Tuesday 26 February 2008

HARMONY AND HARMONICAS

Beating our Bouncers - Moira instructs - Click to enlarge
Improvised movements to Dramm Fyrir Dagmal or Whisky before Breakfast, by the Icelandic group South River Band, got us off to a good start with the ideas flowing freely one after another round the group and after warming up the voices to Kumula Vista, we experimented with harmonising some major chords.
We were then ready to take up the three parts of Senua, the African welcome song, giving a rich harmony. The singers then had a break during which Carol, Malcolm and Jim tuned up their harmonicas.
Finally putting the whole thing together, the harmonicas sounded good playing the tune supported by the group humming in 3 part harmony, after which we sang the song through, _ a heartfelt WELCOME.
Air Falalalo also benefited from the three harmonica accompaniment in the chorus and we'll work on this again next week.
Diana and Joan play their flutes --- click to enlarge
Joan and Diana's flutes sounded good in the verses of Carl Orff's BOOMFALLERA, but we need to brush up our various instrument parts in this.
As always, we ran out of time, leaving plenty to pick up on next time.

Tuesday 19 February 2008

A BEATER BOUNCING MORNING

After warming up to the music of the icelandic group, South River Band we got right down to practising on the instruments.
Scales, patterns, ostinatos _ we whizzed through them this morning, eventually playing, in 2 parts, the 'Instrumental Piece' from Orff's 2nd volume of compositions for percussion ensemble and we can now begin to hear the distinctive, charming quality of these arrangements.
In spite of having to sing over hammering and drilling from next door due to refurbishment of that room, our Boomfallera sounded out loud and clear and the instrumental parts of that are even coming together.
I look forward to incorporating flutes and mouth organs next week when Jim, Malcolm, Carol, Joan and Diana bring their instruments along.

Thursday 14 February 2008

Tuesday 12 February 2008

A BRIGHT SOUND ON A BRIGHT DAY.

On this beautiful spring morning, we opened to the harp music of Alison Kinnaird, slowly limbering up the joints till we had a good posture for singing.
With several members doing other things today our sound was smaller but ARE WE GETTING INTO HARMONY! ----- We are harmonising the WATERWHEEL in a good, relaxed way as well as learning to harmonise the final chord in a unison song, choosing our own notes.
The bonus of being a smaller number is that we have more opportunities on our 8 instruments and there truly was a bright and fresh sound today as we learned the lower line of our instrumental piece, finally putting the two parts together. This hydrant is a good metaphor for our sound --- bright and shiny outside and high pressure underneath!