Tuesday 28 February 2012

NUMBERS MAKE THE DIFFERENCE

Spring was in the air, bringing out all our members save two who are unwell and we were also joined this morning by three visitors who we hope will return. As a result, the six men gave a fine bass line to our African chant BANUWA

Inspired by this, and enjoying the full harmony sound, we easily swept the visitors along with us in the four part ALLELUYA and followed on from that with ROW ON.

We started this week on a new song, THE MOON MAN, by Corinna Hewitt the young Scottish singer and harpist. She's made a lovely melody and harmonic arrangement for the poem by Mildrew Plew Merriman and although it may take some weeks for us to get comfortable with the unusual harmonies as it switches from major to minor keys, I feel sure it suits our group and we'll sing it well.

We ended the morning singing and playing COME MY CHILDREN DEAR and look forward to more mornings with such a healthy turnout making a joyful sound.

Tuesday 14 February 2012

AN IMPROVISING FOR VALENTINE'S DAY

Continuing our focus on improvising, we took the rhyme

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Sugar is sweet
And so are you.

for a 'peg' to hang our melodies on.
As the singing progressed round the circle, it was good to hear how everyone added a melody for each line in turn, in response to the previous singer and I can see that this kind of improvising is worth pursuing, allowing us to let the voices flow freely.

HOW CAN I KEEP FROM SINGING? now has an alto part in the chorus, which will be heard to full effect next week when today's absentees return.
We ended the morning, after limbering up on some scales, with COME MY CHILDREN DEAR on the instruments. (See our blog for January 2011) --- CLICK HERE

Tuesday 7 February 2012

DISCOVERING OUR INNER SELVES

Something never in short supply in our group is empathy, so that when a member told us of the challenge she's facing to sing improvised dialogue in a community production of a spoof opera, we thrust ourselves into having a go, just to understand what it would feel like.
Beginning with a completely spontaneous, sung, remark from me, the dialogue was continued round the group, each person in turn responding to the one before with a new phrase. To our utter surprise, not only was the singing good, but the improvised 'script' was hilarious and not one person failed to sing when their turn came along. 
I think the exercise was a fine encouragement for our opera star member and it was a revelation, too, how some who regularly have difficulty with holding a melody line, were able to sing out loud and clear, improvising words and music on the spot. Wonderful what we can do when we just 'let go' and allow our deeper selves to direct us.
Perhaps this is something worth exploring further.

We will have to making a booking for the ENJOY MUSIC! crowd for that show when it's staged.

After that, we sang ALWAYS THE SINGING with harmony in the chorus and HOW CAN I KEEP FROM SINGING? 
Finally, getting off the 'singing' topic, we revised the harmonies for ROW ON and managed to sing it rather well, with a lovely, full sound which left just enough time for us to do some scales on the instruments, adding rhythm and percussion, at the end of the morning.