Rudsamblog

Elaine did warm up with fancy operatic arpeggios. Apologies, Tom was not on warm up Chris was, but as he was ill and incapable he couldn't have done it anyway. He's doing next week and Mirren's on notes.

Make sure you pick up new song DEPAIRTE DEPAIRTE next week

TOP TIPS -

• if you've sung a song by memory and are looking at music to refresh, look at it with the intention you'll be doing it by heart again.
• when singing by memory, if you get stuck make a note of it and look at the music to check and relearn
• prepare to sing vowels during the rests
• stand properly it helps the tuning

Whistle Daughter (west country style!)
OOOOO not HMMMM on underneath chords
Give Anna-Lauren a nice chord to start on
Tenors watch the minor third (bar 30ish?)
Tenors stay on the A in bar 38
pp and build up to ff - /oh she'd rather - /melodramatic cresc.
Watch dynamics generally
Don't drown solos out but get the notes firm and right
Bar 21 and 60 - Chris is doing tenor line
Well done

Flow Flow my Tears
Give more structure and phrasing to what you're singing
Sing out when you have tune and softly in A and B sectons
Stand up nicely, it will help the tuning
Watch those intervals, especially when small steps down
Get up to that C in section B
Think of the note 'a' before you start singing.

Estrella
Rhythm. Isn't complicated at all.
1st time through -
Shaker 1 (Claire 1) gives a two bar introduction and plays the first bar
Shaker 2 ( Rachael) plays the second bar
Shaker 1 plays the third bar
(this is called alternate bars. Or playing alternately. Some people were pulling puzzled faces but the shakers knew what I meant)
Shakers 1&2 stop playing at bar 9
Drum (Sebastian) plays from bar 9 to bar 15 and stops
Shakers 1&2 play together (that's not alternately) from bar 15 to the end
2nd time through
Guiro (Anna-Lauren) hits the frog hard on the first beat of bar 1
She plays HIT SCRAPE SCRAPE HIT HIT SCRAPE SCRAPE HIT
she stops playing at the end of bar 21
Drum starts playing at bar 9 and stops playing at end of bar 21
Shakers 1 and 2 start playing together at bar 15
Shaker 2 STOPS at end of bar 21
Bar 22 Shaker 1 plays - I want a -(technically semiquaver, quaver, semiquaver)
All percussion off with the singers for that rest in bar 22
Bar 23 Shaker 1 - I want a mango (semi-q,q,semiq, q,q)
Shaker 2 ; Give me that now (3 quavers and a shake)
Guiro; Hit, scrape, Hit
Drum; roll building up to a huge final BANG

DEPAIRTE
Altos are singing an octave down form what is written
Watch the phrasing. Even when not singing words
Roll the 'r's
Round sound and get same vowel sounds as everyone else
Pronounciation is basically as written. Did verse 1 as follows:
day-pairte, day-pairte, alas, I must day-pairte,
from her.....indeed...remeed...pains (not pan's), deed, more and sore.
Sound as one voice with your part

IF YE LOVE ME
Prepare vowel sounds before you sing them
Think of same things as in Depairte and Ave Maris
Make a rich sound for EEE
Blend with each other
get same vowel sounds
Round 'A' like a Yorkshire 'a' rather than Lancashire 'a' (but then this turned into it depends which bit of Yorkshire you're from discussion)
Make 'O' sounds like a cat's bottom. (This gave Sebastian a chance to have a closer look at Rufus!!)
Dynamics
begin pp and warm through to p in bar 1. Stay p to bar 13
Tenors, use a head voice NOT falsetto for the F.
Make a nice tone whatever dynamic is needed.
Bar 13 is a gentle mf, not shouty
Bar 37 dimin. to end
Sing Sprit not Spirit
Well done, nice blended sound coming out

THE REASON FOR SINGING STUFF THROUGH JUST ONCE AT THE END OF A REHEARSAL is because we don't get a chance to sing it through three times in front of an audience, so it has to sound right first time. So we need to practise that.

Ave Maris
Basses make sure you get that Filius entry.
Generally the sound was nice though out of tune - to be looked at

Dle
Basses MUST come in with that Dle entry. It will scare Ollie because if you don't come in the rest of the choir pull silly faces at you, which doesn't look very good

AOB The Norwegian night is on Sunday the 27th May.