Tuesday 24 February 2009

RONDO À LA SPRING.

Inspiration this morning came from the daffodils blooming, the frogs returning to the ponds and the rhythms of all those 'spring' words.
This, in addition to the 3 new instruments, allowing everyone to have a good practice, awoke the creative spirit.

Using that well known rhyme,

Spring is sprung,
The grass is riz,
I wonder where the burdies is.

for rhythmic inspiration, soon we had put together a four bar melody, playing it on the glocks and xylophones accompanied by ostinatos on the bass xylophone and the metallophone, which was a good first part of a rondo.
After all that, the confidence was flowing and a line of volunteers was ready to improvise a section, until every single member had played, - a 'stretched' rondo, for sure!

CARILLON, we played and sang, everyone ready today to give it a good ending.

We continue with Beautiful Africa, looking to begin with a harmony in the chorus, next time.

Tuesday 17 February 2009

TOWARDS A GOOD ENDING

A new warm up song today was by Michael Stillwater, 'ONE BY ONE EVERYONE COMES TO REMEMBER", _ a lovely slow melody where we can really feel the sound quality of our voices. Moving on to singing this as a round will be for next week.
BRAND NEW DAY gets stronger week by week and we continue to listen hard, keeping the parts firmly together.
DUNCAN GRAY is a very good sing, if we can find a pitch that's comfortable for all of us and in our group which includes trained sopranos, fine tenors as well as deep basses, unison singing is not easy. We'll have to work on this problem.
CARILLON.
After some time spent on instrument technique, as well as practice in singing the song, we put it all together, glocks, metallophone, bass xylophone and this week Joan on flute.
This piece comes to an abrupt end, which is part of its impact. We played and sang it well, but didn't quite make the precision at the end, to get the full effect of that finality. Of course, that's something to work at and as we always say in our group, we WILL get there.

Tuesday 10 February 2009

WE REMEMBER BURNS

We can't let this 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns pass without singing some of his songs and we began with the comic love story Duncan Gray.
The text with many wonderful old Scots words is set to a lively tune and some time was spent discussing meanings and pronunciation using some detective work based around the rhymes.
One or two of the group had known a completely different text but couldn't remember it exactly, and went away to check that. I've managed to track down this version from 1851, Scottish Parodies (CLICK LINK) included in The Merry Muses of Caledonia, (enough said). Is this the one they've heard? All will be revealed next week!

Having sung the five verses of Duncan Gray, our energy was flowing so that we were ready for the more controlled, refined singing of CARILLON DE VENDÔME, putting in some practice on the parts.

After the break, we got out the instruments, this time using only those, glocks, metallo, and bass, plus flute as in the score and for the first time, put it all together, instruments and singers. We're keeping up the 'togetherness' in this piece and it's getting better week by week.

Beautiful Africa
, on a beautiful, sunny morning, ended our session.

Tuesday 3 February 2009

TOGETHERNESS

After a good warm up, the singing voices in our group can be good, but this morning we showed our listening has improved enormously.

BRAND NEW DAY with its five bar phrases, is quite a challenge to sing as a round but that feeling of togetherness, which comes from listening intently while singing, was there and the parts kept in perfect time with each other. This song will become really enjoyable to sing and to listen to, when that listening habit becomes so embedded that it's effortless.

CARILLON DE VENDÔME
We had a good practice at this, everyone playing the instrument parts. Although we used all the instruments, the score requires only the glockenspiels, soprano and alto. plus metallophone and bass xylophone which leaves a good number of voices for the singing. What was impressive today was exactly that togetherness when Diana added her flute part and everyone was again listening while playing and singing to achieve that good 'ensemble'.

BEAUTIFUL AFRICA. We sang three verses of this and are already beginning to feel comfortable with the tune _ a really good sing!

Thinking of Africa, and good singing, this video seems to fit.