October started well, indeed. We had a very productive and thrilling rehearsal. If you missed this one, you'll definitely want to read this and do a little homework to catch up.
First, the Pains of Christmas small group had a blast and did really well with their song. We discovered that the challenge with this one is to come in on time with your part. I think that the props will help, and standing in order, more or less could help too. We'll try out some strategies next week.
Our warm-up was a stretch, dance, and sing-along to Billy Joel's Uptown Girl. Fun!
1. All That Holiday Stuff: we're almost done learning this! What a great job everyone did with their parts, super! I reconsidered having the solo at the beginning, and think it would be fine. Lauren and Robyn were the first to have a go. Please let me know if you'd like to be the Christmas enthusiast for this solo. We stopped learning parts at the bottom of page 11 at the sfp (sforzando piano) with a crescendo. That notation means that we hit the word sleigh hard, with force, and then drop quickly to piano before getting gradually louder and louder again. Drama; the drama leads to the next section which is a kickline (think Rockettes) at double forte (extra loud)! We sight-read to the end. We've got this.
2. For Unto Us a Child is Born: Wow!!! I had planned for us to just walk through this one, singing along to a recording, to see what was going to be challenging and to let everyone know that there are videos of each part by itself to help you learn it. I've put links on the website, but you can go to YouTube and search "For unto us a child is born tenor part", for example, and get a number of rehearsal aids. So, you'll have options with speed and formats you might like better. I suggested that if the sheet music is too small for you to read, you could get someone to enlarge it to regular paper size (8 1/2 x 11). You can legally make a "working copy" for marking up and study. We ended up starting to learn the parts, ahead of schedule! And, we got to my favourite part at the bottom of page 3, the double forte "Wonderful". We sang along to a recording of this at my Thursday singing night as an example of a classical song with la-las (melodies without words that we sing, like the whoas in Uptown Girl. We laughed and sang parts of all the parts.). Here, every section has a turn with a big long oh, on the word born. The sopranos start with one in the 4th and 5th system on page one. What we did to make it a little less intimidating is to focus on the first note of each set of 4. Those sixteenth notes don't have to be super fast and they don't have to be super accurate. If we can all land on the right note on the beat, it will be very good. You'll see that Donna plays that part too, and she will be accurate for us. We were reminded of "Tup Tuppa", our choral version of Bach Badinierie. We laughed learning that, it was so hard, but our conductor Svetlana pushed us and we did it, and it was really impressive.
3. When You Believe: We sang in Hebrew! We got through the whole Hebrew section, ending on "I will sing, I will sing, I will sing!" (my favourite part) at the bottom of page 10 and then we sang to the end. It was awesome. Some people had printed out the Hebrew helper from the PDF side of the Music and Recordings section of the website. Excellent! There is also a video link on the Recordings side to help with the pronunciation if you want. But, we did pretty well on our own. I demonstrated how the ch sound is similar to the French or German rolled R, but softer, in the same way that the F sound is softer than the V sound, but produced in the same way and in the same place in your mouth. (that's called voicing in phonetics, pairs of voiced and voiceless sounds. ch is voiceless). You'll get it, but you can substitute an H sound, maybe a hard or hissing H? Play with your voice. For me, it's more important that you get the notes and the timing right. There are videos of choirs singing our arrangement of this song on YouTube, and I've put a couple on my YouTube playlist. Mona and Robyn sang those solo parts.
4. Your Song: We learned all the parts all the way through! And now, we're singing with some big dramatic dynamics. I played the version that inspires me, from the YouTube recording of the Vocal Collective, a choir in New Zealand. We listened to their beautiful sforzandos at the ends of most sections. Remember, the sforzando is a forceful accent, a sudden and strong attack, on the beginning of a note which then sometimes goes very soft (sfp) and then louder. You could make a note on your sheet music in pencil. Write SFZ or put an accent on top of the word "v" and a crescendo <. Watch me for my big crescendo arms. We learned the oohs on page 3. The sopranos divide here. The notes are nice low alto notes, but second sopranos can sing those very nicely too. Donna will record parts for this song, so look out for that on the website, coming soon. In the meantime, sing along with the video:
Next week: Tuesday, October 8th*
*Note: we will be rehearsing in the room across the hall.*
Small group at 6:30: Twelve Pains of Christmas: bring props
- All That Holiday Stuff
- For Unto Us a Child is Born
- Grownup Christmas List
- Santa's Wish
- When You Believe
No comments:
Post a Comment