We will NOT be holding rehearsal on Tuesday December 30th. The polls were split 50/50 on whether to hold rehearsal. Since the state of my car is still uncertain, it seems safest to plan on taking the day off.
However, our two year anniversary is the first week of January, so I hope to have an excellent turn-out on January 6th to celebrate!
Update: CANCELLED
Unfortunately, my car broke down out-of-state, so I have no way to make it choir tonight (and have no one available to cover for me). I was holding out hope it would be repaired in time but, alas, I haven't heard from the mechanic. I need to review the polls later this week but I expect our next rehearsal will probably be our Anniversary Edition, if you will, in January.
Original entry:
Our next meeting is next Tuesday!
We will NOT be holding rehearsal on Tuesday December 16th, as I will be out of town and no one is available to cover for me.
As you know, the period between Samhain and New Year's is always hectic and our rehearsal schedule gets erratic. We have a poll running on our Facebook and Discord groups about whether to hold rehearsal on the 23rd and 30th. Please weigh in on one of the polls or email me your vote!
Either way, our two year anniversary is the first week of January so I hope to have an excellent turn-out on January 6th to celebrate!
Three of us made it out this week. We tried out a few new warm-ups, introducing ones intended to exercise vocal agility and tone. We spent the rest of the time refining "The Dawning of a New Day". We decided early that we liked starting out with a slow tempo on the first repetition, then increasing the tempo with each following repetition. We noticed our volume was also instinctively increasing, which only benefitted the effect. One member noted that it echoed the gentleness of dawn flowing into the brightness of day. We also noted that this song would sound great with a drum! Our primary challenge was figuring out the rests and breaths. The final line provides no rest for breathing, so you have to manage your breath for sixteen beats, which can be tricky. We experimented with resting in various places but none worked well with the flow. Eventually, we settled on removing the word "all" from the last line, since the meaning and rhythm still work without it and it provides a breath around when it's needed. In instances with more singers, those who can manage their breath for all sixteen beats can still sing "all", while those who need to take a breath can omit it. I'm pretty pleased with where we landed by the end of rehearsal!
If you'd like to review any of our material, the sheet music and recordings are available on our Drive. For the naming conventions of the recordings, see the document in our Drive. You can also listen to the TPC playlist of recordings of some of the pieces by professional artists on Spotify. 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.
Our next meeting is next Tuesday!
Our next meeting is next Tuesday!
Update:
I'm sorry to have to do this again, friends, but an emergency has arisen and we will have to cancel choir tonight.
Original Entry:
Our next meeting is next Tuesday!
UPDATE: CANCELLED
Unfortunately, I'm going to have to cancel choir tonight. Despite rest and medication, I can tell that if I try to do choir, I'll be in agony in short order.
This happens every year, it seems to be severe seasonal allergies causing debilitating sinus pain. (I've tried a variety of medications, none helped.) Hopefully it passes quickly this year so we can get back to singing together!
Original Post:
Our next meeting is next Tuesday!
We will not be holding rehearsal on Tuesday November 4, 2025, as it is Election Day. The campus where we meet is generally used as a polling place, so I don't want our presence to make it harder for voters to park and I don't want our members to have to worry about making it to vote and making it to choir in the same evening. Please vote!
- El Pethybridge, Administrative Director
TrianglePaganChoir@gmail.com
Our next meeting is next Tuesday!
Only two of us could make it this week but we had a really productive rehearsal! We spent pretty much the entire time learning our new Samhain piece (which I should probably just start calling "Wings of Night"). Because there were just the two of us, we were really able to focus in on specific difficult areas. The main challenge of the piece for us was figuring out the correct places to breathe. By the end of rehearsal, we'd gotten it down well enough to sing it a cappella without errors!
If you'd like to review any of our material, the sheet music and recordings are available on our Drive. For the naming conventions of the recordings, see the document in our Drive. You can also listen to the TPC playlist of recordings of some of the pieces by professional artists on Spotify. 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.
Our next meeting is next Tuesday!
Three of us made it out this week. We spent pretty much the entire time learning our new Samhain piece. I didn't anticipate this when I composed it, but it's proving a bit more challenging than the pieces from the Chants document. It has more verses and more variation in pitch than most of them, so it takes a bit longer to learn. An additional challenge is that we don't have sheet music for the pieces I composed, just lyrics sheets, so there aren't visual cues. I suppose the next skill I need to unlock is putting my compositions into standard sheet music! In the last 20 or 30 minutes of rehearsal, we worked on integrating our two changes to "Samhain's Door", singing it like a round and with the djembe. That arrangement still needs some tweaking but is coming along. In a small but exciting milestone, we now have so many recordings that I had to implement subfolders to the Recordings folder on the Drive. (I checked and the old links on the blog still work.) Similarly, the accounting document is getting unwieldy, so I plan to close that sheet out at the end of the year and start fresh with a new one in 2026.
If you'd like to review any of our material, the sheet music and recordings are available on our Drive. For the naming conventions of the recordings, see the document in our Drive. You can also listen to the TPC playlist of recordings of some of the pieces by professional artists on Spotify. 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.
Our next meeting is next Tuesday!
Four of us made it out this week, including a new person! After a quick warm-up, we worked on "Full Moonlight Dance". Once we were comfortable with it, we worked on gradually increasing the tempo with each repetition. (Unfortunately, by the time we got around to recording, we were exhausted and it wasn't our best version.) We then spent most of the evening working on "Samhain's Door". After getting comfortable with the standard version, we tried several other variations. First, we added a harmony to the final note. Then, we incorporated a supporting beat on the djembe. Finally, we tried it out as a round. After several tries at that, we decided it worked best if the higher voices lead and the lower voices follow, otherwise it ends up sounding like some people are just behind! That recording is extremely rough, so I recorded one at home as an example.
If you'd like to review any of our material, the sheet music and recordings are available on our Drive. For the naming conventions of the recordings, see the document in our Drive. You can also listen to the TPC playlist of recordings of some of the pieces by professional artists on Spotify. 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.
Our next meeting is next Tuesday!
Four of us made it out this week, including a new person! After a quick warm-up, we did one run-through of the Reclaiming version of "Harvest Chant" with the recording. We then spent most of the evening working on "Samhain's Door". As we've found with many of the chants, the music seems to have been written for having the correct number of beats per measure rather than for singability; so, after trying to get the rhythm right repeatedly, we decided it was more comfortable, easier on the ear, and more aligned with the tone of the piece to simply stretch out the rests. We practiced it a few more times and ended with what I feel was a practically perfect rendition! We wrapped up rehearsal by working on "Moon, Sister Moon" a few times.
If you'd like to review any of our material, the sheet music and recordings are available on our Drive. For the naming conventions of the recordings, see the document in our Drive. You can also listen to the TPC playlist of recordings of some of the pieces by professional artists on Spotify. 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.
Our next meeting is next Tuesday!
Our next meeting is next Tuesday!
Our next meeting is next Tuesday!
Six of us made it out this week, including a new person! Since one of our members is hosting a harvest celebration this weekend, we worked on appropriate pieces she'd like us to sing there, "Lammas Gift" and "Harvest Chant". Since it's a much shorter and easier piece, we started out with "Harvest Chant", singing along to the Reclaiming recording (linked). We identified a number of ways their version is different from the sheet music we have. In fact, it was our new person who noticed that it wasn't just the rhythm that was different, they'd changed notes, too! Reclaiming's version is more fun and less solemn than the version we have music for, so we tend to just use their version. Once everyone felt they had the gist down, we started singing it without the recording. We found there were some places where we struggled to get the rhythm the way we wanted it, so we all stood up to keep time more physically. Eventually, we decided we were overthinking it and moved on to "Lammas Gift". Our new person picked this one up really quickly, as well, so we were able to work on some of the details of the piece. We opted not to sing the piece piano while trying to work on other specifics, since it adds an additional complication, but we also didn't want to belt it, so we settled on a volume we've jokingly dubbed mezzissimo, very medium! 😂 In addition to a quick reminder about softening some sounds to "ah", we also focused on synchronizing when and how we hit "t" sounds. For example, "without a door" sounds better sung, "wihou tah door". This also involved clarifying which syllables are held for two notes, since most of the verses are printed as only lyrics, without the music directly above them. We felt like we had a firm grasp of the piece about ten minutes before rehearsal ended, so we packed up while singing "Harvest Chant".
If you'd like to review any of our material, the sheet music and recordings are available on our Drive. For the naming conventions of the recordings, see the document in our Drive. You can also listen to the TPC playlist of recordings of some of the pieces by professional artists on Spotify. 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.
Our next meeting is next Tuesday!
Our next meeting is next Tuesday!
Six of us made it out this week, including a new person! While some of us have recently worked on "Lammas Gift", some hadn't since last year, and our new person never had, of course, so we spent most of our time working on that. Once everyone felt fairly confident with the piece, we went over choral pronunciation, such as softening the end of "altar". I realized that, in the absence of dynamics direction, we were all singing at different volumes, so I resurrected Emori's listening exercise with a small variation. I asked that everyone sing as quietly as possible and listen to each other to maintain choral cohesion, a blending of voices. It worked! We sounded more unified and I observed that, in the last verse, we all slightly elevated the volume together by listening to each other. We also found that singing the piece piano felt more appropriate than belting it. The narrative of the song is a private ritual, introspectively lending your heart to the gods; a softer performance lends itself better to the tone of the narrative. One of our members pointed out that we were extending the rests beyond what was written and I noted we were also still resting where there were no rests, as that member had pointed out the last time we worked on this piece. We discussed it and collectively decided that breathing when it felt natural to breath enhanced our ability to perform the piece well without detracting from the piece at all, so we would simply alter the piece to suite ourselves, as is our wont. After that, one of our members requested we work on "Harvest Chant". It was getting towards the end of rehearsal at this point, so we simply put on the Reclaiming recording and sang along. One of our members pointed out that the Reclaiming version differs significantly from how the piece is written in our sheet music. We decided the Reclaiming version is more fun and joyful, so we'd continue singing their version instead. We also, inspired by the singers riffing in the Reclaiming recording, had a lovely discussion about the place of improvisation in modern Pagan music and its relationship to improvisation in folk & culture music around the world. We noted that the rigidity of Western classical music is an exception to the rule and that, when playing for joy, musicians tend to approach music as a conversation or an experiment, rather than as a recitation. This organic and communal approach to music-making feels appropriate for a Pagan choir, so I expect we'll introduce more of that as we all continue becoming more comfortable with our voices and each other. The delight of the progress we made on our songs was matched by the delight of hearing our members' thoughts on how history, linguistics, and culture influence music generally and our experiences with it specifically.
If you'd like to review any of our material, the sheet music and recordings are available on our Drive. For the naming conventions of the recordings, see the document in our Drive. You can also listen to the TPC playlist of recordings of some of the pieces by professional artists on Spotify. 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.
