Sherman Charles: Founder of Carmen Scoring

Well, let’s go ahead and start then with the beginning.

How did Carmen come to be?

Yeah.

So it was actually an idea that a friend of mine from undergrad at Ohio State, he went to Pays Valley.

We just got together one time and we’re like, what if we create the perfect score sheet for Show Choir?

And it started there and there were many, many iterations of the score sheet.

And then it was actually his idea, why don’t we create a scoring system out of this that’s better than the paper and pencil?

So we started off with just like an Excel spreadsheet.

And we’re just thinking, okay, so what if every judge has a spreadsheet and it feeds into the next one and that kind of stuff.

So we built lots and lots and lots of versions of this.

And finally we settled on one that we’re like, yeah, this is the way we should be doing it.

And we had friends that were at Arts, which was a, I don’t think they were associated with a school, it was like a community organization that did Show Choir.

Kind of like ETC up in the Akron, Cleveland area.

But they, I don’t think they’re around anymore, but they were hosting a contest and they said, why don’t you come down and test your stuff at our contest?

So we did, we went down and our results were ready as soon as the last judge entered in their score.

And it went super, super smoothly and the judges really enjoyed it.

And one of the judges was our lead, Jeff Clark, who was at Fairfield at the time.

And he actually, after that contest, he said, hey, why don’t you come to Fairfield and do your stuff?

And Fairfield, I think, was in like two weeks or something like that.

So we were like, holy crap, this could be a good thing.

This could be a big thing.

So we put everything together as quickly as possible.

We did Fairfield.

It was a hit.

And then from there, we just kept expanding to more contests.

It was all by word of mouth and then judges using it that also hosted their own contests.

David Mullencamp and Randy were at Marysville’s contest one year and they invited me out to their contest in California at Luce Allen Burbank.

And then, yeah, it just kept growing.

So talk about what happens after the judges finish.

What are all the different things that go on?

Sure.

Because I think everyone understands a spreadsheet and you put in your scores.

I think we’ve all seen a spreadsheet.

But what does the system do with all that information?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that’s a great point.

So after the judges are finished entering in their scores and their comments, we have this rule where we have to get a verbal, I’m done from all of the judges before we close the scores.

And what it means by closing the scores is it locks them in, as in no more changes can be made.

And prior to the contest happening, the contest actually chooses not only the score sheet that they want to use, but the method that they want to use to calculate the results.

And the method is just the math that determines the final places.

Like if somebody wants 60-40 vocals or something like that?

Yes.

Yeah.

So 60-40 vocals can either come from designing the score sheet so that 60 percent of the scores is in vocals and 40 percent of the scores are in choreography as an example or we can mathematically weight it, which means forcing it to be 60 percent or 40 percent.

And did you ever find the perfect score sheet?

It’s ever-changing.

Here you are, hundreds and hundreds of events later.

Do you have it?

No, no, no, no.

Every couple of years, we get tweaks, and we get requests from other directors.

We initially started out with our score sheet, and that’s the only one that we did.

But that changed rather quickly once we started to expand to other contests because they wanted to use their own score sheets.

Or we had a region where they had their own score sheet and everyone used it.

So like New England is an example where everyone uses the same score sheet, or down in Mississippi too, and they create it.

So yeah, we allowed them to customize their score sheet.

And then how does stuff get delivered to the directors?

Yeah.

So once the method calculates the final results, and we basically figure out who wins, well, the system figures out who wins.

We go to the award ceremony, yay, everybody gets awesome trophies, you did a great job.

And it’s quite simply a single button that says, send scores and feedback, and it goes immediately out to the directors through email and through text message.

And they get two different links for every group.

They get one that’s the scores, and in that they get to see all of the scores and the points and the ranks from all of the participating groups.

And the other one is their feedback link, which just contains their scores and their comments from the judges.

That includes the typed comments that they leave, as well as if they used recorded comments.

What’s the best way to do those recorded comments?

I feel like everywhere I go, it’s a different device, it’s a different method.

I’m kind of partial to just using my phone, honestly, but.

Yeah.

So that’s one of the good things, I guess, that came out of the COVID time, where everybody didn’t want to touch other people’s devices.

So everyone started to request that they use their own phone to make their recordings, and then they can just upload it to our system.

So like you said, it’s one of the preferred ways to do it.

Otherwise, contests will have their own handheld recorders that plug in via USB to a computer, and you can drag and drop those files.

Others have, I think Center Grove does this, where they have two different iPads, one for recording and one for scoring.

But I know my new client, World Strides, they actually have it all on a single iPad, and they have split screens between the recorder and entering scores.

However, I am, fingers crossed, hoping to have an application developed by next year that judges can download directly to their phones, and they don’t have to send files anywhere, automatically goes up to our storage, and it’s attached to your name and to a group, and there’s no more dragging and dropping files.

I like to imagine somewhere there’s a Radio Shack or something, and it’s like once a year they get that big order because all the show choirs are getting their voice recorders.

I mean, I don’t know who else in the world is still using those things.

I mean, maybe Marching Band.

Yeah, that’s true.

But you know what I mean?

It makes me smile when I see those things.

So, back it up, back it up.

What year did all this start?

I forgot to ask you that.

Yeah, no problem.

Well, designing everything started in like late or early 2008, and we had our first contest in 2009, or first two contests in 2009.

And then, what are the big milestones since then?

Sure, yeah.

So, from the first contests in 2009, we went from us typing it like still doing paper score sheets, and then we take the paper score sheets and enter them into the Excel spreadsheet.

We moved on to Google Docs in 2014.

And that’s, Google Docs is just the Google version of Excel.

And the judges entered their own scores into the spreadsheet, which surprisingly, we got really mixed reviews doing that.

Like, the judges either hated it or they were like, this is genius.

And I hated it is because they didn’t want to enter in their own scores, which was wild to me.

It wasn’t a technology problem.

It’s they didn’t want to enter in their own scores.

But anyway, we did the Google Docs thing.

And then in 2017, we launched our web application.

And that means it’s completely independent from Google Docs.

It’s a proprietary software.

And we own the code, we run the code.

And yeah, it’s been that way since 2017.

So explain to a dummy like me why having your own application is better than just a Google Doc or an Excel spreadsheet.

What does it do that those things can’t?

Yeah.

So one thing that our software can do that something like Google Docs can, is we don’t have to program the cells, we don’t have to program the formulas for every contest.

And as we’ve already mentioned, every contest does things a little bit differently from the next.

So that spreadsheet has to adapt to each contest.

And I’m sure after a while, if you do enough of these spreadsheets, you have templates that you can basically copy and paste.

However, there’s always a risk of human error.

Always, always, always.

Where with our software, you don’t have to customize the formulas.

You just select who the choirs are, put them in their divisions, put in the judges, and off you go.

Like that’s it.

That’s as simple as it goes.

And do you do only show choirs?

No.

So that’s a great question.

So we started out with Show Choir and in 2022, right?

Yeah, 2022, we started with World Strides.

And World Strides is a large company that hosts multiple contests around the United States, and I believe the UK and sometimes Canada, maybe Australia, I’m not quite sure.

But they host contests of all different kinds.

And this includes stuff like not only Show Choir, but like jazz band, marching band, they do all the bowl games, like the big bowl games at the end of the year, the high school marching bands go and compete there together.

And so we just did a bunch of those this last year.

This includes like bell choirs and guitar ensembles and color guard and just about every type of competitive music you can think of.

Now yours isn’t the only system out there that does this kind of thing, is it?

Definitely not.

Definitely not.

Back in the early days, I guess, I was the only system for a while.

Except for, I think it was eJudicator that started before me.

They were kind of limited to what they could do.

But since then, yeah, there are a number of options out there nowadays.

I guess, how would you describe the difference between what Carmen does and what the other apps do?

Is it like a Mac PC thing?

Is it like just a genre specific thing or?

Right.

Or is it just branding and that sort of thing?

Right.

Yeah, that’s an excellent question.

So the major difference, not only do we have our own web application, which we have control of, but we can customize and develop everything according to what the community wants.

So like I mentioned, the New England and Mississippi circuits have their own score sheet, have their own way of doing things.

So I built a system that fits what they want to do.

While at the same time, I can accommodate California Midwest contests.

So the advantage that we have is maximum customizability.

Customizability, is that a word?

It is now.

And I like to say that it’s made for the community.

So if there are things that you want to see happen, I am more than happy to build it.

Like a couple of years ago, you and I worked on that ShowBand score sheet, because I kept getting requests for a ShowBand score sheet.

And I think it was just like, we were at a contest together and we were talking about it.

I was like, hey, why don’t you help me build that?

And you’re like, okay, let’s do this.

Yeah, that was fun.

Yeah.

So building an app sounds really hard.

I have like a vague understanding of how you make a website.

Is it kind of the same idea or is it a totally different?

Because you do have Carmen online and Carmen on the app.

How do you even make an app?

Yeah.

So I do have some coding experience, but this is limited to my science background.

And so my coding is limited to statistics and modeling and that kind of stuff.

But web programming is a completely other animal.

Application programming is a completely other animal.

And I had to hire people to help me do it.

So I ended up hiring some independent contractors, and the first guy that built it was based out of Bloomington, Indiana.

And he built the whole system by himself for the 2017 launch.

And since then, I’ve had a number of different developers work on it with different perspectives.

And yeah, it’s complex.

And I thought I was going to be able to do it when I first like sat down.

And I learned real quick that that was way outside of my skill set.

Well, and I just heard, you know, that there’s a bunch of work that has to be done every time, you know, Mac OS updates or, you know, there’s a new iPhone, there’s a new iPad.

I mean, what is that even like?

Yeah, that is something I don’t understand how developers can keep up with because it all changes so quickly.

And there are kind of two sorts of changes.

One of them is small, incremental changes that don’t really impact your code.

But then there is whole, like overhauls of how certain packages of code work.

And if you don’t update them in time or keep up with all of the updates, then your browser is just not going to be able to do what it was designed to do.

So yeah, it takes a lot of work and it takes a lot of resources.

It takes a lot of patience and a lot of man-hours to just keep it up.

It’s a lot of work for something that’s not even your full-time job.

Or is it?

No, no, no, no.

This is not my full-time job.

Yeah, not only is it seasonal, but it’s part-time.

So yeah, it is quite a bit of work.

And I do take a lot of pride in saying, like I mentioned earlier, that this is built for the community.

So I’m not building this to make money.

I’m not building this to scam anybody.

I’m not building this to, you know what I’m trying to say?

I’m building it for the contests.

Because I share a love with this just like everyone else.

And I set out to be a choir director.

And I originally was like, I’m going to use this at my contest.

I’m not a choir director.

That was a, you know, young college me wanted to be a choir director.

But I imagine, I guess, this ideal situation where everyone gives me feedback, and then I update the system each and every year, just to keep up with the new trends and the new desires and the new latest and greatest things to do.

And not just Show Choir, but every other type of contest.

Well, and it’s cool that you’ve been able to branch out and get involved in so many other things too.

Oh, it’s a lot of fun.

So, let’s say I’m a new director.

I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’ve got a job and I’ve inherited this program and I’m supposed to host a contest.

You know, give me the basics.

How many judges should I hire?

What kind of score sheets should I use?

Like, what’s, like, because you see a lot of, well, how many contests do you do?

How many did you do this last year?

So, we had 60 Show Choir contests last year, like independent Show Choir contests.

And then the Frisson Foundation in Scotland has, I can’t remember what the number is this year, but I think it’s around 60 as well.

And they do elementary school competitions.

It is the cutest thing.

If you have time, look up the Frisson Foundation in Scotland, and they have all sorts of videos.

They call it Glee Choir over there.

It’s fantastic.

And then I work with World Strides, which they have upwards of, like, I think 60 to 80 contests around the world.

So in any weekend, I could have 20 to 30 different events happening.

It’s pretty crazy.

And you’re seeing what they’re all choosing to do for score sheets and judges and that sort of thing.

So I gather you have opinions about that sort of thing.

What do you think?

What’s the idea?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So if you’re a director that you’re supposed to be putting on this contest, or you’re starting a contest brand new, a couple of things to consider from a scoring perspective.

First is the score sheet.

We have tons of examples of score sheets on our website, carmanscoring.com.

And you can see what tons of other contests do all over the United States.

And yeah, so you can get inspiration from them and submit your own score sheet, or you can use any of those score sheets that are online.

All of those that are online are already preloaded into our system.

So you just select it.

The next thing that you need to consider is what method do you want to use.

And like I mentioned before, that’s the math that determines who wins.

And we have, what is it now?

I think we have five different methods that are available.

The first one is raw scores, which is like the tried and true, total up your points and whoever has the highest points wins.

We have what’s called board account, which is convert those points to ranks and then total up those ranks.

And whoever has the lowest total gets first place.

And the next one is consensus ordinal ranking, which was a Show Choir staple for years.

You’ll also see it called the Fair Fair method after David Fair at Clinton.

That one to me has its logical fallacies and its problems and it doesn’t exist outside of Show Choir.

Well, first, what is it?

Oh, yeah, right.

Thank you.

That’s the method that looks across all of the groups and says, which choir has the most 1s?

Okay.

So as long as a choir has more 1s than another choir, they’re going to get first place.

In ranks.

In ranks.

That’s right.

So let’s say group A has two 1s, group B has one 1, and group C has one 1.

Group A is going to get first place because they have two 1s.

Make sense?

Even if the other judges have them in last place, that’s how consensus on our ranking works.

And then we also just developed this year Olympic scoring, which is you drop your highest and lowest score, and then the remaining judges are totaled and whoever has the highest score wins.

And then the last one, which is my favorite, is called the Condorcet Method.

And this has been around since the 1700s.

It was developed by a mathematician during the French Revolution.

It is very well-established inside of what I’m going to call the voting theory academic community.

It’s these like super nerdy people that study how votes should be tabulated.

And for like presidential elections.

That sounds very podcast-y.

Oh yeah, right?

Yeah.

This is perfect.

Keep going.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So there’s a whole group of people that study this for a living.

And it comes down to Condorcet is the best way to determine a winner out of a group of voters.

And if we treat judges as voters, we can use the Condorcet Method.

And what is a Condorcet Method?

Yeah.

So it is, in simple ways, it’s looking at pair offs or head to head contests between two groups at a time.

So let’s say we’re in a finals round and we have five groups competing.

And the Condorcet Method says, okay, between group A and group B, do the majority of judges have group A in first or group B in first?

Okay.

And then it cycles through the rest of the possible pair.

So group A and group C, group A and group D, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all right?

And out of all of those pair offs, whoever wins the most of those head to head pair off contests gets first place.

So the way they say this in voting theory, it’s the candidate who wins over all other candidates.

And that’s a nerdy way of saying who wins the most.

And the reason why I prefer this one is because it allows the majority to rule.

So even if one group has two ones, for example, and there’s a five panel, judge panel, and the other three judges don’t agree that they should be in first place, why should they get first place?

Makes sense?

So it’s a majority rules formula.

It’s actually looking for consensus.

Consensus is general agreement among a group of people.

But is that not just a more complicated way of doing the same thing?

Because isn’t ranking basically saying this person beats this person, this person, this person?

It is a, let’s, I don’t know if complicated is the right word, but yes, it is another convoluted way to get to the same or a similar answer.

There are logical differences between all of those methods.

For example, the, I’m going to keep quoting voting theory people, the Consensus Ordinational Ranking Method is called a Plurality Rules Method.

And that’s like how we vote for presidential election or who the president in the United States is.

As long as a plurality of people agree, then that’s who the president is.

It doesn’t matter if it’s the majority of people.

It matters if it’s a plurality of people.

Whereas the Condorcet Method is it’s a majority rules only method.

Now, how does the number of judges play into all this?

Because I could imagine that makes a big difference.

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

So from my perspective, the ideal number of judges for a panel is five.

If you can afford to pay for more, then great.

But always try to have an odd number of judges.

So if you can’t have five, have seven, right?

And the reason why we want to go for an odd number of judges is to avoid ties.

And it’s not foolproof.

So just because you have an odd number of judges doesn’t mean you’re not gonna get ties.

It just helps mitigate the problem.

An even number of judges is what we call prone to ties.

So in other words, it’s more at risk of getting ties.

Even with Mr.

Condorcet on your side?

Even with Condorcet, even with raw scores, even with all of the methods across the board, you’re more at risk with even numbers of judges.

And at risk makes it sound like ties are horrible.

They’re not.

You just have to have rules for breaking your ties.

And that’s another thing that new contest directors need to consider is how do you want to break ties?

And the most common way to do it is to start, if you’re using a ranking method like Condorcet or Consensus Ordinal Ranking or Board of Count, you look at the raw score total.

Okay, so the raw score total would be the tiebreaker.

And if that doesn’t help, you go to vocals.

And if that doesn’t help, you go to choreography or music and show for our California.

Okay, so this is one thing I wanted to ask you.

What’s the farthest a tiebreaker has ever had to go and show choir?

Because I don’t think I’ve ever seen it go past raw score or maybe vocals.

But how many levels have we had to go through before we had a winner?

This only happened once in my 15 years, and I can’t remember what contest it was, but it could not be broken.

So it went through the ranks first, and then it went through total raw score, then vocals, then choreography, and I think there was even a combo or band part.

And that didn’t break it.

So at that point, I basically just throw it back to the contest saying, do you want to break it?

If so, I recommend that you just ask the judges to do it, and if they can’t do it, then you live with the tie.

And did the judges do it?

Now I have to know.

Yeah, they ended up breaking it.

Yeah.

That’s hilarious.

I get the sense that people pretty much across the board are moving away from the raw score.

Would you agree with that?

Or is that really just depending on where you are in the country?

No.

People are definitely moving away from raw score for a good reason.

But anytime there’s change from something that is traditional or what you’ve done in the past, or something that’s, quote unquote, easier to understand, you’re going to get pushback, right?

And so because we are converting more and more away from raw scores to another method, you’re starting to hear more complaints about, why don’t we just go to raw scores?

It’s so much-

Because it sucks.

Thank you for saying.

I hate raw score.

And I’m not ashamed.

I’m not embarrassed to admit it.

Yeah.

So new directors out there, avoid raw scores at all costs.

The only time you can use raw scores is if there’s one judge.

That’s the only time you can use it and don’t have one judge.

Well, I mean, okay.

So the reason I hate it is, well, actually, okay.

Like, despite what people may think about judges, I don’t want to be the one to decide everything by myself.

That sounds horrible to me.

And so anytime I have to judge raw score, I’m just like, oh, no, I hope this doesn’t ruin things.

Because if one person just uses extremely high numbers and the rest of the judges use lower numbers, even if everybody is being honest and fair and consistent, whatever, like you’re the one that’s going to decide it can throw things, you know, unintentionally.

So to make that really clear, the reason why we don’t want to use raw scores is because whether intentionally or unintentionally, if there is a low or high scoring judge, that judge alone has the power to throw the contest one way or another.

And I don’t think there are very many nefarious judges out there.

But so in other words, I think it’s mostly unintentional.

But there are definitely low versus high scoring judges, and they end up determining the contest all by themselves.

So my son is really into Monster Jam right now, and they do.

They have like the app where everybody likes.

Actually, are you familiar with?

I’m not.

I’m not.

Okay, then you’d love Monster Jam.

You should probably go.

The whole thing is determined by audience voting.

So everybody goes, and there’s like a code that they give on the big Jumbotron, and then everybody pulls out their phone and like, you know, gives them a one to ten, and they like do the math and throw it up on the screen.

And it’s all done in a matter of, you know, seconds, minutes.

Is that the kind of thing like Carmen can do?

Should we start doing that and show?

Are there any show choirs where the audience is involved in scoring?

Do you think that’d be a terrible idea?

Like, it probably would be, because, you know, people don’t stay and watch every show, but it would be fun to have a little bit of an audience element.

Maybe there’s certain components, you know, like pick the best performer or something like that.

I mean, I don’t know.

Probably cause too much drama, but how does that kind of stuff work?

Sure.

So actually a lot of contests do People’s Choice Awards, which simultaneously function as like a fundraiser for something, like whether it’s a charity or they get a scholarship or something like that, as well as like picking the audience favorite, right?

And we actually built this into Carmen a couple years ago, and very, very few contests use it, but we have an audience vote feature, just like what you’re describing, where there’s like a QR code and people can scan it and vote for who their favorite choir is.

And in fact, new contest director that might be listening, there are two options.

One is the free version where each person only gets one vote, and there’s the paid version where they can vote as many times as they want for a dollar per vote.

And if you use our system, you get to keep 75 percent of whatever comes in.

So I actually had a contest this last year.

Donaldson, who’s just used us for the first time, they paid for their entire bill as well as next year’s deposit with audience vote.

They paid for everything with audience vote.

So that’s a good option for you new contest director listening.

Well, I just think that that would be a fun way of doing some of the caption awards that judges don’t ever feel like doing.

Things that don’t really affect the outcome, best opener, best closer, best instrumental solo, whatever.

Exactly.

Because I’ve been on a lot of panels where you get done after 12 hours of scoring and you’re exhausted.

And then they hand you this piece of paper, it’s like now we need you to decide all of this stuff.

Who had the best set?

Who had the best costumes?

Who had the best, you know, who had the best smile?

And you’re like, oh, yeah.

So new contest director out there.

Don’t forget if you want to do these these caption awards that they’re sometimes called, which is basically just either the panel of judges pick who wins or they have a caption specific judge.

Just make sure you tell them at the beginning of the day if you have them and if they should be deciding them so they can take notes.

Because I’ve been to contests.

Depending on the sheet, it could come from the sheet.

There are some, I’ve been to some contests where they have, overall show as a category and then it just does the math for you, which is great.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

But again, it goes back to picking the sheet, thinking about what awards do you want to give out?

You don’t have to necessarily give a caption for everything.

Yes.

I think people would be upset if you didn’t do best vocals, best choreo, that’s a thing.

Exactly.

But yeah, those are your stables, best vocals, best choreo.

And also, this is something that I’ve been hearing over the last 15 years that I’ve been doing this, is give fewer awards.

Give fewer awards.

And that includes best performer or best soloists.

If you do something like best soloists, put something behind it like a scholarship to Show Choir Camps of America or some sort of benefit.

But best performer and like all of those, like I’m going to call them cutesy little judges, subjective choice awards, give out fewer of them.

So what is the bill?

Somebody wants to use Carmen.

What’s what’s it going to put you back?

Sure, sure.

So, yeah, this this year’s race, we have two different packages.

We have what we call the standard package and the premium package.

And the difference between the two is whether you have one of my employees come to your contest to run the Carmen Scoring system or not.

The most popular choice by far is the standard package, which does not bring one of us out.

So the standard package is $25 per choir, per competing choir.

You get exhibition for free if you want the judges to score your host choir.

Then we provide all sorts of remote support and we’re there live helping you throughout the whole day.

We’re on like Garrett’s Bandit many contests where I’m on the phone talking to the scoring folks.

I can only imagine because it’s always just like, someone takes Sherman.

Exactly, exactly.

And that’s usually like, how do I break a tie?

Or like, we have a penalty.

What do we do?

Well, and then there’s people like me who try to break the sheet just to screw with you.

Intentionally.

I got it to accept a 0.57 the other day and I was like, got them.

Yeah, yeah, you did.

You’re intentionally trying to find holes in the system.

That’s what you need.

You need good beta testers.

Exactly.

That’s why we need people like you out there.

Yeah, so $25 for that’s the standard package.

And the premium package is $40 per choir.

Plus you pay for travel and housing for my employee to come to you.

And this year I have a rep in Massachusetts, one in Ohio, one in Illinois, one in Alabama, and two in California.

And that would change every year depending on who my employees are and their availability and that kind of stuff.

But that gives you regional people that are closer to the action and more aware of what’s going on.

Yeah.

And for the record, I’m based out of Tucson, Arizona.

So if I have to go to your contest, I would be coming from Arizona.

So that’s the premium contest, but we can also do solo contests.

And those are $5 per soloist.

And we do concert choirs and a cappella choirs.

Those are $10 per choir.

So these are for your show choir contests that have multiple things going on at the same time.

So in other words, you don’t have to know what you’re going to have at your contest when you sign up.

Exactly.

Yeah, exactly.

To sign up for us, you need to put in a $250 deposit.

And that’s also the minimum price for any contest.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

So if you only have 10 groups, $250, there you go.

You have a whole scoring system.

Where do you see things going in the future with scoring and competition in general?

Yeah.

So this year, I definitely feel some sort of shift happening, where everyone wants to redesign their score sheets.

So usually, I get one or two score sheets, new score sheets per year.

But this year, I had something like 20.

And so everyone is redesigning their score sheets.

And I think it’s because trends are changing.

For example, out in California, everyone used to use the same score sheet, but this year, they all elected to do their own thing, because they value what each school does and values differently from the next.

And Mississippi, I think, what was it?

I think it was 2018 or 2019, when they established their first score sheet, then they make updates periodically here and there.

New England’s been the same for many years.

So in other words, what I’m seeing in the scoring is the score sheets themselves are changing, just to accommodate the way Show Choir is changing.

I also want to keep plugging this audience participation thing, because I think it’s a really great idea.

Like I said, I built it a number of years ago, but it’s not used very often.

Just getting your audience involved.

The reason why we built it is because of COVID, and we were doing all those virtual contests.

I got to get something out there that makes the audience feel like they’re there at least, something like that.

But yeah, anyway, that’s where I see things.

So everyone’s changing their score sheets.

So if you’re a judge using Carmen, what should you be thinking about?

Well, the good thing is, back in the days when we used paper and pencil, you would get that writer’s bump at the end of the day on your finger.

So you don’t get that anymore, but if you’re using a touch screen, you might bruise your fingertip.

Don’t hit it too hard, yeah.

Exactly.

Don’t hit it too hard.

Perils of the job.

In all seriousness, a lot of people can be really intimidated by using something like an iPad or a laptop to do their scoring.

Especially, I’m going to call them our more seasoned judges.

Our spicy judges.

Our spicy judges.

Yeah.

So the system is built to work what your cheat sheet might have looked like back in the day when you did paper and pencil.

It literally looks like a table of scores.

And all you do is just update the scores for each of the categories and all the math is done for you, right in front of you, instantaneously.

So you don’t have to do any math anymore.

The interface is really easy.

You can’t break it except for Garrett, who manages to break it every once in a while.

And every single one of the judges that comes in intimidated by it, after the first or second group, they are good to go.

They are just, you know, happy as can be, plucking away at those scores and they’re comfortable with using the technology.

Any thoughts on how, as a director, you walk your kids through the results and through the differences of opinion and through kind of, I mean, it can end up being sort of just a information dump of statistics.

I mean, you’re a statistics guy.

How do you walk your kids through it?

Because it’s a lot of numbers.

Right, right, exactly.

So I remember when I was assistant directing Marysville with Jeremy Alfaira like, what is it, like 10 years ago now, more than that, more than 10 years ago now.

I was the guy that sat down and looked at the score sheet because I was the scoring guy at the time, right?

And so what I ended up doing is I picked what I would call like our lowest scoring categories or our categories that need the most work.

And that’s what we would talk about leading up to warmups, during warmups, either for finals or for the next contest or in rehearsals.

So in other words, I didn’t focus on the entire score sheet from all of the judges, because like you said, it’s just a lot of information.

And sometimes it’s meaningless because boys and girls, this is all judges’ opinion, right?

So your directors are there to digest this information and take it with a grain of salt, right?

Because it doesn’t feel good when somebody says like your intonation wasn’t great.

You get a six out of ten or four out of ten or whatever score you’re going to get.

But at the end of the day, they’re meant to help you figure out what you need to work on.

This ultimately, these contests are educationally ranted.

They’re not only meant to help you figure out what you’re doing right and wrong in a show, what you need to improve upon, but they’re also introducing you to how the performance industry works.

There are opinions out there, and sometimes you’re going to get scathing reviews.

But the next week, you need to pick up yourself and the rest of your group and perform again.

It’s teaching not only basic fundamentals and how music performance works, but it teaches the students about life and how to work with a group, how to work with your own director, how to work with people you don’t really agree with.

You know?

So, directors out there, when you’re looking at your results, digest it for your students, right?

You’re that barrier, you’re that buffer between the judges who could be potentially extremely critical.

And you need to digest that information to make it educationally oriented for your students.

That’s my two cents.

And it’s always great to participate in this community that tends to support itself and tends to support all of its members.

And don’t forget, all of us are here to support each other.

This application, this scoring system was made for you guys, and you guys basically determine how it works.

So any feedback, please let me know.

That seems like a really good note to end it on.

Nice positive message.

No, thank you for taking the time to talk us through all of this.

I’m the kind of person that really likes the behind the scenes stuff.

I’m the Mr.

Rogers, how they make it, and the picture for all that stuff.

I like figuring out what goes on when nobody’s paying attention, and all the prep work and everything that it takes.

Because it takes a lot of work to put something like this together.

So anyway, really appreciate it.

It was a pleasure talking to you.