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!
