{"id":13151,"date":"2019-04-18T21:07:09","date_gmt":"2019-04-19T03:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/?p=13151"},"modified":"2019-05-02T18:39:26","modified_gmt":"2019-05-03T00:39:26","slug":"piano-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/2019\/04\/18\/piano-man\/","title":{"rendered":"Piano Man"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Craig Jones began his Spring Sing career 46 years ago, the same year Spring Sing started, and has been vital for staple production throughout the years.<\/p>\n

Jones, an instructor of music and Bible at Harding Academy, came to the role when Steve and Dottie Frye, Spring Sing directors, asked him to take his talents as vocal coach with hosts and hostesses and move it to the club shows.<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved it very much, but I also valued sleep so I stopped doing that,\u201d Jones said. Jones currently meets with each club show twice, once to hear the show and add adjustments and a second time for the recording of the club\u2019s vocal track. Working with club shows on diction, harmonies and notes, Jones workshops the groups\u2019 vocals in advance of their music track recording. \u201cIf you work harder here early, then when you\u2019re on the stage for the show, you don\u2019t<\/p>\n

have to work as hard,\u201d Jones said.
\nOver the years, Jones has worked with many shows, but said the one that stands out is \u201cThe Show Heard \u2018Round The World,\u201d a 2014 show from men\u2019s social club Knights. He said he was immediately impressed by the high-quality nature of their performance, music and lyrics.<\/p>\n

He also recalls a show from men\u2019s social club TNT and women\u2019s social club Zeta Rho in which the group\u2019s vocals were so strong, production turned off their vocal track on a Saturday performance to let their talent sing for itself.<\/p>\n

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It is not, however, always pitch-perfect, Jones said. Certain male voices and untrained singers can make perfecting the shows a tall task.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe hardest issues are when male voices drop an octave to sing the melody instead of the harmony that is written,\u201d Jones said. \u201cSometimes you just have to punt what the arranger has done because it doesn\u2019t work with the voices that are in the group.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sophomore Andrew Lanning, a director for the men\u2019s social club Gamma Sigma Phi and women\u2019s social club Pi Theta Phi show, said Jones made all the difference in their show\u2019s vocal performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe brought another professional level to our show and held us to a higher standard,\u201d Lanning said. \u201cHe was able to bring out the musical talent that we didn\u2019t know we had.\u201d<\/p>\n

Junior Kyle Raney, a director for men\u2019s social club TNT and women\u2019s social club Zeta Rho, said Jones was not afraid to tell the directors and cast what they needed to hear.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause he didn\u2019t just give us a \u2018Great job, y\u2019all sound great\u2019 and actually gave us constructive criticism, we were able to take our track and work super hard on it,\u201d Raney said. \u201cAfter that practice, the track completely changed into something I couldn\u2019t be more proud of. He seriously made our track go from good to outstanding.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the majority of the audience will never directly recognize the time and talent Jones offers, his dedication will pay off in the sounds that hit their ears as they enjoy the eight club shows.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Craig Jones began his Spring Sing career 46 years ago, the same year Spring Sing started, and has been vital for staple production throughout the years. Jones, an instructor of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15124,"featured_media":13152,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13151"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13153,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13151\/revisions\/13153"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}