Hi everyone,
Good to see and sing with you yesterday. We have just 4 regular rehearsals before our concert week. Pretty scary stuff. I appreciate all of the hard work that is going into learning notes and texts. We now need every single singer to jump on board and practice at home. It can definitely be challenging to find time in our busy days, but even 15-20 minutes at a time will be incredibly helpful.
These are some of my favourite ways to sneak in extra practice time:
- create a playlist of choir songs and make it your go-to listening. Helps with general familiarity.
- bring your scores wherever you go. You never know when you will have 5 or 10 minutes of waiting time and can review.
- commit to practicing with a friend. A choir buddy helps keep us accountable.
- memorize tricky lines of notes or text. It really does work over time.
- teach someone else your line. When we have to teach it, it sticks better.
- make a reward chart. Not even kidding. Track your practices and then treat yourself after a week of good work.
- FIRST choir practice THEN tv time (or whatever fun time you like!)
Rehearsal priorities for this week:
Away in a Manger
– seamless throughout. Mark your scores with safe places to breathe. NOT when the soloist breathes.
Miss Fogarty
– count 1 2 3 4 5 6 – get used to the feel of 6/8 time. The strongest of the 6 beats are generally 1 and 4.
– place final consonants rhythmically
– m.25 – draw the “glasses” to remind yourself to look up at me
– this rhythmic precision applies to the whole song
Brightest and Best
– m.99 – soprano 2 add D and D for the first 2 notes “Bright-est”
– m.103 – same on “dawn on”
– m.131 – same on “-er is laid”
– Here is the rejigged m.116-123 for the SSAA lines. Please write your notes in your score OR print and tape it in.
– m.119 and m.122 lower voices will use a TTB split
Suai’r Gwynt
– we start verse 2 next Tuesday.
– Verse 1 needs a lot of work from many people
– Anne’s recording is in the shared folder
When Christ was Born
– verse 2 – TB
– verse 3 – SA
– remember our detailed work on the syllable stress and vowel formation? Awesome. We need that in order to have beautiful tuning.
– “excelsis” = ehk – sheh – lsees
The Snow
– m.51-end – mark your score for phrasing/breath marks, final consonants, dynamics. This piece has a lot happening.
– m.75 – soprano – we will go with the years (schwa) rather than thee years
– this piece will have a lot of push and pull in terms of tempo. Be ready. We need to be watching each other in order to be effective.
Auld Lang Syne
– thank you to our solo triers!
– we sang through m.37-44 – mark the 5/4 measure. Mark your pronunciation so that we don’t have to keep reviewing it.
Our other songs to keep fresh:
– The Hands
– Cum decore
– Shchedryk
We will work on the 3 carols in the booklet at our workshop on Saturday, November 14th!
Krista