can
you begin to interpret their words logically.
Step 2- Compile all of the comments and write them out on a
big sheet.
Once you know your judges well, it’s time to eliminate the
subjective aspect of judging. The best way to do this is to write down the
comments of every judge, but on one big sheet so they all blur together. That
way, you won’t begin to assume one judge “has it out for you” or “he/she is
taking your performance personally.”
Step 3- Eliminate the paradoxes
This happens all the time. One judge says you have a great
vocal percussionist, one judge says you have a terrible vocal percussionist. If
you find any conflicting comments like that, cross both of them out. Statements
that directly contradict each other only prove what you should already know:
that you can’t please everyone.
Step 4- Find the patterns
If there is one comment that the majority, or all, of the
judges make, take that comment very seriously. If everybody noticed it, it’s a
problem or it’s something you do very well.
Step 5- Summarize your findings
Instead of taking each comment literally, categorize the comments.
For example: These four comments talk about your vocal quality. These eight
comments talk about your choreography. These eleven comments talk about your
vowels.
Organizing and categorizing these comments gives you a much
broader picture of what you need to work on for next year. If you have four
comments about dancing and twenty-one comments about vowels, maybe you should
start working on vowels.
Marc Silverberg
Follow The Quest For The A cappella Major:
Twitter.com/docacappella
Acappellaquest.blogspot.com
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This parallels very closely what I tell my recording/mixing clients when I ask them to get outside opinions. The paradoxes, the patterns, the sources - it's just humanity, and any one opinion (no matter how "expert") doesn't hold much weight. The more people you can get to "practice judge" your work before the real thing (in competition and performance as well as recording), the better.
ReplyDeleteIn making records, a group that makes all of their own choices as to how it should sound usually makes many horrid rookie mistakes by ignoring how it will actually be perceived by the 99.9% ears (both expert and novice) of non-group members who will hear the final result - simply because of their own (over)familiarity with their own voices or arrangements. The same works in competition - if you already have gotten 30 or 40 "judging sheets" before you go for the 5 that actually count, you will probably have corrected 90% of any rookie mistakes before you get to the actual competition.