Next Rehearsal – 04/30/24

Our next meeting is next Tuesday!

April 30, 2024 7pm-9pm

Raleigh UU, Peace Hall, Rm. 101

3313 Wade Avenue

Raleigh, NC 27607

Our next rehearsal will be on Beltane Eve! I think it's a safe bet we'll spend some time with "We Dance Around the Maypole" from the "Chants" set. We may also work on our sigil song or start working on our next Sabbat piece, depending on how we're feeling. If you'd like to be an overachiever and come prepared, the sheet music and recordings are available on our Drive.

We welcome all safe and respectful Pagan and Pagan-adjacent adults of any skill and experience level! We're community-focused rather than performance-focused, so we don't hold auditions and we welcome drop-ins. Because of the music that is best-known and most-available, our starter songs trend a little Wiccan, but we will be seeking to incorporate all kinds of Pagan and Pagan-friendly music. You can help! We welcome recommendations and leads on pertinent music that is in the public domain or is low-royalty. 

There are no fees or dues for participating, but we do gratefully welcome any cash donations* to cover the cost of renting our rehearsal space. We will have a receipt book on hand to log all donations and post aggregate info (without personally identifying information) to the blog so everyone can see where their donations are going. *We are not currently a registered 501c, so we don't have financial accounts and I can't speak to whether or not your donation is tax-deductible.

If you are experiencing any symptoms of a contagious illness, especially Covid-19, please defer your attendance until you're feeling well. We'll all be breathing the same air in that meeting room and, while you are absolutely welcome to wear a mask, it isn't exactly conducive to singing.

We will have name/pronoun stickers, sheet music, and folders available at our meetings. The sheet music is also available on our Drive. The only things you need to bring are your voice and the vocal-chord-friendly drink of your choice!

The UU campus has multiple lots, buildings, and doors, so we have a video demonstrating how to get to our rehearsal space from either lot. (Apologies for my winded smoker wheezing!)

We can't wait to sing with y'all on Tuesday!

- El Pethybridge, Administrative Director

TrianglePaganChoir@gmail.com

P.S. In addition to this blog, there are a number of ways to stay updated on our events. We have a mailing list for weekly email reminders and can even send you an Invite directly through Google Calendar. Email us at the address above to be added to both or either of these lists. You can also find us on Facebook at our Page and in our Group, where we share Events and other info. If you'd like to be added to the Invite list for our Facebook Events, please follow our Page or join our Group (otherwise FB won't let me send it to you) and drop us a PM. Here's the FB Event for our April 30 rehearsal.

P.P.S. Sorry I'm a day late with this; we were celebrating my husband's birthday on Wednesday.

Rehearsal Summary - 04/23/24

We had a really fantastic rehearsal this week! Including your directors, there were six of us present, including a new person! In honor of the full moon that night, we focused on songs for the moon. After a brief warm up, we started out by running through "Dark of the Moon" First Melody a few times. Then, we learned a whole new song, "Full Moonlight Dance" from the Chants set. It has a pretty challenging tempo but, by the end of the night, we had it down pretty well. We closed out the evening by standing in the courtyard in a circle, joining hands, and singing "Full Moonlight Dance" together, which was a really nice experience. We even got video of it! I've also uploaded the best audio recordings and a couple some with instructions from Emori.

If you'd like to review any of our pieces between rehearsals, the sheet music and recordings are available on our Drive. For the naming conventions of the recordings, see the document in our Drive. If you're trying to practice at home and can't quite discern your note, you can use a keyboard app to plunk out whichever ones you're having trouble with.  (This is by no means an official endorsement, but the app I use is "Voice Training - Learn to Sing" by the developer Learn to Master. It labels the notes on the keyboard and gives you real-time feedback on what note you're singing.) If you need a tutorial on how to read music, this one seems sufficient for helping you figure out which note you want to find on the keyboard.

We received enough donations this week to completely cover the cost of our next rehearsal! We're 74 cents in the green! Thank you so much to everyone who donated, we really appreciate it! If you would like to track our accounting, you can view our donations and expenses spreadsheet and receipts on our Drive.

Next week's rehearsal will be Beltane Eve, so I expect we'll spend some time with 
"We Dance Around the Maypole". We can't wait to sing with y'all!

- El Pethybridge, Administrative Director

TrianglePaganChoir@gmail.com

P.S. Sorry I'm a day late with everything; we were celebrating my husband's birthday on Wednesday.

Next Rehearsal - 04/23/24

Our next meeting is next Tuesday!

April 23, 2024 7pm-9pm

Raleigh UU, Peace Hall, Rm. 101

3313 Wade Avenue

Raleigh, NC 27607

We plan to continue working on the Beltane piece, "We Dance Around the Maypole" from the "Chants" set and/or delving deeper into our sigil song. If you'd like to be an overachiever and come prepared, the sheet music and recordings are available on our Drive.

We welcome all safe and respectful Pagan and Pagan-adjacent adults of any skill and experience level! We're community-focused rather than performance-focused, so we don't hold auditions and we welcome drop-ins. Because of the music that is best-known and most-available, our starter songs trend a little Wiccan, but we will be seeking to incorporate all kinds of Pagan and Pagan-friendly music. You can help! We welcome recommendations and leads on pertinent music that is in the public domain or is low-royalty. 

There are no fees or dues for participating, but we do gratefully welcome any cash donations* to cover the cost of renting our rehearsal space. We will have a receipt book on hand to log all donations and post aggregate info (without personally identifying information) to the blog so everyone can see where their donations are going. *We are not currently a registered 501c, so we don't have financial accounts and I can't speak to whether or not your donation is tax-deductible.

If you are experiencing any symptoms of a contagious illness, especially Covid-19, please defer your attendance until you're feeling well. We'll all be breathing the same air in that meeting room and, while you are absolutely welcome to wear a mask, it isn't exactly conducive to singing.

We will have name/pronoun stickers, sheet music, and folders available at our meetings. The sheet music is also available on our Drive. The only things you need to bring are your voice and the vocal-chord-friendly drink of your choice!

The UU campus has multiple lots, buildings, and doors, so we have a video demonstrating how to get to our rehearsal space from either lot. (Apologies for my winded smoker wheezing!)

We can't wait to sing with y'all on Tuesday!

- El Pethybridge, Administrative Director

TrianglePaganChoir@gmail.com

P.S. In addition to this blog, there are a number of ways to stay updated on our events. We have a mailing list for weekly email reminders and can even send you an Invite directly through Google Calendar. Email us at the address above to be added to both or either of these lists. You can also find us on Facebook at our Page and in our Group, where we share Events and other info. If you'd like to be added to the Invite list for our Facebook Events, please follow our Page or join our Group (otherwise FB won't let me send it to you) and drop us a PM. Here's the FB Event for our April 23 rehearsal.

Rehearsal Summary - 04/16/24

Only four of us could make it this week, so we mostly spent time catching up. We also looked at the newest iteration of the sigil song to make sure the notation was correct and went over some new lyrics that will hopefully become full-fledged songs soon and get cycled into our repertoire. 

If you'd like to review any of our pieces between rehearsals, the sheet music and recordings are available on our Drive. For the naming conventions of the recordings, see the document in our Drive. If you're trying to practice at home and can't quite discern your note, you can use a keyboard app to plunk out whichever ones you're having trouble with.  (This is by no means an official endorsement, but the app I use is "Voice Training - Learn to Sing" by the developer Learn to Master. It labels the notes on the keyboard and gives you real-time feedback on what note you're singing.) If you need a tutorial on how to read music, this one seems sufficient for helping you figure out which note you want to find on the keyboard.

No donations this week but we remain grateful to anyone has has donated in the past. Thanks so much! If you would like to track our accounting, you can view our donations and expenses spreadsheet and receipts on our Drive.

We plan to continue working on "We Dance Around the Maypole" and/or our sigil song next week. We can't wait to sing with y'all!

- El Pethybridge, Administrative Director

TrianglePaganChoir@gmail.com

Next Rehearsal - 04/16/24

Our next meeting is next Tuesday!

April 16, 2024 7pm-9pm

Raleigh UU, Peace Hall, Rm. 101

3313 Wade Avenue

Raleigh, NC 27607

We plan to continue working on the Beltane piece, "We Dance Around the Maypole" from the "Chants" set and/or delving deeper into our sigil song. If you'd like to be an overachiever and come prepared, the sheet music and recordings are available on our Drive.

We welcome all safe and respectful Pagan and Pagan-adjacent adults of any skill and experience level! We're community-focused rather than performance-focused, so we don't hold auditions and we welcome drop-ins. Because of the music that is best-known and most-available, our starter songs trend a little Wiccan, but we will be seeking to incorporate all kinds of Pagan and Pagan-friendly music. You can help! We welcome recommendations and leads on pertinent music that is in the public domain or is low-royalty. 

There are no fees or dues for participating, but we do gratefully welcome any cash donations* to cover the cost of renting our rehearsal space. We will have a receipt book on hand to log all donations and post aggregate info (without personally identifying information) to the blog so everyone can see where their donations are going. *We are not currently a registered 501c, so we don't have financial accounts and I can't speak to whether or not your donation is tax-deductible.

If you are experiencing any symptoms of a contagious illness, especially Covid-19, please defer your attendance until you're feeling well. We'll all be breathing the same air in that meeting room and, while you are absolutely welcome to wear a mask, it isn't exactly conducive to singing.

We will have name/pronoun stickers, sheet music, and folders available at our meetings. The sheet music is also available on our Drive. The only things you need to bring are your voice and the vocal-chord-friendly drink of your choice!

The UU campus has multiple lots, buildings, and doors, so we have a video demonstrating how to get to our rehearsal space from either lot. (Apologies for my winded smoker wheezing!)

We can't wait to sing with y'all on Tuesday!

- El Pethybridge, Administrative Director

TrianglePaganChoir@gmail.com

P.S. In addition to this blog, there are a number of ways to stay updated on our events. We have a mailing list for weekly email reminders and can even send you an Invite directly through Google Calendar. Email us at the address above to be added to both or either of these lists. You can also find us on Facebook at our Page and in our Group, where we share Events and other info. If you'd like to be added to the Invite list for our Facebook Events, please follow our Page or join our Group (otherwise FB won't let me send it to you) and drop us a PM. Here's the FB Event for our April 16 rehearsal.

Rehearsal Summary - 04/09/24

Including directors, seven us were able to make rehearsal this week. To be honest, we spent about half of rehearsal catching up with each other since so many people haven't been able to make it recently. (As a community-centered organization, I consider this a perfectly acceptable use of our time.) We were, however, able to work on our breath, warm up with "rolling hills", and work on "We Dance Around the Maypole". As you may know, that little ditty has a very awkward section where it really feels like there should be a rest and, instead, there's a "but". We've considered various methods for addressing this, including simply adapting to it, but last night we tried removing the "but". This seems to flow better musically and resonate better semantically. We were able to get a pretty good recording of this version, which I've uploaded to the Drive. We had planned to work on the sigil song, as well, but my musical notation skills are lacking, so I'm going to revise the sheet music tonight and we'll revisit the piece next week.

If you'd like to review these pieces, or any others from our repertoire, at home, the sheet music and recordings are available on our Drive. For the naming conventions of the recordings, see the document in our Drive. If you're trying to practice at home and can't quite discern your note, you can use a keyboard app to plunk out whichever ones you're having trouble with.  (This is by no means an official endorsement, but the app I use is "Voice Training - Learn to Sing" by the developer Learn to Master. It labels the notes on the keyboard and gives you real-time feedback on what note you're singing.) If you need a tutorial on how to read music, this one seems sufficient for helping you figure out which note you want to find on the keyboard.

No donations this week but we remain grateful to anyone has has donated in the past. Thank so much! If you would like to track our accounting, you can view our donations and expenses spreadsheet and receipts on our Drive.

We plan to continue working on "We Dance Around the Maypole" and/or our sigil song next week. We can't wait to sing with y'all!

- El Pethybridge, Administrative Director

TrianglePaganChoir@gmail.com

Next Rehearsal - 04/09/24

Our next meeting is next Tuesday!

April 9, 2024 7pm-9pm

Raleigh UU, Peace Hall, Rm. 101

3313 Wade Avenue

Raleigh, NC 27607

We plan to continue working on the Beltane piece, "We Dance Around the Maypole" from the "Chants" set and/or delving deeper into our sigil song. If you'd like to be an overachiever and come prepared, the sheet music and recordings are available on our Drive.

We welcome all safe and respectful Pagan and Pagan-adjacent adults of any skill and experience level! We're community-focused rather than performance-focused, so we don't hold auditions and we welcome drop-ins. Because of the music that is best-known and most-available, our starter songs trend a little Wiccan, but we will be seeking to incorporate all kinds of Pagan and Pagan-friendly music. You can help! We welcome recommendations and leads on pertinent music that is in the public domain or is low-royalty. 

There are no fees or dues for participating, but we do gratefully welcome any cash donations* to cover the cost of renting our rehearsal space. We will have a receipt book on hand to log all donations and post aggregate info (without personally identifying information) to the blog so everyone can see where their donations are going. *We are not currently a registered 501c, so we don't have financial accounts and I can't speak to whether or not your donation is tax-deductible.

If you are experiencing any symptoms of a contagious illness, especially Covid-19, please defer your attendance until you're feeling well. We'll all be breathing the same air in that meeting room and, while you are absolutely welcome to wear a mask, it isn't exactly conducive to singing.

We will have name/pronoun stickers, sheet music, and folders available at our meetings. The sheet music is also available on our Drive. The only things you need to bring are your voice and the vocal-chord-friendly drink of your choice!

The UU campus has multiple lots, buildings, and doors, so we have a video demonstrating how to get to our rehearsal space from either lot. (Apologies for my winded smoker wheezing!)

We can't wait to sing with y'all on Tuesday!

- El Pethybridge, Administrative Director

TrianglePaganChoir@gmail.com

P.S. In addition to this blog, there are a number of ways to stay updated on our events. We have a mailing list for weekly email reminders and can even send you an Invite directly through Google Calendar. Email us at the address above to be added to both or either of these lists. You can also find us on Facebook at our Page and in our Group, where we share Events and other info. If you'd like to be added to the Invite list for our Facebook Events, please follow our Page or join our Group (otherwise FB won't let me send it to you) and drop us a PM. Here's the FB Event for our April 9 rehearsal.

Rehearsal Summary - 04/02/24

Unfortunately, Emori had to "put out some fires" last night and was unable to make it to rehearsal. However, the three of us who were able to come had a very productive rehearsal! We were able to learn both our Beltane piece, "We Dance Around the Maypole" from the "Chants" set, and all three parts for the sigil song! Since there were just three of us, we were able to cooperate really seamlessly to work out any problem spots we had and felt very confident in our command of the pieces by the time we adjourned for the night. 

If you'd like to review these pieces at home, the sheet music and recordings are available on our Drive. For the naming conventions of the recordings, see the document in our Drive. If you're trying to practice at home and can't quite discern your note, you can use a keyboard app to plunk out whichever ones you're having trouble with.  (This is by no means an official endorsement, but the app I use is "Voice Training - Learn to Sing" by the developer Learn to Master. It labels the notes on the keyboard and gives you real-time feedback on what note you're singing.) If you need a tutorial on how to read music, this one seems sufficient for helping you figure out which note you want to find on the keyboard.

No donations this week but we remain grateful to anyone has has donated in the past. Thank so much! If you would like to track our accounting, you can view our donations and expenses spreadsheet and receipts on our Drive.

In other news, now that it's still daylight when we get to rehearsal, I was able to get a video of how to navigate to the space once you're at the UU. I've uploaded that video to our Drive. (Apologies for my winded smoker wheezing!)

We plan to continue working on "We Dance Around the Maypole" and/or our sigil song next week. We can't wait to sing with y'all!

- El Pethybridge, Administrative Director

TrianglePaganChoir@gmail.com