Rudsamblog

Please bear with me, there was quite a lot of useful technical stuff at the beginning of rehearsal. It needs to be read because there's only two weeks before our first recording and Ollie is really concentrating on getting our blend right, and being tighter.

HOMEWORK
Breathing. Get that diaphragm under control!! Use two hands. Place one on your first tyre...sorry, is there a diaphragm in there?... and one on your reserve fat area...sorry, tummy. Take breaths making sure when you breathe out your diaphragm is pushing your abdomen down. Keep the tummy still and just make sure only the diaphragm is moving. Practise this technique at home AND in pieces of music such as LUX and No8 of the Tormis pieces.
Practise getting a rich vowel sound. Make nice vowel sounds and horrid ones anywhere at any time. so you get used to rich vowel sounds and variants of it and can hear the difference. (Just an idea; if you're cooking it's fun to give each ingredient a different sound - carrots are good because they're shaped like crescendo and diminuendo signs. Chop some root to head and practise the vowel sound pp to ff, then chop some from head to root ff to pp, then make lots of carrot cake!)
It's IMPORTANT that we blend with the vowel sounds because, as Ollie demonstrated in rehearsal, it REALLY sounds bad if even one person is singing an AAAAA instead of AAAAH or vice versa.

PLEASE BE AWARE
That for the recording only, Ollie will beat a certain number of bars. PLEASE write how many on each piece of music so you don't come in too early or too late or have to ask how many bars he's beating EVERY rehearsal.

IMPORTANT THINKING APPLICATION
For the beginning of each piece of music we sang tonight we did a simple exercise where Ollie beat one or two bars, we sang - shhhhhhh - for one bar, then hit the first note with AH. Then we did it again singing - shhhh - then the first word/vowel sound of the piece. Ollie suggested we can practise this at home as well.
This was to show us that we MUST think about the first vowel sound we'll be singing WHILST Ollie is beating, NOT half a second bfore singing it! As demonstrated, it meant we were focused and gave the first note a much better quality.

WARM UP
Ollie turned us into snakes and, apart from making us head butt each other and lie on our backs and poo (as his snake does in self-defence), limbered us up the reptile way.
We also did some mirror work with a partner. THE REASON BEHIND THIS EXERCISE being that we need to WATCH visual instructions, like Ollie's conducting, so we come into a piece of music at the right speed. For instance in En Seule.

DINDIRIN
1) For recording purposes, Ollie will beat FOUR bars. He'll beat THREE bars of THREE beats, then ONE in a bar. Please write this on your copy.
2) We practised coming in at different speeds. And having a nice tone.
3) Come in almost on the 'I' of Dindirin. The note can't be sung on the first consonant of this word.
4) This piece would originally be sung by 4 people. Therefore the BLEND is very important to get right. Needs to be well tuned and well rounded.
5) It's THE nightingale, not A nightagale. (Guilty!!!)
6) D-ah-nya, NOT, D-aa-nya
7) Make sure you get the contrast between the first LEGATO half of verses and the 2nd half of the verses.
8) Put 'T's on the ends of words.
9) NO intrusive 'r's should be sung on Lover/wander/etc. Should sound more like 'ur' as in fur/bur/murky (unless you're from Newcastle!)

HANDING OVER TO ROBIN. THANKS. Jenny

Dark eyed Sailor

- Ollie will give 2 bars of 3 in
- Get the right sound forward vowel sounds and no breathiness
- Hum with half closed lips at the right points
- Make sure that you come off notes at the right time and give rests their full values
- Men watch Ollie for the bit that goes "then half..."
- Make a big difference between "bottom of the sea." and "then half..."

Tormis Set

The cat one
- 2 bars in (4 crotchets)

No.8
- Bar 6 take a crotchet off to breath quietly
- Tenors watch G in bar 7

No. 10
- Men should be a bit quieter

Hide and seek
- went surprisingly well

Anne said

- 1st CD recording March 12th 6.30pm to 10.30. St. Peter's in Newington (bring some food...)
- 2nd on the 16th April also St. Peter's (Possibly 9th April at Cannongate if St. Peter's no good)
- 3rd on Saturday the 14th June
- 15th April Interational students thing in the Playfair library get there as close to 5 pm as possible
- Another possible gig on the 7th November at the Pleasance

PS Sing in the shower

Jen did a jolly warmup and we all sounded and looked silly as usual

kiisu-miser:

a song about cats catching partridges and slaves and sticks and stuff.
keep chords accurate and purring soft
Ollie is our chief cat

Laulda teile laulake:

Anne is singing us a little song. It is apparently all about infants with horns and milk...hmmm...intriguing!
went through pronunciation which is largely unimportant or the rest of us except for the altos who come in for the final line.
Remember to break where there is a break (bar6)
Breathe quietly and if you can't then don't breathe at all.

Taevased kosilased:

another jolly Tormis song
Ask about the splits...I lost track of how the boys were splitting.
Sops watch final bar of second page and watch split at the end

Gaelic set:

how jolly!

Les Chansons des roses:

watch the rall and a tempo.
Ollie asked for a quieter sound while keeping it light and bouncy.
p at the start
Make sure you make the jumps and don't swoop about.
Bar 11- get off quick
The middle section should be legato with clear distinctions between notes

Envoi:

bar 27 soft oh was

That's it...no jokes or quips or humorous comments. So...I will do what I always do in such situations- find a decent pirate joke...there are a surprising amount of these actually

What do you get in you cross a pirate with a courgette?
A Squashbuckler

Oh come on, that's quite good. I was going to tell this one...
What has 12 arms and 12 legs?
12 pirates

Bet you're glad I didn't

Felicitations
Claire

After a funky warm-up from Claire_2 (wala wala bing-bang so so saroooso lickety split), boys and girls separated for some notebashing.

Lauridsen - En une seule fleur:
Tenors:

• bar 5: resist the tendency to go up to the B instead of getting the B flat, don't let the 'crunch' of the Bflat with the A flat from the basses put you off your note.
• watch the transition between bars 9 and 10, make sure you get that crunchy Dflat + Eflat in bar 10.

Both tenors and basses 'may' want to go home and imprint onto the inside of their skulls the notes that fall on [...] ton calice (bars 2 and 11) and [...] l'avait osé (bars 5 and 14).

Victoria - Magnum Mysterium:

• Pretty straightforward, just watch out for the occasional accidentals - keep a sharp eye out for the sharps.
• Be prepared for the time signature change in bar 53.
• Tenors: bar 64: make sure you go for the G, not the Gsharp.
• Tenors: bar 30: in your descending-ascending phrase, make sure you go down all the way to the A (i.e. don't make up a phrase).
• Sopranos: think 'high' on the very first note, it was going flat and the rest of us with it - "The Rudsambee Sink".

Ollie says (partially paraphrased): in general,

• We're aiming for a pure and warm sound. Pure meaning: get rid of extraneous noise / hiss / breathiness in your tone.
  
• Keep your phrasing in mind, make your runs clear and make them stand out (slightly louder).
  
• When we change to 3/2 time in bar 53, make it lively and bouncy.
  
• Throughout, keep up the tempo - we tend to drag (almost rightaway in the beginning).
  
• Just as in Lauridsen's Magnum Mysterium, always place the emphasis as follows: "Oh Magnum mysterium", instead of "Oooooooooooh Magnum mysterium".
  
• Make a conscious effort to look ahead (helps with the accidentals and just generally a good idea, means you can concentrate on generating that warm sound instead of panicking about your next note).

We also did some work on dynamics:

• More volume desired on the low bass notes G and A whenever they appear. Whenever your part goes up high, not so loud.
• Starting from the beginning, the entry of each additional voice is an event that should clearly come out, i.e. come in securely and confidently (but don't shout), and the voices already present tone it down a bit to leave room for the increased density of sound.
• Start of the piece: p, tenderly. Check that you're still p or at most mp in bars 16 / 17.
• [CORRECT ME IF I'M WRONG]. Between there and bar 39 things have been tending to get a bit louder, I assume this is ok with Ollie.
• Switch gears mentally between bars 39 and 40, come into bar 40 pp, with great stillness and pure tenderness ('O beata Virgo').

We'll work more on the dynamics.

Betinis - Envoi:
We all went home humming this, sounded pretty good.
After the first two or three pages we have to make sure we're all keeping the same beat otherwise the train derails --> look at Ollie!
This is especially critical moving into bar 27.
The tenor and alto whispers towards the end should be loud whispers.
Basses: the two note ascending 'Fly' motif that starts in bar 45 and carries on until the end of the piece should be legato and the two notes connected.
A general instruction: sing beautifully!

Some dynamics:

• bars 22 - 23 should be a decrescendo
• same in the first half of bar 26 for the basses, before they crescendo down into the mf B of bar 27.
• also, I've got marked a decrescendo in bar 53, basically when the tenors start whispering.

Concerning the 'Dolby digital DTS surround sound' effect in the last two bars of the piece (needs a lot more work), it's important that

• we all start sliding up at the same time (on the 2nd beat of bar 60? look at Ollie!)
• we actually do the < f > and
• really make sure we decrescendo into a pp, keeping the tone very pure to construct that crystalline final chord.

Anouncement at the end:

We may have found a venue to record, though if I understand correctly it may be too expensive.

We started 7.45 sharp (The new years resolutions seem to work!) with a
warmup by Arno.

(Notes are not strictly chronological)

PART I: Everyone

Dream Angus

• We started with the little Etude for Dream Angus; Tenors, B3: the Bb in the notes should read C
• Obey the phasing; underneath parts support the phrasing of the melody
• pronounce "heather" as "hither"
• humming should be slightly louder than you think
• B8: definite entry, T+B: breath as well at end of B8

Dream Angus, splittings

* B18

• SA: S=S1, A=tune=A1+S2
• ATT= A2+T1+T2

* B52

• SA: S=S1, A=A1+S2 - Elaine - Susan
• A=A2
• ST: S=Elaine+Susan, T=T
• TB: T=B1, B=B2

* B69-End

• bottom line splits T + B1 + B2 as written

PART IIa: Women (thanks to Jenny)

En seule fleur

• Pronounciation: cet with 't' but not on vait
• watch change in time signature (6/8, 9/8 I guess), think in quavers
• Beat + 1/2 given - ie x 1 Ces (You probably know what Jenny means by that)
• memorize last bar so page turn is smooth (Good tip for the MEN as well)
• crisp + bouncy

Dream Angus

• "Dream Angus is hirpling ower" - no breath!
• Hit A (the wee lamb) - an open sound
• to - not 'too' - t'

Envoi (I guess)

• Count!!! (in 3s)
• Sop I+II as usual (they know who they are)
• Write counts above the notes

PART IIb: Men

Roses

• Make sure you keep pitch on those repeated notes, think upwards rather than constant

Envoi

• "fly" = fl-aa-i, where aa denotes a nicely shaped open, front a with a slight o mixing, similar to the danish vowel aa
• Barit.=Robin+Tom, others as usual

PART III: Announcements

• We are still looking for a replacement for Priestfield as a recording venue. Should be cheap, have a good acoustic and not too much traffic noise, should be accessible for Edinburghers, and if it is a church there shouldn't be service while we are singing (some of our recording dates are Satudays). Suggestions to be forwarded to Anne.
• "Waverly Care" runs a "come and sing" thing on the 16th of February. For the registration form refer to Anne's email about it.
• Chris exposed us to a recording of the roses to give us an idea about what it should sound like. Thanks!
• We sang a happy birthday to Helen.