Singing a Burns song as a group means deciding on pronunciation and that involves considering all the ways we've heard that song sung, as well as our own individual native dialects of the Scots words. In our group these native dialects include Glasgow/central Scotland, Aberdeen, Stirlingshire and west coast and today we worked on finding a consensus as to what felt right for all of us. So pencils in hand, we read over GREEN GROW THE RASHES O, writing in word by word, directions as to how to pronounce the printed text and ending up with our definitive version.
After that we sang it with good feeling, not quite all together yet, but now at least we know where we're going with it.
The cafe is now open again and we enjoyed the break upstairs.
Afterwards, working on the instruments, we practised fitting in the 'scale' section of THE FAIR LADY, which took some time, but as I see those crossover movements with the sticks looking more agile, it is now beginning to feel more relaxed and truly musical.
