Working on our Music at Home

We're starting to get pretty good at recording and posting our music for extra rehearsal at home.

It's a new thing for us still. It took us a long time to start using recordings because the idea was that we should all be able to learn all the music on Monday nights alone and not have to commit to extra time. We also made a point of booking all of our performances for Monday nights, with the exception of our 2 public concerts, so that members could set aside only one night a week for choir.

Now that we have so many members, and so many of them are strong singers and excellent musicians, we are learning more music and more difficult music. (And, we've been able to accept some requests for other nights and even week days.) Most of the time, these strong singers make it possible for others to follow along and learn more quickly too.

Sometimes those strong singers are good because they are just really good and more experienced musicians, but I bet that most of the time, those leaders are good because they are able to review their parts at home. Maybe they play an instrument and can learn on their own, or maybe they use our recordings. Either way, a little extra work can go a long way.

For those of you who don't feel very musically gifted and like to follow, our recordings are an excellent resource. Sapphire plays your part on top of the accompaniment so that you can follow along on your sheet music. The sheet music is also on line, so you don't even need your binder to practise.

We are now looking into recording voices on top of the piano part because we've learned from Richard's recordings for the Choral Extravaganza that having the words sung is helpful. It's much more difficult and time-consuming in our experience, so that's something we have to learn to do better before we start that.

For now, we have each part played by Sapphire on top of the accompaniment. And, I'm pretty happy with how well we are doing with that.

Yup, this is what I look like when I'm rehearsing at home :-)

This picture comes from this website for karaoke music downloads. Have you tried karaoke? 

Here's how to rehearse at home using our recordings:

1. Warm up. You can simply do some of the exercises you remember from Monday nights, or you can find warm-ups online. There's this app for iPhone and androids that leads you in vocal warm-ups.
2. Go to our website, sign in, and go to the Resources page in the Members Only section. There's a short cut to Music Recordings on the home page too.  On the left side, you can click on the song you want to sing. The sheet music will come up. Minimize that. On the right side, you'll find the title of the song underlined, then under that, click on your part (SATB or S1 S2, etc). Download the mp3 to your music player (iTunes, or Windows Media Player, for example). Start the music and then pull up your sheet music. 
3. Sing your part along with the recording for your part. You'll hear the accompaniment playing softly and your part is loud. If it's really hard at first you can try dividing up the task. First, sing without words, singing only la-la or na-na. Then, speak the words without the melody, just fitting them in to the timing. Finally, sing the words. Stop and do the tricky bits over and over. 
4. Repeat. And, repeat. Some people make a CD of their parts to sing along with in the car or while washing dishes. 
5. Once you feel confident with singing along, try to sing your part with only the accompaniment. Download the accompaniment recording, the title of the song underlined. See if you can hold your part by yourself. If that's too hard, try it with the Soprano part, or if you're a Soprano, with the Alto part. Tenor can sing with Bass, and vice versa. It's fun!
6. You'll need to pay attention to the dynamics, where you're supposed to sing softly and where to get loud. It's best if you do this right away so you get in the habit of singing every section the way it's supposed to be. But, if you want to divide and conquer, learn one thing at a time, you can add this at the end. Each time you repeat a song, it should sound more beautiful.

Soloists: you will want to work on your performance differently. You have the extra task of memorizing your part so you can look at the audience, and you'll need to be more clear and concise than when you're singing with others. And, if you are on stage alone, you'll need to think about what to do with your hands. Sing your part looking in the mirror.

Here's a link to an article about rehearsing at home. There's tons of stuff online about singing and performing.