YRCC 2024 Rehearsal Review October 8

 I love my choir! It was so much fun singing together last night and we still got a ton of work done. 

The Pains of Christmas small group had some challenges with timing but we worked it out, mostly by slowing the song down and getting really frustrated and mad at all the pains. Hilarious. I recommend that everyone in that group spend some time singing along with YouTube videos or other recordings of this song to be able to sing/yell your part without needing to look at your music. Here’s a link to a video. We’ll have the lyrics on a couple of music stands but you want to be able to use your prop to clarify what you’re saying. We remembered to have a warm-up for this small group, something we often forget.

Our choir warm-ups included stretching, breathing, rollercoasters,  and mi-may-my-mo-mu, among others.

1. All That Holiday Stuff is done! We’ll need to practise and perfect this, but we learned all the parts and sang it through wonderfully. Melodie did a fine job on the solo. She’s the most devoted fan of Christmas that I know. 

2. When You Believe: We made very good  progress moving backward from the end, learning the section at bar 29, then bar 21, then 11. We sang from 11 to the end! The beginning is a duet, so we’ve done all our initial work. Now we have to get more comfortable with it. You will want to review the Hebrew section, for sure. There are links to each part, plus there’s a link to a tutorial on the pronunciation of the Hebrew words. It’s not the best because it’s the words on their own and not in the song with the rhythm, but it might help you to feel better if you hear each word how it is by itself. I suggest you sing along with a choir, and here’s a link to a choir singing it very nicely and clearly. If they can do it, we can too. 

3. Santa’s Wish: We’ll have to wait until next week to get the music, but I’ll put it on the website so you can look at the electronic version. I played a recording of the Tenors singing this song. I created a choir arrangement based on this: here’s a link to the video. It’s my wish too: the world singing in perfect harmony. 

4. For Unto Us: Wowza! You guys are amazing. I discovered that there are a bunch of people in the choir who have sung this before, and it makes a huge difference for us. Having even one person in each section who has some experience with this is a big help. We reviewed parts from the beginning and added on everything to the end of page 7. We’ll continue to review parts and add on more, and it will keep getting better and easier. I recommend doing some homework on this piece as well. Here’s a link to my YouTube playlist where you’ll find videos of your parts. You can find more by searching YouTube. There are lots of different sounding ones for you to choose from. 

5. Grownup Christmas List: most of us have sung this before, and it will be very easy to get this one brushed up and shiny again. I’m considering using a soloist for the first verse. Think about whether you’d like to sing it. This is our theme. What we wish for, our wish list, changes over the years, over our lifetimes and over generations too. As adults, the older we get, the less stuff we need or even want, and the more we wish for togetherness and harmony, peace in our homes and our communities, and in the world.

Next week: Tuesday, October 15th (right after Thanksgiving Monday)

Christmas Lullaby small group at 6:30  (videos of parts are up on the website)

• Christmas Auld Lang Syne
• For Unto Us
• Grownup Christmas List
• Santa's Wish
• When You Believe

YRCC 2024 Rehearsal Review October 1st

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

Our Friend Colby is a Published Author

 How exciting to find out that the nice person you sit next to in choir is a published author! A charming young author is in our midst: our very own bass/baritone Colby! He is a little shy but somehow we got the good news out of him that he's had a book published and he's working on more writing. 

It's always good to strike up a conversation with the people in the choir. They're amazing individuals with lots of stories to tell. Talk to someone at break, someone you haven't talked to yet, and you'll be glad you did. 

Here's a link so you can buy a copy of Colby's book. Support a young author. You can say "I knew him when..."

 The Eagle's Last Flight (2024)