Welcome


Welcome to Renate's Baton. This blog is mostly for and about my choir, The York Region Community Choir.

But, While I'm holding the baton, I'm in charge. So, if I want to talk about other parts of my life, I will. :)

The choir itself is a community and I'm discovering that we have a lot in common with one another besides our love of music and singing.

When I go off on a tangent, there is always a crowd coming along. Join us!

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Monday, Feb. 4 (Birthday Eve)

Thank you for the nice surprise of coffee and cake and the wonderful card! The eve of my birthday was never better spent, I'm sure.

We had fun warm-ups with lots of groovy belly-dancing or hula-dancing moves and synchronized hip swinging while singing, and bouncing while singing. Did it help us to sing louder and stronger? Not sure. I'll continue to look for new ways to help us to sing using our whole bodies. In the meantime, don't do that exercise while your teenagers are watching. You can do it in private for your spouses ;)

We started lots of new songs:

1. Flying Free. It's so pretty! We went to F and learned that section, and then found that we could sight read the rest better.

2. Wild Mountain Thyme. Also pretty! It's a bit confusing to read and know how to manage the repeat, but the soloists will have to worry about it and the rest of us will follow them :) Mona and Stanley did the solos and sounded great. There are others who are interested in these solos, so we'll try someone else out next week (Daphne and Michael?)* I'm thinking that the addition of some guitar plucking and strumming would be nice here.

3. You'll Never Walk Alone. The piano part is awesome! There are all kinds of surprises and for starters we just looked at the timing of the triplets compared to the straight eighths (for example, at 19 and 20).

4. Imagine is excellent and we did well sight reading. There are some tricky rhythms and the timing of rests is important so that we come in together and stop together. It's a bit confusing at the beginning. The solo will continue at 17 this time, with Sopranos doing the oohs with the Altos. Tenors and Basses also have oohs.

5. The Greatest Love is pretty and easy! The beginning is going to be a solo. The whole first page. Louisa sang it for us, and it was good.

* I'm finding it challenging to assign the solos this time. I won't forget to assign back-ups this time, so maybe that's got me doing more thinking about it than last time. Thank you to all the people who've come forward willing to do solos! And, thanks for your patience.

Looking ahead to next week: 
From a Distance
Imagine
One Small Step
Wild Mountain Thyme
You'll Never Walk Alone



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