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.
