Tuesday 27 October 2009

THE BLACK SOCKS WARM UP


Black socks, they never get dirty,
The longer you wear them the stronger they get.
Sometimes I felt I should launder them;
Something keeps telling me: don't wash them yet,
Not yet, not yet, not yet _.


This energetic round started us off on a chilly morning, warming the voices and the spirits. Careful attention to tuning the notes and managing the jumps in the melody paid off as we were soon singing it well. Next week will be the move into three (or four) parts.

Our current Burns song GREEN GROW THE RASHES O was next. We spent some time noting pronunciations and note lengths before launching into the song, the challenge of which, for a group, is to sing the tricky rhythms together and accurately; the words are so good that they sing themselves. The range of this song makes it difficult for a group of mixed voices, and here it is the bases who need to jump octaves to stay with the melody. But ever resourceful, they manage it and our tenor, struggling somewhat in the low notes of the verse, really shines in the chorus.

The scale in the accompaniment of THE FAIR LADY is now a dawdle for us but fitting it in between what comes before and after is still difficult. It's a real joy now to see the agility of everyone crossing the sticks for the notes of the scale and playing with obvious feeling for the pulse of the piece.

We ended the morning with FAREWEEL TAE TARWATHIE, always a favourite

Tuesday 20 October 2009

OUR DEFINITIVE VERSION

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.

Tuesday 13 October 2009

WE DO BURNS

Beginning today with some scat singing in a jazzy round by Orff teacher Woflgang Hartmann, we further warmed up the voices with the round BIRDS FLY SOUTH, in three parts plus bass ostinato. Two whistling improvisers, although soft, gave the piece atmosphere and the ensemble worked well.

After that, we took a fresh look at the Burns song GREEN GROW THE RASHES O! and decided we liked every one of the five verses. There was some discussion of how we should pronounce various words _ we have many different backgrounds, as far as Scots language is concerned _ in our group. Interesting to hear the range of ideas and come to consensus. The range of the tune is a challenge for our mixed voices but we'll work at it and perhaps stretch the range of a few members (in a good way).

We missed the flutes today for the Connemara lullaby but substituted voices before coming in with the words. Wonderful how we can now sing and play at the same time, keeping it all together beautifully.

Finally, we practised the parts for THE FAIR LADY, which we've always found difficult and we'll come back to that next week hoping to get it right next time.

Tuesday 6 October 2009

TO GREENLAND AND BACK

We spent some time and effort today on TARWATHIE, achieving a good blend of the voices and having a try at memorising the words, which one member, who'd visited Greenland, found entirely reminiscent of the landscape there.
LOVE SOMEBODY, in 'call and response' form, always requires sharp attack at the beginning of phrases and this took a little time to establish. Also, more verses would be fun and this was the challenge set to our wordsmiths this week: Write more verses!
By now in good voice, we revived from last spring the Orff piece about the bells of towns in France, CARILLON. The melody is in two voice parts with the bass holding a low, sonorous DIN DONG ostinato.
This is accompanied by our two flutes, glocks, xylophones and metallophone. It lacked good balance since several strong singers were missing today, but it should sound good with our full complement.
We ended the morning with CONNEMARA LULLABY; remarkable to hear how comfortable we now are with this dorian mode melody which at first seemed quite strange to our ears.