Developing this site has cost a great deal of money, and it costs still more to keep it alive
(hosting, domain names, etc). Any help you can offer in offsetting these costs is greatly appreciated.
Other Useful Information
Programmers API
If you are a programmer, and would like to develop an application for the iPhone, Android smartphone or any other platform, please visit our API page
Tag Teaching Guidelines Updated Mar 21 2014 Darwin Scheel has compiled and made available his Barbershop Tag Teaching Guidelines for
men and
women
How to Multitrack
Anyone interested in creating their own multitrack recordings should check out the excellent guides we've collected on our Multitrack page.
SmartPhone Apps
Access all the tags on our site from the following smartphone (iPhone, etc) applications:
Tag Master - DePollSoft (iPhone/iPad, Android and Windows Phone)
Dean Martin from singersdaily.com, for making the domain name available
According to Wikipedia, a "tag", in barbershop music, is the last section of the song. Its rough analog in Classical music is a coda.
Tags are characterized by a heightening of the dramatic tension of the song, frequently including a "hanger", or posted (held) note. In addition, good tags can be sung as short, stand-alone works. Tags may be soft and tender but are typically characterized by loud, "paint-peeling," ringing chords. According to the competition rules of the Barbershop Harmony Society, every song entered for a competition must have a tag.
When Barbershoppers get together, even if they have never met before, it is common for them to get into groups of four or more and sing a few tags. Those that don't know the tag being sung can be easily taught by those that do. This typically brings feelings of joy and camaraderie to all involved.
Barbershop is a style of a cappella (unaccompanied) singing, characterised by four male vocal parts sung in close, rich, consonant harmony. The most well-known expression of this musical style is the "Barbershop quartet", the contemporary form of which has shed its twee image of four men with moustaches, striped suits and boater hats, and is now sleek, professional, musically sophisticated entertainment. Groups of men larger than four can also sing Barbershop music. Organised groups are usually known as "choruses" and are found in most North American cities, as well as in Australia/New Zealand, Great Britain and several countries in Europe.
The organisation responsible for overseeing Barbershop singing and development in North America is the Barbershop Harmony Society (BHS). It organises an annual convention and competition for quartets and choruses, which has become the de facto world championships for the art form. Groups from affiliate organisations in other countries are also invited to compete. Contestants must adhere to strict rules governing their performance style and the musical structure and subject material of their chosen songs.
The female counterparts to the Barbershop Harmony Society include Sweet Adelines International (SAI), Harmony, Inc (HI), and others. Mixed (male and female) Barbershop groups exist, but are not common.
SATB stands for "Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass (or Baritone)" - the names of the voice parts of a typical four-part mixed-gender (female/male) a cappella quartet or choir. SATB groups sing a wide variety of a cappella music, not just Barbershop
A Cappella is a musical style comprising of one or more voices without instrumental accompaniment. The term is Italian (or Latin) and literally translates as "From the chapel" (although most a cappella music is not church-related).
Barbershop is one type of a cappella singing.
Multitrack refers to a recording technique. When it applies to tag-singing, it means that each of the voice parts is recorded separately and then mixed together after recording is complete (as opposed to recording several singers harmonising with each other in one recording). In a multitrack recording, each voice part can be sung by a separate individual, or one person can sing all voice parts.
The term can equally apply to video recording. During the mixing stage of a multitrack video, the video screen is typically split into sections (4, 6, 8, etc), each section showing one person singing one voice part (they can often be all the same person, resulting in an eerie effect). A good example is here.
Two articles on how to record a multitrack tag can be found on our Multitrack page.
Welcome to Barbershop Tags.com
This site contains 3922 freely-downloadable Barbershop tags, with more being added every day.
Many tags come complete with learning tracks, sheet music - even video clips of them being sung. Most of the tags are in the Barbershop style (male or female voicing), but there are also SATB and other a cappella tags available.
It's all free! You can listen to the tags on the website, or download them to your own computer. Most importantly, anyone can upload a tag or a video!
Every tag and video on this website was contributed by one of our members. If you know a good tag, become a member and then enter the details into our site. If you have the sheet music or feel like recording some learning tracks, even better!
Videos too! If you know a good tag-related video on YouTube, you can easily attach it to a tag on our site. If you're one of those people who creates those excellent multitrack videos, become a member and add them all to our site - it only takes a few clicks for each one!
We encourage you to download all the tags you want, and give each one a rating out of 5 (you don't have to be a member to do so). If you notice some missing/incorrect information about a tag, it would be great it you could let us know (click on the Add Missing Details button on that tag's page).
It's now possible to upload tag videos that are located on Facebook. Up until now, tag videos on this site could only be uploaded from YouTube. But now it's possible to get them from Facebook as well.
When uploading a video, you simply copy-and-paste the Facebook video URL. Instructions for locating the URL of any Facebook video are provided on that page.
Unfortunately, we have had to reset the ratings (1 to 5) of every tag in the database. For the next little while, most tags will show no rating at all.
The ratings system was being abused - people repeatedly clicking "5" (or "1") in an effort to promote (or demote) certain tags. We didn't anticipate this behaviour when we created the ratings system (very shortsighted of us), and so now we're left with no choice but to clear the ratings of ALL tags and ask that people rate tags again. The new rating system is not able to be abused like the first one.
After a few months the rating system should be healthy and useful again.
The embedded MP3 player in the site has been upgraded to one that does not require Flash in order to play the MP3 audio. This means that all files should be playable from with iPads, iPhones, etc.
Chat with fellow tag singers and discuss the tags on our Facebook group
