Dan Baker: Heart of America's Executive Producer

Hello everybody, and welcome to this month’s episode of Show Choir Sessions.

I’m Garrett Breeze, and today we have the Lindvahl family on the show.

Marty and Mark Lindvahl, now retired, were the choir and band directors at Danville High School in Illinois for many years.

You will find one or both of them out judging just about every week during Show Choir season.

And they brought their son-in-law Aaron with them today as well, because they have created a new app called Judges Assistant, which uses artificial intelligence to analyze and summarize judges’ comments.

The website is judgesassistant.com.

It’s a really neat idea, and I’m super excited to give it a try this year when I’m out judging.

So we’re gonna talk all about the app, how to get it, how to use it, where it came from, and then we’ll go on a few tangents about judging as well.

So without further ado, here is Marty and Mark Lindvahl and Aaron Smiley.

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Well, let’s jump right in.

What is Judge’s Assistant?

Well, it started over a cup of coffee.

Truly, like at the kitchen table, Aaron and I were at their home in Indianapolis, and I was getting ready to go to Brownsburg and Judge, and we were just having a cup of coffee, just shooting the breeze, and he’s very inquisitive and wanting to know, so tell me about what you do when you’re judging, and all that stuff.

I said, well, we adjudicate, usually it’s done on a computer, but a lot of times it could be paper judging still, but most of the time it’s computer, like a glorified spreadsheet that we use.

And I said, we talk in voice recorders, and we talk the entire show about what’s happening, and our opinion, and what’s happening.

And he said, oh, that’s cool.

So then what do you do with those recordings?

And I said, well, we give them to somebody, and they upload them into a Google Doc.

Now, I’m old enough to remember when you didn’t have voice recordings, everything was written down, and it was scratches and you couldn’t read most of it.

Or then it graduated slowly to cassette tapes, and I’m really aging myself here.

So you might get a manila packet full of 10 cassette tapes that you had to run to the homeroom and plug into a cassette recorder and try to hear what the judges said.

It was very muffled.

It was hard to hear.

There was a lot of crowd noise.

And then it sort of graduated to CDs.

And then it was thumb drives.

And then it was eventually recordings that they upload on a Google Doc.

And that’s where we’re at now.

And so Aaron’s like, well, then when do the directors hear those?

I said, well, usually the end of the day.

And it’s like, oh, OK.

And so then Aaron said, let’s do it better.

We can do this better, Marty.

He said, so they have to listen to all the recordings before they maybe go into finals or whatever.

And I’m like, yeah, they have to.

And if you’re a and she doesn’t mind me mentioning her, Jen Dice from Center Grove, she’s real excited about this.

She’s usually always towards the end of the day competing, and then she has to turn around and compete in finals.

So she has to grab three or four of her people and say, OK, you listen to Garrett Breeze and you listen to Marty Lindvahl and you listen.

And so they’re all in a room trying to listen to what the judges had to say to possibly make some improvements for finals, right?

And so she’s like, it’s crazy.

If I had all this in a highly organized memo, I could scan through each of the judges in 10 minutes time and go, hey, they’re all saying we have some intonation problems on the opener.

And they’re all saying this, that or the other.

And we can fix all that stuff before finals.

And it’s just a much more efficient way for the directors to get their feedback.

So that’s how it kind of started.

And Aaron’s doing this in his veterinary practice.

So talk about that a little bit, Aaron.

Yeah, so we use the same kind of technology, except instead of you talking in a microphone, judging a show choir group, it’s the doctor, the veterinarian talking to the client.

And then what’s happened with large language based artificial intelligence is you can take that transcription and it’s just this gold mine of data.

And so like what Marty was taking, okay, we’ve got the transcription from the judge.

How can we mine that data to help the director and the performers do better, right?

Because the knowledge that comes from the judge, we want to impart that on the performers so they can do a better job, whether that be in finals or that’s in their next performance.

But if we can take that data and we can mine it for the gems that are in there and distill it down to what really matters, then we can take action on it.

And I think that that’s what was exciting to me when I was talking to Marty like, oh, let’s do this better.

Let’s get the performers the information that is in the wealth of knowledge that these judges are providing and not let it get lost in the ether.

I mean, Mark and Marty, I was blessed to have them both as high school band directors.

I mean, honestly, it’s wealth of knowledge.

I want to know what Mr.

and Mrs.

Lindvahl have to say about this because they’re going to make me better as a performer.

For sure.

And sometimes I wonder too if anyone’s listening to these tapes.

You spend all day, you spend 12 hours talking to a recorder.

Sometimes you see groups later and you’re like, nothing’s changed.

They didn’t listen to my tapes.

And you take it super personal, right?

And honestly, Garrett, you and I both know that some people give really great feedback.

It’s very specific.

It’s very concise.

And then there are others that just might throw four or five comments in here and there.

And there’s a lot of just emptiness in the tape.

Or they might have space.

Yeah, a lot of dead space.

And so for Jen Dice said, I just want to cut to the chase.

I just want to know in a quick way, what did Judge A really want to say, rather than listen to 20 minutes?

Well, she’s taking four groups everywhere she goes to.

That’s the other piece of it.

A lot of these directors have multiple groups.

Yeah, they have a women’s group, mixed group, men’s group, you know, a prep group.

Right, so they don’t have time to sit down and listen to six different, six times four, 24 judges, tapes or audio recordings.

So we just thought it would be kind of exciting to try.

And so we, we did that weekend in Brownsburg.

Yeah, we kind of beta tested it there.

And then he was like, so, you know, when you’re judging, what are the people called that help the judges?

And I said, well, they’re called judges assistants.

And he goes, bingo, that’s your name.

Right.

And away we go.

And then Adam Peters, you know, Adam Peters.

Yeah.

I saw him at an HOA and he’s really fired up about this.

And he was like, I’ll make your logo.

And he came up with a cute little bird on a treble clef.

You’ve probably seen the website.

Yeah.

So he helps me with my logo.

And so, and I found that, let’s be honest, most of the younger directors and younger people like you, Garrett, you’re younger, are like-

Thank you for including me in that group.

I remember cassette tapes too after competitions.

Thank you very much.

But they’re kind of like, why hasn’t anybody thought of this?

Why hasn’t anybody tried this?

And I’m like, I don’t know, but it’s a goldmine of, like Aaron said, to be able to get directors their information.

Like, for instance, when I beta tested it at Brownsburg, and Connie Mulligan was there too, and there were other people, they were like, let me try it too.

So I literally had, they gave me a voice recorder, and then I had my phone, and I recorded both at the same time.

I hit stop, stop, I named my file, I sent it to Aaron, and within two minutes, I had a highly organized memo that was time stamped in chronological order.

Then I looked at it, I might have edited a couple things, like, oh, I wouldn’t have said it that way, or whatever.

And then I copied it, and then at the bottom, you know, where your judges have a little space for comments, then I pasted it in there.

And Connie’s like, wow, that was fast.

I’m like, I know, it only took a couple minutes.

And it didn’t take me any more time.

I named a file and sent it, I got it back.

And while I was putting my scores in, and you know, everybody’s tearing down in between groups, you have a little bit of dead time, four or five minutes.

And I was able to copy and paste it and put it in the comments.

And the unfortunate thing is in most of those competitions, those directors don’t see that till the end of the day.

I think it would be great if they could see it literally leaving the stage.

You know, they’ve got their members already, you know, and it’s right there.

And some contests do that.

They’ll send the audio files, but not the scores.

And I think that’s where everything is headed.

And I think this is just the next step of that.

So let’s get really technical.

You’ve got some mysterious AI somewhere transcribing everything.

Like, how does that work?

Is that a system you developed?

Yes and no.

The analogy that I use is going to the grocery store.

So anybody can make a pie, right?

Anybody can make, why do we go out to eat?

Well, you could grill a hamburger.

Why are you going to McDonald’s?

Well, because you like the convenience or you like the taste or whatever.

So all we’re doing is going to the grocery store of softwares and we’re picking a little of this and a little of that.

We need to do this, we need to do that.

And we’re mixing it together for something that’s tasty to give to the judge and to the director and the performers.

So there’s no mystery behind it.

Anybody could, I mean, Marty is super kind.

I don’t really know what I’m doing.

I just know where to shop, right?

And so I’m going to the grocery store and picking out a few groceries and putting them together.

Well, that analogy makes sense.

The reason I’m asking is because I’ve tried a couple of different audio transcription things online just for podcasting.

And what I found is that they don’t understand music terminology.

A lot of stuff is misspelled.

So how do you train or shop or build?

I don’t know the technical term, but how do you get a system that’s able to transcribe this really specialized terminology?

Okay.

The first thing is it’s getting better every day.

So I would encourage your listeners, go back and try it again.

Now, use judges’ assistance.

We’d love for you to use judges’ assistance, but don’t give up on AI if you haven’t already tried it.

The second thing is poking around with tons of different prompts.

So the time spent isn’t any genius, it’s just me tinkering.

So I get an idea and I was a kid that did Show Choir.

So I have this idea of what’s going on and then Marty, she perfects that idea and helps my imagination understand exactly what’s going on.

Then it’s just hours of tinkering.

So you try this, it doesn’t work.

You try this.

And I mean, that’s to me, that’s what the beauty of music too, right?

Is where you can practice and you practice and you know that you’re never going to get to the place where you want to be, but you can watch this thing get better, whether I’m playing my trumpet or I’m doing my clarinet or whatever, I can hear it get better and better and better.

And it’s that same kind of tinkering with this artificial intelligence technology.

It’s something that you just keep rolling through the mill like you would your musical instrument, and you keep watching it get better and watch it.

So the short answer is you just keep tinkering around with prompts.

And you know, when I first started, Garrett, when I was going to do it at Brownsburg, I was kind of like, Oh my gosh, Aaron, am I going to have to talk differently?

Am I going to say?

He goes, No, no, no, no, Marty, don’t do anything different.

Just do what you normally do.

Talk like you normally talk.

And I would, you know how when you’re judging, Garrett, you get a show info usually, which I love when they list all the songs they’re doing and so on and who the soloists are.

So when I first did it, I would just say, okay, now on your opener and I would name the song.

And then I would just start talking about it.

So then when it came in a memo, it was timestamped, but it was also in order.

It would list the song that I said, it would say the words opener or production number or ballad.

I mean, it even would say like if I mentioned, well, Sally, I really enjoyed that solo.

It would say, you really enjoyed Sally’s solo.

Thought it was very commendable or whatever.

Organizes the thoughts.

Yeah, organize the thoughts.

That’s right.

It’s organizing my thoughts.

And I said to Aaron, but he goes, it’s just a math problem, Marty.

You’re just putting in the information.

It’s giving it back to you.

You’re the ones putting in the information.

It’s organizing it.

Now, it might think a little more sophisticated, maybe in some ways than I would, or it would maybe assume that I’m going to, I meant this.

And so sometimes you do have to do a little bit of editing, but I didn’t find that I had to do much editing at all.

And then Aaron would keep tweaking it.

Okay, so you want it to be focused on, you know, you have an opener, you have a production number, you have a ballot, you have a transition number, and you have a closer.

And so we’ll prompt it to glean those ideas.

And then, like I said, I liked when it was time stamped, because it would say at 45 seconds, you said this, and at, you know, a minute and 30 seconds, you said this.

So then the director can go, oh, I can go right to a minute, 30 seconds on my recording and hear what she had to say, or hear what my group was doing.

So that’s helpful to the director to have it time stamped, I think.

So that’s kind of what, and we are still tweaking it.

We used it this summer.

I music directed a teen musical Pippin, and we used it in a couple of rehearsals.

Like I recorded the entire rehearsal, and he put the rehearsal in with the script.

Oh, interesting.

Oh, it’s fascinating.

It was fascinating.

All the places that Pippin missed the lines or the words, you know, it was like basically analyzing the whole show to the script, and that was super cool.

And then I beta tested it at three or two of the HOA competitions I went to, and I had Anne Chapman try it, and I had Mara Kover, and I had other people try it.

And Mara Kover actually said, Oh my gosh, when she was a critique judge, she went into the critique session, and there was a ballet section in one of the shows, and they actually said, Well, what did you think of our ballet section?

And she said, I honestly had missed it because I had looked down.

She said, I was still thinking I needed to write things down.

And she said, I now know that I could have just watched the entire show and not taken my eyes off the group, and I wouldn’t have missed that ballet section.

I would have just kept recording.

So there’s things that a critique judge, it’ll be really awesome for because they are looking down to write, or they are looking away to go, wait a minute, what about that?

When they don’t have to.

So that’s-

Well, and I’ve even had to judge competitions where they ask you to type comments.

So you’re looking at your screen or, I mean, there’s just a lot going on.

And I think the fascinating thing about this is we tend to get sort of hyper focused on competition, but you could use this thing all over the place.

Oh my God.

You could use it in rehearsal every day.

I mean, you could use it at private lessons, musicals, Broadway.

Yeah, any of the pageantry arts.

We’re going to try it at the U of I Marching Competition and maybe some other marching competitions.

Because you’ve got on field judges that are running around with the percussion and they could be recording everything and not have to run to the sideline and write anything down.

It’s just all there.

And be able to read it.

And be able to read it.

Good point, right?

There’s that part of it too.

So how does the, it’s not an app, is it?

What is it and how do you use it?

Like if I’m hosting a competition and I want to use judges’ assistant, how does that work?

So you go on our website and you say, I want to use it, then we basically will, what we’ve done so far is it’s not an app.

So at that competition, the judges would, just like I said, record, name the file, and Aaron would provide a email address for that to be sent.

So you send it automatically to the email.

It comes back literally like I’ve had it back within a minute, a minute and a half.

And what we want to do is we want to support the systems that are in place.

So what judges assistant doesn’t want to come in and try to push anybody else out, right?

The systems that are in place are very good, they’re robust, they work.

What we want to do is layer on top of that and go, hey, use what you’re using.

That works, that is traditionally that makes sense.

Here’s an added layer of expertise that can enhance everything.

And we can use the native apps that are built into most phones.

So like Marty uses an iPhone.

Well, she’s already got a voice recorder on there.

So what she would do is she would say, hey, judges assistant, I want to use it.

Here’s my 30 bucks, dirt cheap.

Here’s my dirt 30 bucks.

And then what she’s going to do is she’s going to get a unique email address.

And so when Marty’s done with that show, she labels it and what she says, she emails it to this unique email address.

And within a minute and a half, she gets a highly organized note back.

Does it come back as a word doc or something similar?

A word doc, yes, because we want to make sure it’s easy to edit.

Because what comes out of judges assistants, not the judge’s opinion until he stamps it or she stamps it and says, that’s what I said, because this is just a tool.

This is just a computer, this is just a math problem.

So it does get things wrong, but it’s highly accurate, but it gets things wrong.

So until the judge says, this is my opinion, we don’t want anybody to get confused or concerned that Marty, when she sends something off to judges assistant, it’ll automatically be put to the director.

No, no, no.

Marty has control of that as the judge.

And if I don’t like, I don’t think that that’s going to be helpful for me to post that, because maybe it was really critical or something.

I don’t have to send it.

I don’t have to use it.

Or I can glean parts of it that I did like and put it in the comments and think, okay, because it’s going to be, like I said, it’s and I find myself being very positive as a judge, and most of my feedback is very positive.

But if there’s things in there, I’m like, I really don’t want to say that.

What I thought was interesting while I was listening, because I got to listen and process a lot of these, not just Marty’s because she had other people beta testing it, was when I listened to some people, I’m like, that’s harsh.

What the AI could do is make it more diplomatic.

It was more kind and honest versus just being honest.

Because as a judge, you need to be both.

The balance is to be kind and honest.

I would listen to some of these judges and I’m like, they took the pain off the barge with that one.

But what the AI would do was just melt a little bit of kindness in with that honest opinion.

Yes, made it a little more palatable.

Yes.

Well, then it can go the other way too, because some things can look really harsh written down.

But then when you hear it with the tone of voice, you’re like, well, they’re just playing with me.

Like, that sounds terrible.

You know what I mean?

Like sarcasm or whatever.

To Marty’s point with it being timestamp, you could go back as the director and you’re like, I dramatically disagree with Mark Lindvahl on that one.

Okay, well, it’s timestamp.

Go back and then listen to his audio and listen to your performers sing over the top of him.

You’re like, oh, he’s right.

They were pitchy.

What happens to all of this data?

What happens to these recordings and these sheets after it gets sent to?

Does your robot have a name?

Judge’s assistant.

No, I don’t.

I haven’t named the robot yet.

My wife is a second-grade teacher and she has continuing education on artificial intelligence.

They said to the kids, don’t call it a person.

It’s an it.

As far as in the mind of the child, they didn’t want to have this humanized.

I’m like, well, most of the time, I’m operating on the level of a second-grader, so I’m like, okay, I don’t want to name.

This isn’t better.

Anthropomorphize it, yeah.

Right.

What happens with the data is it’s securely stored.

Basically, the grocery store that we go to, we can then provide all of those terms of services to all the judges.

Our stuff is held securely with the other parties that we use.

It’s secure.

We’re not taking that data and then going to other places and going, hey, do you want to listen to how Marty did that judging so you can sell them sequence?

That’s just not what we’re in the business of doing.

Then I have them all in my e-mails.

I have all the e-mails of my memos.

You have a record of what you sent out.

Yeah.

How long until AI is going to replace us as judges?

I don’t think they ever will.

This is the reason why, is because it takes the human element.

It’s just one more level of technology.

So you would say that with any, okay, well, my guys, now they have, we’re going from open fires to stoves.

There go the cooks.

No, no, no.

The cook is now just enhanced because now she has the control of a stove and she doesn’t have to fuss with the fire.

So her culinary wizardry goes up.

So it’s the same thing.

This unleashes more of the creative energy of the human being, because we can spend less time on the mundane tasks.

And in the fine arts, this is so exciting to me because now you get these minds that get one more layer of being unencumbered, free these minds up to do their creative work, because that’s the beauty that they bring into life, that is the beauty of art.

I mean, why do fine arts matter?

It’s because it separates us from the mundane parts of life.

I get to experience grace and beauty and love in the fine arts.

If we can free up our creatives to do more of that, that’s a better world.

Right, because AI scares people that way.

I’m like, no, it’s just a tool.

It’s a tool that we’re using to help organizer.

You’re giving the input.

They still use Garrett Breeze to give the input about the arranging or the key that you chose or whatever.

I don’t know that AI could really do that as well as a human.

And you also have the emotion and you have the, oh, that ballad just moved me to tears.

I don’t think AI would have that.

So I don’t think it’s going to ever replace the human element in judging or in evaluating music.

It’s just going to help us be more organized.

And as a director, I would have loved to have memos that I could just go look at real quick.

And I didn’t go into the room and help the kids be quiet so I could hear what this judge had to say, so that I could fix it before finals.

And I would have loved that.

I would have, no offense, I didn’t have time to listen to six different judges.

So I would sometimes have to go, hey, I really want to know what Garrett Breeze has to think about my arrangement.

So I’m going to listen to him.

And I want to know what Eric Van Cleve thought.

There are certain judges, you’re like, I want to know what they think.

But I might not listen to all of them because I don’t have time.

I’m busy.

I’ve got kids in warm up.

I’ve got two groups going.

I’ve got a kid that’s faking an asthma attack.

I mean, there’s a million things you have going on.

So as a director, you don’t have time to do all that.

And so I think that’s the beauty of it.

As a former director, I would have loved having…

I mean, as a current judge, I would love it because you get to the end of the day and you need to pick caption awards and you need to pick costumes and all this stuff.

And you don’t always remember everything of every group.

But then you can go back and go, yeah, I said I liked the costumes there or I said this.

And also, it’s an evaluation tool of you as a judge.

Aaron said, hey, Marty, how about you give me your voice recordings and I feed them through and let them evaluate you as a judge.

And it was really interesting.

It would tell me, you didn’t quite explain that.

What did you mean by this?

And you said this word several times, but you probably didn’t mean that.

You probably meant it was great.

The AI actually critiqued you for judging?

Yes.

It’s so beautiful.

Talk more about that.

It takes a level of confidence that a Mark and Marty bring to the room, right?

You have to be confident in who you are.

And I would say my ego is very fragile, so this is difficult for me.

But if you walk into the room and you say, I want to get better, and that’s one of the things as a student of Mr.

and Mrs.

Lindvahl that I love the most, even to this day, both of those people are pushing to get better at their craft every day.

Mr.

Lindvahl practices his horn, right?

He practices golf swing.

It’s one of the things that I admire about him as a human is he’s always trying to get better.

So if you could walk in to the AI with that kind of a mentality, it helps you get better.

Because just like what Marty says, it says you didn’t explain that well.

Well, okay.

That doesn’t mean I’m a bad judge.

That just means, oh, okay, I didn’t realize I didn’t explain that because I don’t know.

Aaron, you use it in your veterinary practice.

I didn’t explain this well to Mrs.

Smith, the cat lady I’m impatient with or whatever.

Correct.

That’s exactly.

And that’s where the idea came from.

With every exam that I do, I get critiqued.

The AI comes back and says, good doctor, bad doctor.

You did that well, you didn’t do this.

But what happens to our level of competence when we allow that type of coaching?

And I don’t call it criticism, I call it coaching.

Whether you’re doing a golf swing, okay, the coach is standing right there with the iPad going, okay, let’s look at it.

Let’s look at it.

And as the golf player, you’re not kicking the ground going, well, I want to be perfect.

No, you’re there to be coached.

And so we see this as far as if we can get feedback on all different levels, we get better.

I want a better golf swing.

You want to be a better judge.

The director wants to have a better performance.

This is a tool that can raise the bar.

And I think the memo helps you as a director to immediately in that homeroom, say to the kids, or in that warmup for finals, or on the bus going home, or hey, if you’re really a, I think, a confident director, you copy all those memos and you send them to the kids.

Here’s what the judges said.

Read it on the way home.

Yeah.

And then they can, when they come in on Monday, they’re like, yeah, I read all that on the way home on my phone.

And they’re like, oh, we’ve got some work to do.

Or they thought we were great.

Although we didn’t make finals, they still had these nice things to say about us.

Because the kids are wanting that feedback just as much as the director.

And so, it gives the kids a little ownership in the show too.

If you’re being grown up enough to go, hey, here’s the memos from the judges.

You know, a lot of directors would go, no, no, I’m just going to, you know, spoon feed the kids what I want them to hear.

But, you know, if you’re pretty confident in what you’re doing, maybe that’s something you share with your students or your leadership team in your show choir or whatever.

I think they’re so, like I said, it’s-

Oh, it’s incredible.

There’s so much that could be done with it.

Well, and it’s so much more realistic to ask your students, hey, go read this five-page memo, than it is to say, listen to these five 20-minute takes.

That’s correct.

Good point, Kieran.

You know, like that’s not going to happen.

No.

Well, and I’ve got a good example that Jen Dice, she’s an awesome director and she went to a competition.

I won’t name the competition and I won’t name the judge.

But she couldn’t understand a word they were saying because the audio was so bad and you had a hard time hearing the judge and there was a lot of background noise and it was just, she goes, I couldn’t understand and I was in the Orlando airport at the time and I said, Jen, send me that voice recording if you can.

Remember that, Aaron?

Yeah, it was incredible.

I sent it to Aaron at like 930, 10 o’clock at night and within a couple minutes, he sent it back and it had all of his stuff that he said.

When I sent it to Jen, she’s like, oh.

That’s gold.

Yeah, I mean, because it happens all the time, right?

There’s a glitch in the Internet or a battery dies.

I mean, it happens every show.

But it was able to pull that judge’s comments through all the noise.

It was able to glean all of his words and pull it out so that she could understand it.

She goes, oh, it was awesome.

That’s what he was saying.

I couldn’t, I didn’t have any idea what he was saying.

So there’s a good example of a way it could be used too.

So we’re hoping some folks will use it this year.

It’s, I think it’s easy.

If I’m 70, I’m going to be 70 years old.

Gosh, no, that’s not.

I am.

I am.

If I can figure it out and use it, then by golly, who couldn’t?

But like I said, I’ve had several judges beta test it, and they’re like, this was easy.

This was easy.

And that several of them would say, oh, it makes me sound so much smarter than I am.

I go, no, you are smart.

It’s just parroting what you had to say.

It’s a parrot.

It’s giving back what you just said to it in a maybe more organized, sophisticated way.

But it’s what you said.

It’s not making up stuff.

You’re the one that gave it the expertise.

It’s just parroting it back to you.

That’s what Aaron kept saying.

It’s just a parrot, Marty.

Are there any plans to have Judge Assistant somehow compile the feedback from all of the judges?

All six judges said you were flat on this spot and kind of categorize by how many judges said this, how many said this, how many said this.

We did talk about that.

We have talked about that and that’s up to that host school if they want to do that.

We can certainly put all those memos in and have the software go compile them into one memo.

That’s the beautiful part of it as far as your creativity.

We sit on this gold mine of data.

We sit on this gold mine of the intelligence that’s coming out of the judge’s brain, and now we can mine it.

Now, Garrett’s creativity goes, hey, hey, hey, what about what?

You say to Marty, hey, Marty, do that.

Well, the technology can do it.

This is a conversation we had before is, don’t let your creativity get inhibited, let it go, ask the question, and the answer is probably like, yeah, but we can, just like with Pippen.

So Marty and I start talking about that.

Hey, I’ll bet we can compare the script to what the students are doing.

Oh yeah, we can.

So I love that idea.

It would obviously, in practicality, it would take everybody on board because we wouldn’t want anybody to think that we’re doing something outside the bounds of what they gave us permission.

But if everybody agreed to that, the technology can most certainly do that.

I think for people, they’re like, oh, this is new.

But judging has really not changed a whole lot in the years that I’ve done it, 50 years or whatever.

It’s sort of an elephant that we just kind of poke a little bit at a time, a dinosaur moving.

But I think this is just like Aaron said, just taking it up a notch.

It’s not throwing away anybody’s system or the way that anybody’s done anything.

It’s just taking what we’re doing and making it highly organized and giving better input to the directors.

So as a judge and Mark, chime in on this too.

Yeah, Mark, chime in.

What do you wish directors knew about judging?

First of all, it’s a personal opinion based on their own experiences with their groups, either professional or teaching, whatever it may be of what they’re looking for in the sound.

Or number one, you have to take into consideration each judge and where they’re coming from, what they’ve done, and what their level of what they consider excellence.

And everybody has sometimes a certain thing that they really listen for, but it might be intonation or diction or balance or blend, whatever it may be or rhythmic precision.

So knowing that it’s what those judges are listening for.

And again, because a lot of them are specific if they’re doing just dance or if they’re doing just vocals or if they’re doing the combo.

Just finding those specific elements that hopefully, in the end run, make your performance better.

The kids can understand, try to get helpful comments for the kids and the director to be able to pass it on to help their performance get better.

And I think as a judge, and I know you do this, Garrett, you don’t want to just go, oops, those kind of comments.

You want to be more specific about right there, we need to work on our tone trumpets, or we need to make sure that we’re all articulating up to that first trumpet player, where we need to work on this or that.

You want to give them specific things rather than just, I don’t like it, but that’s bad.

Or oops, it, you know, because there have been judges that’ll just, have been caught saying, it, or I hate that, you know, and that’s not good feedback for the kids.

I mean, that’s not telling them what they could do differently.

So I think as a judge, you’ve got to be willing to, as you’re critiquing, give them hope, and give them some, here’s what you could do to make this better, and this is really great, but it could be even better if you did this.

If we would all unify our vowels on that chord, it would be ringing, and it would be even more beautiful than it is, okay?

You give them hope that they can do better.

Even the groups that are like, you just want to go if, to, you got to give them a little nugget that they can go, yeah, he said that we could, or she said that we could really be better if we did this, this, and this, rather than just being critical, critical, critical.

Yeah.

For instance, if it’s, if they’re playing something in a jazz style and the hi-hat’s not working on two and four, if they’re do something in a disco style or do something in a Broadway style with a boom chick, boom chick, whatever it could be to say, hey, in this style, it really helps if the drummer would play this pattern, or again, intonation, the articulation should be a little longer here or shorter.

Those trying to give them helpful hints to make, again, help their performance get better, just help the kids realize in this style, these are things that the judge may be listening for.

Instead of drummer, you got that wrong.

You’ve got to give them, like I said, you’ve got to teach, you’ve got to always be an educator, even when you’re judging.

We’ve all been in those trenches, we’ve all worked with kids, and we know what it’s like for kids to put a show together and how hard the director has worked, and everybody has worked really hard.

And you want to get, you want to be educational about your comments.

And that kind of touches on the thing that I really wish people would take to heart, and that is just because somebody has a lot of criticism for the show, doesn’t mean that they didn’t like it or like you.

Right.

Right, like we tend to equate sort of the two, and if they had a lot of negative comments, or if they had a lot of feedback, that means they didn’t like it.

I’ve seen plenty of shows that were executed flawlessly, and I didn’t really care for it, right?

And the opposite is true, too.

You see some that are kind of messy, but it was really fun.

And so I think it’s just as we get into competition season, it’s helpful to learn to sort of separate those two ideas a little bit, because although we are giving our opinions as judges, it’s not that sort of evaluation.

It’s not personal in that way.

It’s not I like this, didn’t like that.

I mean, unless unless somebody chooses to say it, right?

And some judges do.

But like, just because you talked about vowels the whole time doesn’t mean you didn’t enjoy it.

Right.

Right.

Right.

And I think as a judge also, you have to put your maybe your personal tastes aside a little bit and judge what is there, not what you want to be there.

You know, because there’s times when I’ve had groups, they’re like, well, I wish there was more male sound.

Well, I do too.

But do you see how many boys I have up there?

You know, or I wish you had with a band, you know, it’d be great if you had tubas, but I don’t have tubas.

So, you know, I think sometimes we have to judge what’s there.

And that they’re doing the best that they can, because everybody is doing the best they can.

Even if it’s not great, they’re all trying really hard.

And I think maybe I don’t like certain kinds of music or maybe there are certain things.

I don’t even know what the song is.

And maybe the show is full of those songs that I don’t like.

I have to still judge that in a positive way, even though I don’t like the songs or they wouldn’t be my choices.

But they did them really well.

Or like you said, maybe the show was super sloppy, but it sure was fun, you know?

I think you just have to put aside what you think should be up there and judge what is up there and what is going on.

Well, and I think this tool will help with that because I think it will, at the end of the day, get more of the judges’ comments into people’s brains.

And it will let students see, oh, it wasn’t just one judge picking on us, it was, they might have scored us differently, but they all thought the same thing in this particular spot.

Or I don’t know.

I mean, I do know some directors that will only change something if they hear it from more than one judge.

And this makes it easier to sort of make those evaluations.

And I mean, there’s all sorts of different ways you can…

Well, let me get your take on it.

As a director, you get this feedback from a judge.

How do you decide what to take and what to leave?

What do you implement and what do you go, I don’t agree with that.

You know, a lot of times I start my recording off with that.

I say, you know, I’m going to make some comments.

And this is just one woman’s opinion.

So you can take what you want, you can leave what you want.

Because at the end of the day, you’re the director and you’re the group, and you get to decide what your forte is.

But I think as a director, I maybe shouldn’t say this, but there were certain judges that I was like, I really like their opinion more than I maybe other judges on the panel.

I mean, we all have judges where we’re like, I just have always admired them.

I’ve always admired their groups, and I just feel like their comments have a little more weight with me as a director, because I have always felt that they were positive, or they’re the vocal guru in the world.

So if they’re saying to me, you’ve got a lot of balance and blend problems, then I probably do.

I think they’re being honest with me, and so I would take that to heart and go back and go, kids, we need to sing better, or we need to work on our unification of vowels or whatever.

But I think if I had somebody just didn’t like my show, well, you can’t just throw your show out.

You can’t change the costumes.

So there have been plenty of times where I’ve said to the kids, they didn’t like our show, but that’s okay.

We like our show, so let’s just move on.

There’s times where you just let it go.

I’ve had vocal judges put us in last place choreography and tied for second vocally.

How does that happen?

How can you be so great vocally in March and your choreography be last place?

Well, that was just a judge that probably had a bone to pick with my choreographer.

I don’t know.

You just let some of that go.

You just have to go, well, it’s okay.

So I think as a director, if you can make changes and you think it’s going to be beneficial for the kids and educational for the kids, you do.

But if you think it’s going to tear down their whole unity and their feeling about themselves, no, you just go, yeah, that was one person’s opinion.

And we appreciate them sharing that.

And then you move on.

So that’s kind of how I feel about that.

Yeah, this is great stuff.

Is there anything I’m like forgetting to ask about Judge’s Assistant that you wish we would talk about?

Well, I just, first of all, I want people to go to the website because I think Aaron’s done a fabulous job at the website.

And I’ve got several friends that have tried Judge’s Assistant and made comments on there.

And I would just say to directors, why not be a little cutting edge, try something new, you know?

We don’t have to do the same thing every year.

Let’s throw Judge’s Assistant in this year and see if directors like it.

And if they don’t like it, then get us good feedback and Aaron will do more tweaking to make it better.

But give it a try.

It’s dirt cheap at 30 bucks a judge.

I mean, come on, that’s hardly anything.

You know, if you have a judging panel of six, that’s nothing.

It’s, what is it, less than $200.

I’m gonna go with it.

But give it a try.

And like I said, I think you underestimate the judges.

You know, some people are like, oh, the judges aren’t gonna want to mess with that.

Oh yes, they will.

They’ve all got their iPhones out anyway.

How many panels have you been on, Garrett, where they don’t have their iPhone out?

Oh, I’m shocked at how many places are still using those old voice recorders.

Yeah, use your phone.

You have a really good voice recorder on your phone, whether it’s an iPhone or it’s an Android.

Use your phone.

This is going to be the final nail in Radio Shack’s coffin.

Yeah, right here.

Well, yeah, because those voice recorders a lot of times don’t work, or they’ll come back and say, I didn’t get your recording.

And you’re like, but if you had it on your phone, you go, oh, but I did it on my phone too.

So here it is.

I’m going to sit to you.

So I think that shouldn’t be a barrier.

Unless you have to upgrade from a flip phone.

Yes.

But if there are judges still using a flip phone, we’ll provide them a phone or an iPod.

You know, when Chad first started doing HOA, you were there, Garrett.

Remember, he did the iPods.

We recorded on iPods and then we immediately sent them by email to the director.

Do you remember that?

Yeah, they were like judge-only iPods.

They were judge-only iPods.

And then they had the director’s emails already kind of populated in there.

That’s right.

They put them all in the contacts.

So then we didn’t have to worry about like misspelling the address of the director or anything like that.

So sometimes judge or the directors were getting their phone blown up in their pocket as they’re leaving the stage because we were sending our voice recordings immediately to their phone.

And so it’s been done and it’s, you know, why not get the information?

Because some people are like, well, is that fair for Mr.

Smith to get his voice recordings at 830 in the morning and Mrs.

Penelope get hers at 430?

Well, this is because he had to perform at fricking 830 in the morning in the morning.

Yes.

And you know, he’s earned those tapes.

Okay.

He has earned those.

That’s what I said to somebody because they were like, that’s not fair if they’re getting theirs six hours before me.

I go, yeah, it is because you got to perform last.

You have the advantage.

I guess you’re right.

So anyhow, I just hope people will use it and take a, you know, just take their competition up a couple notches and try it.

You know, we’re we aren’t going to promise that there won’t be glitches and mistakes.

We’ll work them out.

And but, you know, like I said, I used it for competitions and I didn’t have any problem with it each time.

Now, there were what there was one time where the Wi-Fi was slow.

Yeah.

But then.

But you still have the recordings.

So I mean, you’re not at risk of losing the comments.

It just might be a little delayed.

It might be a little delayed.

Yes.

And and then I think I ended up just putting it on my 5G and it worked out great.

And they were lightning fast.

I mean, literally, I was getting the voice, the memo back before I even got through scoring.

So it wasn’t like I was waiting for that to come back to me.

It was pretty stinking slick.

And Garrett, just for fun, if you want to send me the transcript of this conversation, then we can pick it apart.

That’s just recording, right?

So just send me the.

Yeah.

Well, you know, Apple, Apple does the the automatic transcripts now.

So I want to compare it to Apple’s and see who had a better transcript.

Just send Marty questions.

Say, hey, Marty, I want to know.

And then send her five questions.

Blah, blah, blah.

What was the most insightful thing?

What could I have done?

Blah, blah.

I don’t care.

You think it.

You’re creative.

All right.

Yeah.

The most fun for this project, for me, is that this is genuinely an outcropping of my fine arts education.

Right.

So in my fine arts education, I had the freedom to experiment.

So and one of the places where we could was jazz band.

Mark gave us tons of freedom to be able to play.

And it was hideous most of the time, right?

It says the seventh grader that was honk, right?

And even as a senior in high school, fighting for something that sounded good, but to have the freedom to experiment.

And out of that fine arts education, I mean, I am a average to below average trumpet player, right?

My lips would come on fire if I picked up the trumpet.

But what I got out of my fine arts education was more confidence in the tinker.

And so then Marty and I can sit down at the table and we can think and we can dream because I had a high-quality fine arts education.

That’s huge.

So to a 40-something year old man that has nothing to do in his professional life with fine arts, there is an outcropping that comes in daily life of having confidence of being able to tinker and experiment and ask one more questions.

And I think that that’s the most beautiful part of this for me.

And then it can always be better, you know, let’s make it better.

Make it better, you know, it’s not that the other way was wrong.

No, but it’s just allowing us to take the judging to another level and be able to give that feedback immediately to the directors.

And it’s all automatic.

So if 20 competitions the same weekend, I’ll decide to use it, it still runs the same, correct?

Yeah, correct.

20 individual.

Yes, you can’t be in 20 different places, but yes, we could support those many users.

So 20 different competitions would have 6 judges a piece or yada yada yada.

Also, and maybe I’ll cut this part, I don’t know, because it’s kind of a can of worms, but also it’s an interesting thought.

Oh, let’s open that can of worms, Garrett.

Let’s do it.

Yeah.

But people have talked about the lack of training for judges in our profession.

And people have used the word janitor judge.

Where did you get the janitor judge?

I haven’t even heard such a thing.

You know, like, why are they on a judging panel?

They don’t have any expertise or whatever.

It’s all good.

You know, you’re going to learn from everybody.

Well, Eric Van Cleave has a fun story about, I don’t know if it’s true or not, but he said once that he, you know, just wrote a list of things that he wanted his kids to do, and he handed it to the janitor, told them to wear a suit and come in and say it.

And because it wasn’t him, they all just immediately listened.

I think that’s where I heard the janitor judge thing.

So I think that’s an Eric Van Cleave ism.

And it probably didn’t happen, but it’s a good story.

I hope it’s true though.

As a father of children, I believe it.

I think if someone came and told my kids to do something, then it wasn’t me, they would listen.

Yes, it’s true.

Well, I’ve always said, you know, when I would have clinicians come in or when I would walk into a school as a clinician, which I did four or five times last year, I would first of all say to the kids, you know, I’m going to say a lot of the things that your director says to you every single day, but you let it roll right over the top of you, because the fact that I’m 20 miles out of town makes me an expert.

I’m not an expert, I’m just saying a lot of the same things that your director is saying that you’ve just tuned them out.

Yes, I get to be the expert in the room, but I’m just an old choir teacher that’s got the same things in her head that your choir director does.

I got sidetracked by Eric, which is not unusual.

But a lot of people have issue with the fact that there’s not any training or certification or whatever you want to call it for Show Choir.

Although I’m not necessarily convinced we need something that’s strict, this gives us a tool to actually help educate judges too, and get evaluations and feedback.

And it can, you know, eventually it’ll have all the comments from every judge ever given, and it can kind of compile all that and say, well, you know, compared to Marty, you’re not giving enough feedback about this, you know, or your delivery is not quite this.

You know, like, it could be something that judges use to get better at the craft too.

Well, marching band does it.

I mean, you have to, the judges have to go to trainings for BOA and that kind of stuff.

And there isn’t that sort of system for Show Choir, but I just think when you get this kind of feedback, and maybe that if you’re running the competition, you might say, hey, I’d like to see what everybody’s comments were, then that you’re kind of evaluating the judges too.

But maybe that’s a can of worms that we don’t want to open.

But…

Well, I mean, I’ve had, obviously, you know, you have your good days and your bad days, but I feel like in general, I’m pretty consistent in the kind of feedback I give.

And I’ve gone to some places where they just eat it up and they love it.

And I get comments about how great they thought it was.

And then the next week, people will get offended.

You know, I mean, it’s, you can’t please everybody.

No, you can’t.

You can’t.

And I think as long as your intentions are right, because it’s, believe me, I’ve had, I’ve listened to some judges over the years, and I’m like, you know, but then the more I thought about it, it’s like, well, you know, they really were right.

We did have a lot of intonation problems or whatever.

But at the time, you know, you’re coming off that stage sweaty and you’re excited.

And you think your kids have the best group of the day and why, and then they don’t make finals.

And you’re like, well, wait a minute.

And then you have to step back and be the, you know, the grown up in the room instead of the kids, you know, let’s go to Fuddruckers and have a hamburger and then we’re going to go home.

And then we’re going to evaluate.

But right now, how did you feel when you left the stage?

Well, I felt great.

I go, well, then that’s your trophy and let’s go, let’s go get something to eat.

And sometimes you have to take that kind of attitude too, is that they can only pick six groups to go into the finals.

This time we didn’t make it.

Okay, it’s all right.

The sun is going to come up tomorrow.

We’re still going to have our group.

We’re still going to love each other.

We still love the way we felt on the stage.

And you’re going to have memories of riding the bus.

I asked my daughter one time, what was your favorite thing about being in high school band and show choir?

And she goes, and I thought it was going to be the music and the this and that.

And she said, I just love riding the bus with my friends.

You know, so there’s that part of it too, right?

The kids just have fun being together.

So it’s sometimes it’s not about because think about it.

When you look at the groups that have all these trophies, you know, I remember having to say to my kids, can you go out in the hallway and look at where we placed last year?

Because, you know, you have to remember you write those bios and what places you I couldn’t even remember from the year before, where we placed in a competition, I’d have to go out and check.

So it’s not about the trophy and what place you were.

It’s about, don’t you remember that show?

We had so much fun with that show.

When we use the feedback system in the clinic.

So I work with technicians and then with assistance.

And so people have varying levels of education.

The continual feedback is upsetting at the beginning because it’s like, oh gosh.

But as I manage those people, the fact that they’re getting consistent feedback is so much, it takes a lot of burden off of me.

So like Garrett, when you describe what you’re doing as a judge, you are getting zero feedback.

You’re talking into the abyss.

Right.

I mean, I was thinking about what like, professionally I go and I’m interacting with people’s faces all the time.

I get instantaneous feedback.

Oh, that was a, you guys have no idea.

You’re just shouting into the void.

And so to be able, I think it would be so, there’d be comfort in that.

And there are also ways to get better.

But as a judge, I would want to hear, hey, well done.

And the AI will kick that back to you.

I hear you did a nice job on that.

And not just right not to make you feel good.

But I think that there’s some of that, that the judge needs to feel that the accomplished judges need to hear that feedback like, oh yeah, that was good.

It might have been a lot of truth, but it was accurate.

It was accurate.

So I think that it definitely has the potential to help everybody get better.

And I don’t know how often this happens, Marty.

You have a more informed opinion on this.

But if a director wants to talk about your comments a week later, you would actually have the tools to be able to have that conversation because you’d have your printout from judges assistant.

If all it is is the recording and then it’s gone and you don’t even have the recording, and then you go judge two more places and then someone tries to ask, well, why didn’t you like this?

I don’t know.

I have had a phone call or a messenger from, most of the time has been positive.

Hey, I really appreciated everything you said and it was right on and you were so positive and could you come work with my kids or whatever?

Most of the time it’s been positive, but I’ve had a few of them were like, I didn’t get what you were meaning there.

You know what I mean?

I could go back to my notes and go, because when they ask you what you thought of their show and you’ve listened to 20 groups and you’re like, first of all, what’s your name and what’s your color?

What would your costume color?

I don’t know.

You’ve listened to so many groups, you forget that a group you heard at eight in the morning, and now it’s five o’clock.

Right.

Forget it.

I think that’s something that’s under-appreciated by a lot of directors.

Or like you said, we’ve got to pick the best vocal or now most of the time is done by score, but we might have to do best show opener, or we might have to do costumes, or we might have to do those caption awards.

Then we can go back to our notes and go, well, I said a lot of good comments about their costume, or I said a lot, I love their opener, the concept of their opener.

And then you can go back to your notes and you go automatically remember like, oh yeah, they did that opener and it was really cool how they change key five times or whatever.

So it’s going to be helpful for the judges.

But like Aaron said, it makes you feel like, wow, I really am giving good feedback.

When you don’t even know if they listened.

Because maybe they didn’t have time, but now they can go back and check it.

I mean, it’s brilliant.

Well, I’m glad you think it’s good.

We do too, and we just hope that people will actually use it and not be afraid of it, and not be, because there’s so many things you have to do when you’re running a competition, that you’re like, I don’t want to mess with one more thing.

Right.

The one more thing is a lot of bang for its buck, and the one more thing is not that hard to add.

No, it’s not hard at all.

You’re using an iPhone and you’re naming a file, and you’re sending it off and giving it back.

That’s how easy it is.

It’s not like you’re having to type or edit much.

I’m hoping all you directors go to our website, give it a try.

You’ll like it.

You’ll like it.

Listen, if Marty Lindvahl likes it, you like it.

It’s easy.

Garrett, we appreciate you letting us come on here about it.

I appreciate all your good questions, and just use the technology, and sign yourself up for judges assistant at your competition this year.