All Recording Tracks are Online - Due Dec 13th
Hi Everyone:
The recording tracks for the last two songs are now online on the members' page under the 'repertoire' tab. There are 7 songs in total, so record all if you can. Below each song there are additional instructions for recording, including what to wear.
Please have all recordings in by the end of Sunday December 13th, and if you are not able to record everything please let me know which songs you won't be submitting. There is absolutely no pressure to record; this is meant to be a fun project.
If you are having any technical difficulty please get in touch and I'll do my best to help you through. If you're not sure I received your songs, then please ask me in an email.
DATES TO REMEMBER,
Tuesday December 8th at 7pm is our final rehearsal for all sections.
Saturday December 12th at 7pm is the Harmony House Music School Concert ONLINE, to which you're invited.
Tuesday December 15th at 7pm will be our Christmas Carolling Night, so please invite friends to join us. More details to follow. Lyrics will be available online prior to the evening. If you have any favourites, let us know by email and we'll try to include them.
Saturday December 19th at 7pm is the Spirit's Call Choir Concert ONLINE to which you're welcome to invite all your friends.
The link for all events is:
https://zoom.us/j/5845511675?pwd=TGZEN1BtUFJLbjFCRkhEN1JBN2FmQT09
Meeting ID: 584 551 1675 Password: In_Harmony
Have a great weekend and we'll see you all this Tuesday.
Jeremy.
More Recording Tracks ONLINE
Hi everyone:
If you haven't yet seen, there are more recording tracks on the Spirit's Call Choir repertoire page in the members' site. So far we have Morning Hymn, Round and Round, The Rain Song and The River.
Do your best to get them all recorded and submitted by the end of this weekend so they don't pile up on you. Plus, it'll give me time to get them edited.
There are more songs to come: Hallelujah, Straighten Up and Fly Right, and Thula Sizwe. The absolute deadline for all recordings is end of Sunday December 13th.
Also, don't stress - if you feel you can't record all the videos, it's no problem. Just let me know so I'm not waiting on you.
Our concert will be Saturday December 19th at 7pm, online. (The same zoom link as we use for choir practice)
If you have questions or need assistance, please get in touch. jeremy@harmonyhousecommunity.com.
Have fun with it.
Thanks,
Jeremy.
Optional Virtual Video Tips
REGARDING ALL VIRTUAL VIDEOS...
Hello all, this is a reminder that we DO NOT want your participation to become a negative stress in your life (positive stress is good, negative stress will produce negative consequences).
REMEMBER IT'S JUST FOR FUN!!!
Everyone is asked to do only what works well for you in your life. If you are a real go-getter and you have the time and energy to do all the recordings, that is wonderful! But, we realize they are time consuming and not everyone is comfortable with the process - that doesn't mean you can't continue showing up and singing along and learning with the choir each week. Think of the videos as an "extra". You don't have to do them to participate in our weekly learning.
You do you! You are welcome to submit just 1 video or a few - and remember they do not have to be perfect. When we sing along we can hear all the imperfections very clearly. When we sing together those imperfections are still there but we don't notice them because there are other voices sharing the airwaves.
It is the combined sound which gives us the illusion of "perfect" sound. As long as the imperfections aren't happening to everyone at the exact same time it will sound glorious! So - don't be shy! Sing out freely and lovingly as if you were singing with your best friends after having had a glass of wine, or as if you were singing to a baby who adores you, or your dog... the energy with which you sing is much more important to your sound than getting the notes perfect.
If you are "nervous" the muscles in your body will be tight and that will effect your voice and your confidence, so use your imagination! Pretend you are a confident performer or pretend you are a character in a play... whatever you need to do to keep the tension at bay so you can really release your pure, heartfelt voice!
En-JOY yourself! Chances are if you are actually enjoying yourself, we will hear that lightheartedness in your tone, and you will sound confident. It's a great trick... if you are authentically enjoying yourself while you sing, you will sound your best. So mentally infuse yourself with JOY just before you start and we will hear it!
🙂 Sandi
Hello fellow singers!
I'm writing to apologize for the confusion regarding the "Round and Round" round. I was thrown off by the arrangement Jeremy created for you to follow last week with the odd number of bars to wait between verses. Because this is a song we have sung a lot in the choir before, and we will sing it a lot in the future as well (because it is so glorious when we sing it in a cathedral) it is important that we are being consistent.
1/2 of our choir is not participating with us online so if we change the form of the song they will all be lost and confused when we are back together in person, and it would be difficult to adjust. So I just wanted to be clear that it is not that I didn't think that you would be able to make the adjustments for our video, I was thinking long term and wanting to keep consistent.
So, that is why you may notice that on this final recording it is actually only 2 "heart beat" drums between verse 1 and verse 2 (not 4). Each phrase is 4 bars long, but there are only 2 heartbeats per phrase. This allows us to perform it in SATB sections (soprano, alto, tenor, bass).
So, once again - VERY SORRY for the confusion. Hopefully it's straight forward now. (It's really such a straight forward song! LOL!)
Happy video taping!
🙂 Sandi
Recordings to be done by this weekend...
By the end of this weekend, (November 22) please have recorded and submitted "Round and Round" and the alleluia of the "Morning Hymn." Instructions on what to wear and how to record and send the video are all on the Repertoire Page along with the backtracks for the songs, and instructions on how to record and send the video are on the page How To Record.
As discussed in last night's rehearsal, the Round and Round backtrack has been reposted. There were some timing errors in the previous recording which have since been corrected. Our apologies for the error and resulting confusion.
If you've already recorded and submitted Round and Round, you don't need to redo it!!! I can edit it once I put the video together.
If you have yet to record, please note there are only 4 beats between EVERY verse, so there's no guessing where to come in. After the last note is sung in the verse, just count... 1... and 2... and 3... and 4... and "round and round..."
Get in touch if you have any questions or need assistance.
1/2 Price Private Vocal Lessons for Choir Members
Hello friends! Have you ever wondered what a private voice lesson would be like?
We have come up with another win-win idea to help fill the schedule of our newest teacher at our music school.
We hired the beautiful Assell Zakarina to take on 1 day of teaching our budding musicians, but she would like more students so we are offering all choir members up to 4 private lessons at 1/2 price.
Assell just graduated from the exact same program at Capilano University that Sandi did back in 1996 (Jazz Studies, Vocal Performance) and she even studied with many of the same teachers! Assell is keen to help students of all ages and stages of development learn more about their voice.
Private lessons on zoom work REALLY well. It is very easy for the teacher to hear the student sing and give feedback, (the teacher sends the student back tracks for their songs and of vocal warm ups and exercises before the class).
We will add a picture of Assell to this post soon. A few people have already signed up! We'll post their testimonials after they've had their lessons so you can get a better idea of what you might gain from trying it out. 🙂
Yay!
Hello all!
While it is true that online singing is not the same as in person, that doesn't mean we can't continue to get all the same healing benefits from singing online together during Covid. It just means we have to change our expectations and our focus for the term. We can still have FUN! We can still LEARN! We can still CONNECT with one another through smiles and conversations and just simply showing up for one another. What we'll be missing without the in person connection we will make up for with personalized skill development and education!
REMINDER: Tonight is our very first night of "sectionals"!
What is a sectional? This means I will be working with the soprano sectiton only and Jeremy will be working with the tenor section only. We will spend the whole evening focusing on the ins and outs of these two sections, (we will not be covering any alto or bass part singing). And next week we will hold sectionals for the Altos & Basses and it will be the soprano & altos turn to work on their own with the recordings.
We are doing sectionals to make better use of your time and energy, so you don't get bored waiting around for your section to have it's turn. Sectionals allow the group to be smaller and focused on specifics, so the learning curve is steep!
What are you supposed to do on your "off week"? Well, PRACTICE of course! I suggest practice from 7 - 9pm on Tuesdays as planned to keep your singing time regluar, but of course you can do your practicing whenever you want and as many times as you want! That's one of the "pros" of online zoom lessons!
You can either re-watch the video from last weeks rehearsal in full, or you can watch it in part and rewind and run over the songs as many times as you need to until you start to INTERNALIZE them! "Internalizing" is different from memorizing. Internalizing is when the song just comes flowing out of you and you don't have to think about your notes or your words - you've just sung it so many times that you don't have to think. THAT is when the MAGIC happens! And that is when we really EXPERIENCE singing on the vibrational level. 🙂
PLEASE REFER TO THE SCHEDULE to check when all your live rehearsals will be. We will post the video re-play of every rehearsal so that you have access to them whenever you want all term long. This will actually greatly speed up the learning curve "if" you use the recordings!
And for those of you who want to work on your personal skill set... we will also put up recordings of all the vocal warms ups, skills & drills (including ear training, sight singing and vocal technique) so you can play around with those over the term as well. The nice thing about working on "skills and drills" is that you will notice progress! And nothing feels better than progress!
See you all soon!
Sandi
Choir begins September 8th
We're looking forward to seeing you all September 8th. With the rise in COVID and lack of rehearsal space, we are continuing online for now. Because it's online, people from anywhere are welcome to join.
PLEASE SHARE THIS WITH ANYONE YOU THINK MAY BE INTERESTED!
See you soon.
Jeremy & Sandi
