Southern Gospel Glee Club

If you're watching the NASCAR race from Atlanta and saw the National Anthem, it was sung by Ernie Haase and Signature Sound, one of the more popular quartets in the business.  Today they had five people singing, so I'm guessing they decided to let their piano player have a little ESPN TV time since they were using a recorded track for their background music.

I like EHSS - they're a dynamic group with tons of talent.  I wish they could have just done the anthem a capella rather than use the big orchestrated arrangement, mainly because their track sounded like it had stacked vocals on it.  That's why it sounded more like a choir than a quartet.

Stacking vocals is pretty much the standard way of doing things in Southern Gospel these days.  It saves wear and tear on the vocalists who are performing several times a week, and gives a fuller sound to the group.  We use them on some of our newer tracks and it's nice to have the extra support on some of those big endings.

Although we use stacks on a handful of songs I'm kind of old school.  I'd rather hear four well-blended voices rather than 12 perfectly blended voices.  It's a quartet, not a glee club.

It's amazing how heavily stacked a lot of artist's tracks are these days.  We were waiting our turn to sound check at the Great Western Quartet Convention in Fresno some years ago and a popular trio was running through their check a head of us.  Well, to be completely accurate one member of the popular trio was doing the sound check, but all three could be clearly heard on the track.  They almost could have done their set without singing at all.

The arrangement EHSS did is a little slow for a sports event, but given how badly most singers butcher the song, it was a pleasure to hear someone sing it like they knew what it meant.  And sing it like they knew the song wasn't about them.  This is probably the first time I haven't muted the anthem in several years.

UPDATE:  If you didn't hear the EHSS performance somebody put it on YouTube here.