Eight choir students attended the annual Tenor I, Tenor II, Bass I, Bass II (TTBB) Choir festival at Cal State Fullerton Saturday, October 21. 

Different schools with their individual choirs attended the event. Students worked with college directors such as Dr. Christopher Peterson, the Cal State Fullerton Titans Chorus director. At the end of the day, a small concert was held in the evening to showcase all the students’ accomplishments during the festival.

“I never went there before last year even  though I was in the Chamber [Choir]. This is my first time there but I’ve been to honor choirs before, so I think this is a great experience as a practice run for honor,” junior Jake Xiang said. “Because the honor choir takes three days with our music, you have to perform well. On the other hand, this [event] is only one day.” 

Honor choirs require singers to audition for their spot, making the event much more advanced than the TTBB Choir Festival. This event was more casual, and students were able to enjoy the musical curriculum Cal State Fullerton had to offer. 

“I thought it was pretty fun because it was the first time for me to do something like that because I’m new to Chamber Chamber and that kind of thing. It was my first time along with [Calvin Chen], so we were in the same boat together,” junior Matthew Montoya said.  

The festival participants learned valuable skills such as “breathing techniques and visualization of your voice to get a richer sound while you sing,” Montoya noted. 

“After we went in groups, we went up to the stage. Before that we learned with the Titans, the members that each had a job to teach us a tag, which is just like a tiny barbershop. Each school has different ones and then and then we had to warm up with Dr. Peterson on the stage,” Xiang said. 

In choir, the term “barbershop” means a capella with four parts and a “tag” refers to the ending chords of a song. Students were also challenged with sight reading, the practice of reading and performing a piece one has never seen before.  

“We sang all the [sight reading] songs first. There were four of them that we sang, so we sang those [songs] blindly and that was a little messy,” Montoya said. 

Students were given the opportunity to hear the Singing Titans, which is the college choir, as well as other high school choirs perform for them. 

“I believe after this experience, we can apply many of the things we learned to our own choirs and improve overall as a group,” Xiang said.