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!

Sunday, November 8, 2020

YRCC songs 09-NOV-2020

 It’s already Sunday?!

Tomorrow is Monday, choir day! Please join us in our Zoom choir hour. It’s not what we really want, it’s not us in a room together singing, but it’s what we have and it’s good. 

It’s good to see our choir friends and to hear that they are fine and coping well during this pandemic. 

It’s good to read sheet music again and remember our art. 

It’s good to sing in the choir. Yes, we sing together with the whole choir, with recordings of the whole choir singing. It’s the closest thing to singing with the choir live. 

Please join us so that we continue to be a choir. When we can meet again in person, it will be almost as if we had never stopped. 

Go to the choir’s Google Calendar every week and find the Zoom link there. Double click and you’ll be with us. Take a moment to make sure your video is on, and choose gallery view (not speaker view). Some people are really good at this and some of us take some time to figure this out. We’ll help. 

Also on the calendar will be attachments, the PDFs of our sheet music for the evening. 

You can download and print it if you prefer, but using it electronically is great once you get used to it. It’s easy and environmentally friendly. No binders needed. I like having my sheet music on my iPad and the choir (Zoom) on my laptop.

We usually chat a bit and mostly remember to have a warm-up. When we’re ready to sing. I’ll choose a song and we all take a moment to call up the sheet music. I’ll get the recording ready and just before I start it, I’ll mute everyone. You will sing and nobody will hear you, but we’ll see you. This way, we avoid the issue of everyone’s individual wifi and device combination having different timing. There’s no way to get everyone in synch. No problem. You hear yourself and the choir, everyone else hears the choir and themselves. With gallery view, you get the feeling of being together. It’s really quite nice. You don’t usually see each other when you sing. You all look at me and I see all of you. This way, it’s kind of fun and new, You’ll notice though that most of the time people are looking at their music, which is what normally happens. So, don’t feel like everyone’s watching you all the time. 

This week, we’re singing Hallelujah, We Rise Again, You’ll Never Walk Alone, and Grownup Christmas List. I’ve added Little Tree in case we have time and energy for more :-)

I hope to see you all tomorrow!

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