Congratulations, everyone!

Congratulations to everyone for a productive and timely dress rehearsal!

Keep working on your music - difficultiesWILL yield before a determined, informed, tireless, patient assault ;-)

Kickoff Dinner this Friday, October 16 - in Casey Commons!
Pictures begin at 5:30 p.m., food at 6.00, and then Special Activities And Very Special Things to follow...

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Practice Tips for everyone and everything

Now is a good time to begin singing with the choral recordings of your pieces for FWC.

Play the recording and just listen.
Play the recording and track your part in the score.
Play the recording, sing and track your part in the score. Have you marked cues from other parts?
Play the recording and sing.
Play the recording again.

If you'll be walking while singing something, practice this combination maneuver.

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Mastery in Numbers:
Why not get together with one or more people and run your music?
Go into a practice room, pull up a choral recording or voice part recording on your smartphone, and sing with it.
Sing for each other, record yourselves, and then work through feedback:

Feedback Tips:
1. Basic Accuracy: Rhythm, pitch, note lengths and rests, dynamics.
2. Text: Diction, proper shaping of vowels, consonants, shadow vowels, pitched consonants, etc.
3. Line, phrasing, tapering, etc. What are the phrase shapes? Pay attention to your "support system" when you manage breath and tone through long phrases.
4. Timing of onsets, off-sets, rests, breaths. If you're working through a section that doesn't have a definitely marked breath, where DO you take your breaths? Mark them and practice them! Do you know where you are NOT supposed to breathe? Mark those places! (NB, dotted curved line).

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A Little Inspiration for Chamber Singers

Dufay Gloria with voices singing the ostinato:

Gospel inspiration from the divine Aretha. My, my, my, this woman can SING.

Total Praise with 1500-voice gospel choir in Stockholm, Sweden. I really love this version - the guitar solo is something else!
Hey everyone: know this. Gospel music is for everybody. It is NOT about your "paint." It is about your soul. If it speaks to you, then it is yours.

Inspiration for those who are singing chant: Just play this "in the background," letting it soak through the crevices to water your soul.

Here's some chant expanded into organum  - a Kyrie. Men's Chorale: if you sang J. Edmund Hughes' "Steal Away/Kyrie" last year, you will recognize this chant!
(by the way, that movie was totally AWFUL - read the book, instead).

More organum for your delectation: Sederunt by Perotin (The Great), 13th century!