THE TURNING OF THE YEAR

Amid these grim, wet, cold, gloomy days it's good to remember that we're coming up to the shortest day and that's the burden of our new song, words and music by Jan Holdstock.

THE TURNING OF THE YEAR

The leaves are gone, the boughs are black and bare against the sky, _
So bring a branch of evergreen and hang the holly high.
For the darkest days are over_ and the spring will soon be here,
So we sing _ and we celebrate _ the turning of the year.
The days are short, the nights are cold, the sky is dark with rain,
But we can see the sunlight in the candle’s flickery flame.
The wind may blow, the frost may bite, but we will take the time
To cheer our hearts with carolling, with music and with rhyme.


We picked it up quickly and were soon carolling away like linties, enjoying the music and the up-beat sentiments.

I'm always happy when it's time to sing the Carol of the Advent, the lovely French tune Besençon, to words by Eleanor Farjeon and we gave it full voice.

The spotlight was on the percussion department today, allowing them some time to concentrate on exactly where and how to hit that drum and cymbal, get the feel of the weight of the beater and also listen to the sounds as the beater hit different parts of the instrument. The result was sensitive playing from both players and now we're ready to film our piece again, first time we have a full turnout.

Last meeting of the year next week followed by the Christmas lunch.

THE FAIR LADY -- TAKE 1 !!!

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

A SCALED DOWN (AND UP) DAY.

For various reasons, to do with The Mod, sunny climes, grandchildren and home maintenance, our group was small in number today: nevertheless we learned a new round _ a "DOO-BE-DOO" by Wolfgang Hartmann, an Orff teacher who worked for many years at the Orff Institute in Salzburg and now travels the world giving seminars.
Moving on to the instruments after that, we had a really good practice, 'crossing over' with the beaters and playing scales, up and down. We did make those xylophones sing!
We followed this with CONNEMARA LULLABY - practising the words to become more comfortable with them and enjoying the repeats: flute-song-flute.
Although the high voices were missing today for SONG OF THE SOUTH, Irving Berlin's arrangement of WAY DOWN UPON THE SWANEE RIVER, we sang the melody which gives scope for concentrating on good, round tone on the long notes.
FAREWEEL TAE TARWATHIE was our final song, started by Don singing verse one in a low key then raising the pitch, all joined in for the rest of the verses.

THE CALL OF THE SOUTH

Returning to BIRDS FLY SOUTH today, we sang the four part round in perfect togetherness, the bass ostinato giving just that little bounce to keep the birds going so that the soprano improvisation on names of the big, solitary birds _ osprey, eagle, sparrowhawk, falcon_ was able to soar above the music of the flock.
This good ensemble continued in CONNEMARA lullaby, the melody played today on two flutes, an octave apart, which gave a fine, full sound. The original words of this melody being lost in time, we sang a new text written by one of our members which fitted perfectly both the music and the mood of the melody.

CONNEMARA LULLABY
Words: Ruth Mills
Tune: Irish, Traditional

On peaceful shores the waves are lappng
And calling me to tarry awhile.
I walk beside the sparkling water
And all my cares wash away on the tide.

A gentle breeze embraces me softly,
A gentle breeze is leading me on
To tranquil pools I see before me ,
My cares are washing away on the tide.

Next. we sang through THE CALL OF THE SOUTH, an Irving Berlin arrangement of the Stephen Foster song, Way Down Upon A Swanee River, which features a melody for soprano which complements the main tune. This gives scope to the fine soprano voices in our group and will be interesting to hear next week when they've learned it.
We ended the morning with FAREWEEL TAE TARWATHIE, giving the first verse to our bass singer, in a low key, accompanied by quiet humming from the others. Raising the pitch after that, we enjoyed singing the rest of the verses.

ONE FLUTE FOR CONNEMARA

BIRDS FLY SOUTH was again a good warm up song, now more relaxed and even sounding 'fluttery' in softer voices and four parts.

Moving on to THE CONNEMARA LULLABY, we sang the tune by heart this time before picking up the beaters to play the instrument parts, glocks and upper xylophones playing two note chords. By the time Diana added the flute melody, it was really impressive how everyone was listening intently, slowing or speeding up to follow her and keeping the ensemble intact to give a really sensitive and musical rendering, __ a pleasure for us all. We look forward to hearing this piece next week with the whistle and perhaps another flute.

After the coffee we picked up the golfing song CARMEN ANTISPHAERISTICUM, which we'd promised to help Gordon with, ready to sing the choruses after his three verses. We were completely unprepared and amazed at the lovely tones that flowed and the confident singing Gordon gave us. As a result we sang with gusto and declared him well ready to sing at the golfing dinner in Troon.

FAREWEEL TAE TARWATHIE the song of the Dundee whalers, collected by Ewan McColl with its lovely slow three beat metre, recalling perhaps quiet reflective nights rocking on a calm sea, was our last of the morning __ five verses and a good sing.

OUR NEW SESSION BEGINS.

The seasonal round, 'Birds Fly South' _four parts with bass ostinato, was a good start, going at a brisk pace and opening up the voices.
But following that burst of energy we could wait no longer to hear from our new member who'd brought along his concertina. To see such an instrument, far less hear it played these days is rare and we appreciated every note of the two tunes, sensitively played.

Lucky then that our next piece was The Connemara Lullaby, arranged by Orff and Keetman for flute and instrumental ensemble. We began by learning the distinctive melody, in Dorian mode, singing it many times until our concertina player declared "I can play this!" and went off to practise in the next room.
Meanwhile, we picked up the sticks to tackle the parts for the barred instruments.

Finally coming together for the whole piece, the Lullaby, played softly on this fine rosewood framed concertina, sounded beautiful accompanied by the xylophones, glocks and metallophone. Next week, we hope to hear it on flutes and tin whistle as well.

'Beautiful Africa' was a good sing to finish off our morning.

Enjoy Music and Fun at Fintry

Enjoy Music Group at Fintry -- Click to enlarge

On Moira Perritt's invitation, we held our last meeting of this session at her house in Fintry. The rain poured down all the way but the temperature was up and the coming of summer was confirmed by the many swallows that darted in front of the car as we approached Moira's house. What an inspiring setting for our music,- beautiful views in every direction and a warm welcome as we were ushered in.
Although our group of twenty filled the room we were still able to begin with some fine stretching and opening movements, led by Diana, to a vocalisation by the Swingles Singers of a melody by Bach.
From there on in, there was no stopping us as members one after the other, contributed poems and songs.
With everyone in good voice after that, and with our best Old Norse pronunciation, we returned to the Icelandic folk song about the coming of summer:

NÚ ER VETUR ÚR BÆ --- Icelandic folk song
Nú er vetur úr bæ ---- Now winter has left (the farm)
rann í sefgrænan sæ ---- Has run into the reed green sea
og þar sefur í djúpinu væra ---- And is sleeping there in the calm deep,
en sumarið blítt, ---- But (the) kindly summer
kemur fagurt og frítt ---- Comes, beautiful and mild
meður fjörgjafar ljósinu skæra. ---- Bestowing (the) energising bright light.

Tune, traditional. Text, Jónas Hallgrímsson.

Our call and response song, LOVE SOMEBODY YES I DO was a success as verse after verse was led with confidence, by a new person and spontaneous harmonies sprouted at the end of every chorus.

We ended the musical morning singing ASALAAM in four parts, the harmonies ringing to the rafters in the lovely room.

As Moira invited us to the buffet lunch, we were urged to feel free to spread ourselves around the house and we took full advantage enjoying the space, the views and the garden (when the rain subsided) as we ate and talked together.
This was a great ending to a good year, both musically and socially. This year has been hugely enjoyable for me thanks to the commitment, in every way, of all our members and I look forward to our next session, starting as last year, the second week in September: Tuesday 9th.
HAVE A GOOD SUMMER,

To see a few photos click on the small thumbnail photo

Enjoy Music Group at Fintry

WEATHERING THE BEATS ON THE XYLOPHONES.

We were small in number today which was an opportunity to have a good practice on the xylophones. Our song THE WEATHER was an exercise in using the beaters and finding the notes and it paid off when by our half way mark we were able to play the piece right through at a good pace. We moved on from there to improvise sections for a rondo using the xylophones and also the temple block and the cymbal. The inspiration was flowing and we made a truly original piece.
After the break we returned to the 'tricky' rhythms of THE FAIR LADY accompanied by Jim on the whistle and Diana on the flute, feeling the delightful effect of the composition when all the instruments are playing accurately and precisely.
Our morning ended with several energetic repeats of the call and response song LOVE SOMEBODY YES I DO, with a different caller each time receiving enthusiastic and musical responses _ a good fun song.

For our final meeting of the 2008-2009 session we are all invited, beginning at 10.00,to Moira Perritt's farm in Fintry, where we'll stay for lunch from 12.00 onwards.

HAVE YOU GOT RHYTHM ?

A WHISTLE FOR THE FAIR LADY.

After warming up to the WEATHER song, we moved on to the African WATCHA, picking up the three harmony parts.
Getting down to instrument practice, we worked on the rhythms of THE FAIR LADY, simple but tricky and ultimately very effective in accompanying the song. That rhythm is not yet bedded in and some felt it easier to play while singing the song but the real challenge was when Jim added the tune on the tin whistle, a quiet, clear sound. Real concentration was required on the part of everyone to keep the piece together and we did manage it but perhaps next time we'll be less anxious and begin to enjoy it.
Still working on BEAUTIFUL AFRICA, these words are coming easier now and always uplifting to sing.
As before when I've missed a week the group took over and entertained each other and I think it's time I was in on this, so I'm suggesting that we have a re-run of last week's programme when we meet in Fintry on 19th May. Now that'll be a treat!
In our group of mixed voices we talk a lot about high and low registers in an effort to find a comfortable singing range for everyone.
Here are some musicians who between them cover quite a range, _ and with humour!

Enjoy Music without Moira

In Moira’s absence we held another ‘concert’ this morning.
Diana started us off with a beautiful and calming warm-up exercise, called Body Prayer. We performed this to Air on a G String by J.S. Bach.
Isla then followed on with a vocal warm-up with a difference. We all sang a chorus from Rhythm of Life, while trying to remember to think about breathing, expression and rounded vowels.
Joan then played a piece on the flute called Andante in E minor by J.S. Bach. This was a lovely piece, with a lot of difficult trills.
Ruth then recited a couple of poems. The first one, ‘Swallows’ was written by Ruth herself, inspired on a nice afternoon while watching birds near Lennoxtown. Ruth’s second poem was called Meditation and was written by Iris Hesselden, who writes poems with uplifting thoughts.
Next on the agenda, Mairi sang a song called Caledonia by Dougie MacLean. This song was chosen this year as the homecoming song. We all joined in with the chorus – to the best of our ability!
The café was next in line for a welcome cup of tea/coffee.
After the break we all sang There was an Auld Seceder Cat. This was our 2nd attempt at this. Rosemary, Lyn and Mairi sang the parts which we found difficult to manage last November and it sounded much better this time.
Jim and Rosemary then sang O Gin I Were a Baron’s Heir, with Rosemary playing the keyboard. This is one of the most beautiful of old Scots love songs, with words by William Holden and composed by Joseph Wm Holden.
Next we heard Sue read a couple of poems. This first one was called Prima Donna of Pittenweem, a light hearted poem by Nanzie McLeod. Sue’s second poem was called Hebrides, which was a description of the islands. It was written by Kenneth Stevens.
Mairi then sang ‘Through Bushes and Through Briers’ which is a traditional Irish ballad. Mairi then taught us a chorus from ‘Mary Mack’ which was difficult to sing at speed, but we managed to sing ‘Mary Mack’s mither’s makin’ Mary Mack mairry me etc when it was slowed down.
Finally, we all enjoyed a good sing with The Lights of Lochindaal.
Thanks to everyone who participated this morning. We all enjoyed the variety and quality of the performances.

WEATHER WARM UP AND RHYTHMIC LADY

We opened our morning with swinging energy, listening and moving to FOLIA, based on a European dance form from the renaissance period and played on guitars, lute, psalter and double bass and featuring an improvisation on clarinet piccolo, beautiful open sounds for a sunny day.
Our voice warm up was WHETHER THE WEATHER BE FINE, WHETHER THE WEATHER BE NOT, something of a tongue twister song which really loosens up the facial muscles and gets the deep breathing going.
Now in good voice we returned to the African song which celebrates music and singing,
TINA SINGU LELUVATEO, WATCHA, WATCHA, WATCHA.
This is sung in two basic parts and we quickly added more (as you do) feeling the full sound of the harmonies and we're working on achieving a good blend.
Next after singing through the Scots ghost song about Mary Queen of Scots, THE FAIR LADY, we got out the instruments, ready to work on Carl Orff's arrangement for this song after the coffee.
Duly boosted by coffee and a chat, we picked up the beaters and concentrated on the simple but tricky rhythms of the music on xylophones.
Drums, flute and whistle parts remain to be added. That's for next time.
We ended the morning with BEAUTIFUL AFRICA, it's five verses being quite a sing, but with such uplifting words the energy finds its flow.

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