Like many great Americans and ideas, Pieces of Eight was conceived in a hotel room.   We had all sung together in the Northwest Sound barbershop chorus for years and some of us had sung together in other quartets.  But it would never have occurred to us to form a quartet, because three of us were quartet tenors and the other was a bass.   A little good-time singing in that hotel room was enough to convince us, and our wives, that two of us needed to change parts.   A quartet was formed that has since performed throughout the Pacific Northwest and has toured Great Britain and Ireland and the Caribbean.