If you are having difficulty following along, or find yourself getting lost, or just want to improve your music reading skills, check out the Sight-Reading Factory.
https://www.sightreadingfactory.com/
There’s also a basic primer about following a choral score. I’ve noticed some of you occasionally seem lost. Maybe this video can take some of the mystery out of following the music, and staying afloat during rehearsals. Try it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn7YJWGsw5Q
Monthly Archives: January 2023
Need some help with your sight-singing skills?
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What Is Peace?
This is part of a larger work, the text is based on the Beatitudes (from the Sermon on the Mount).
This stand-alone movement from Tuvayhun – Beatitudes for a Wounded World, is from Matthew 5: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be the children of God.”
SOPRANOS: Please everyone learn soprano 2. I will only put one or two voices on the sop 1 part, as it just needs to float and not be too heavy.
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How Can I Keep From Singing
This is an arrangement of an old Shaker hymn written 250 years ago. Even though it was written as a deeply Christian hymn, I appreciate the fact that this arrangement is timeless and open to interpretation. We are certainly living in times of tumult and strife, roaring tempests and darkness. The rock we each cling to to survive is personal and unique to each of us. Some believe in a God, for some it’s the goodness in others, for some it’s simply love, for some the Earth as our Mother. Whatever you feel is your rock, please sing this beautiful song with heart full.
Here are the parts to this arrangement. Please note the time signatures as we move through the changes in meter.
As you work on your part, warm up your voice a little, then first just listen and follow along, making sure you have your line of music marked so you don’t get lost. Please as you listen, ignore the words. Don’t even look at them. Pay close attention to your notes and rhythms. The words are easy and will come later.
Then, on the next listen, sing along on a neutral syllable like doo or loo or lah. Learn the notes and rhythms that way first. Have your pencil ready to make any tricky spots that might need extra work.
Repeat until you know all the note and rhythm changes, continue to ignore the words, looking at only the notes and rhythms. Then when you’ve really got it in your ears, eyes and body, you can add words, remembering to use tall vowels and deep full breathing.
Have fun.
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Time Signature Refresher
From time to time I’ll post some helpful videos or information concerning the art of music reading.
This one helps to explain time signatures. Please watch if you have any questions about what a time signature is or what information it gives you.
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Ukrainian River Song
Enjoy. We will pick up the tempo eventually!
sop part: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaIOCUieF6o
alto part: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Irzl8CLh8ZE
tenor part: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hICx7xZHvAA
bass part: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdCcaVWHpz0
We’ll pay tribute to our Ukrainian brothers and sisters by singing this joyful dance-like song.
Mostly nonsense syllables, it is written in the style of a Ukrainian -Carpathian folk song. May the People of Ukraine find a reason to dance very soon.
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January 15, 2023 · 8:14 pmHow Can I Keep From Singing Arr. Sarah Quartel
A Beautiful rendition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL3-gqGHfdw
I am familiar with a couple of different arrangements of this song. We sang the arrangement by Gwyneth Walker several years ago. I like this arrangement, and I like the tempo Susan Rice takes to keep it light and not plodding. Just listen to the blend of the women’s voices!
Parts to follow in the coming weeks.
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Lux Aeterna by Tom Porter
In choosing music for this session, I felt it was important to acknowledge the profound losses (global, national, and personal) of the past 3 years, and was looking specifically for the text of the Requiem. I settled on this arrangement by Tom Porter. Perhaps we can all have the intention of holding someone dear we’ve lost in our hearts while we sing this together.
Here is the translation from the Latin text:
Light eternal shine on them Lord,
with your saints in eternity,
because you are holy.
Rest eternal, give them, Lord,
and light unending shine on them.
Here are your isolated rehearsal tracks.
soprano https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqGfEBCIe1I
alto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoYS3aquEkc
tenor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuoisYGk6EM
bass https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeiXRBg_Ezg
All Parts/Full Mix https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apFVXtHzU7c
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Let the Music Fill Your Soul
This selection is one that I had chosen for us to do in 2020. We had started it before the world changed. I like this message, the horn collaboration and the interesting meter changes. My apologies to the first sopranos. I played your last note a beat early.
The rest of it it pretty clear. Nice triple and duple beat divisions here. It’s a little slower here than we will take it.
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Sing Gently
Sing Gently Eric Whitacre
I had the time finally during the pandemic to participate in this global choir experience. The end result is beautiful, but the process was hair-raising and humbling. It took me 4 takes to get a submission that I was satisfied with and it STILL was not perfect. It was that darn drop of an interval of a 7th in the alto part that I struggled with time after time. Oh well. You can’t tell by listening that one alto out of 17,000 singers was slightly inaccurate in that one spot! I did find myself floating in the forefront at one point. can you find me?
The experience left me cold, though. This type of choral singing is all about the technology that allows the final project to look and sound beautiful and abandons all the excellent things about choral singing that is important to me: breathing together, the vibrations we feel as we hear each other, the ability to tune with each other, the sense of ensemble, the common intention of a room filled with different singers…in short the “each other.”
It is true that the 17,000 of us created a sort of on-line community during that time in which we rehearsed, recorded, and submitted our parts. There was a lot of on-line chatter before the premier. I remember chatting with excited strangers all around the globe as we counted down the minutes before its release on the web. It is a beautiful piece and an impressive bit of editing and production. Kudos to those who made it possible.
However, once you’ve experienced the real in-person thrill of a perfectly in-tune chord, or a gorgeous pp passage, or the acoustic echo/ring in the singing space of the final chord cut off, virtual choir will always be like carob to me compared to in-person ensemble singing that is the most delicious dark chocolate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InULYfJHKI0
parts:
soprano 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTlq2aIXUP8
alto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTtt5dpWw1g
tenor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij3KCYp17OI
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We Are One
This one will be a memorized encore. So download it to your listening device and get busy.
Here is a nice version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye_wUgap0GE
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