Wednesday 25 November 2009

A CHORAL SOUND

The Enjoy Music Group - Click to enlarge

Of course we are a music group, exploring and enjoying many aspects of music, but singing is a particular joy and we have been quietly and steadily training ourselves to be better singers and even think about blending our voices. This happens regularly whether we are twelve or twenty but this morning the combination of being twenty, and at last feeling comfortable with GREEN GROW THE RASHES O, was quite special and for the first time I felt we were singing as a choir. Words are almost perfect from memory and the faces are showing real feeling for the song,_a pleasure to see and listen to.

We also spent some time this morning having ourselves filmed singing and playing THE FAIR LADY. It's some time since we made a film and I think we got a good format this time for our position in the room. It went quite well but the results were so close to being good that I've decided we should do it again next week now that we're familiar with the drill and get it right.

We are scheduled to finish this term on 1st December but decided to add a meeting on the 8th after which we'll go for lunch at Douglas Park Golf Club

Tuesday 17 November 2009

CALL AND RESPONSE ROUND THE CIRCLE.

Call and response is one of the oldest forms of song, found in many parts of the world. It depends on one person with a strong voice who sings a line at a time for the others to echo. We have a number of these in our repertoire and sing them either with one caller or in two groups, _ one group calling and the other responding.
Today we sang WHAT'LL I DO WITH THE BABY-O? with each person taking a turn to 'call' a line of the song, right round the circle. Interesting how the need to sing the line, solo, demonstrated how not everyone was secure in the song and concentrated minds on fixing the melody. By the third time round, all were singing their lines in good, clear, confident voices.
This is a good way to build confidence among singers and also a fun way to sing.

GREEN GROW THE RASHES O we have almost memorised and our challenge now is to begin to enjoy the song and sing it confidently.

We ended the morning with ALEYKUM ASALAAM, Arabic for "Peace be unto you', a four part harmony piece by Nickomo. It's some time since we sang this but after re-learning the parts we achieved a full, close harmony sound which sent us off with a musical warmth inside on a cold morning.

Tuesday 10 November 2009

THE FAIR LADY IN BALANCE.

For several weeks we've been practising the barred instrument parts of the Orff-Keetman arrangement of the old Scots ghost song, THE FAIR LADY and of course we had to use all the instruments, glocks, xylophones and metallophone, allowing everyone to have a go.
The arrangement, however, calls for only xylophones and metallophone, seven barred instruments in our group, and today we added the bass drum and a cymbal, nine players altogether, leaving the others to sing the song.
This was a good balance of sound. We heard the drum and cymbal to great effect and the voices came over clearly above the gentle rhythmic ostinatos from the xylophones and metallophone. We repeated it many times, enjoying the sound as well as the satisfaction of getting it right, at last.

The success of this may have been due to the good warm up at the beginning when everyone did an improvisation, to be copied by the group. Many of these were snippets of songs learned long ago, and happily revived, giving a lot of laughs, as well as good exercise for the voice.