From the basement!
"Phew!" (or "Ouf" - pronounced 'ooff' - as they say in French!). Our first gospel meeting has been and gone. I woke up this morning with slightly stiff shoulders so I must have been jumping about all over the place as I directed. I kind of feel as if by sheer physical will I can get the note/sound I want out of the singers!! Great sport!
So, last night at 8.30 I set off to join the others at the house of one of our singers. Cars were parked both sides of the street and people headed into the dark recesses of the basement. I joined them as they huddled in a circle giggling that it was like some clandestine sect meeting! Actually the basement was very well lit, heated and spacious - which was just as well as there were over twenty of us. Our friend's husband scoured the house for as many chairs as he could find but I reminded them that gospel music is best sang standing anyway!
There were a couple of unfamilar faces - two teenage girls who wanted to join us and a couple of other new recruits, but mainly people who are already used to singing together. We only mustered four men - who did a good job but who could do with reinforcements.
I was pleased to see my fellow gospel 'students' who proved to be invaluable with the harmonisations they remembered from the summer course. Also our regular choir director who was sitting discreetly with the altos. Haha : a chance for revenge for all the jibes she sends our way on Tuesday evenings (all in good humour, of course). :-)
I decided to start by a short speech outlining the origin of the idea for the group and the short-term objective of basically being a musical experiment. Then I gave a quick introduction to the sense of gospel. I said this was religious music and that no-one should feel uncomfortable at that idea if they were going to sing it convincingly. I explained that I was a Christian and that just as Christians try to show their faith by the way they are, gospel music must inhabit you if you are going to get the impact of its message across. I wonder what anyone thought of that little comment? It was hardly a moving testimony but I didn't want to preach a sermon. Perhaps they just ignored it? Anyway, I then said a bit about the sort of music it was (i.e. modern rather than negro spirituals) and we started warming up.
The warming up is, I think, essential before a good sing and recently I have been delegated this job at our Tuesday choir practice. I don't know why me but everyone seems to enjoy it. They're particularly fond of the facial massage I ask them to do and yesterday I only had to say "Let's warm up," and some of them were already rubbing their cheeks!
I got them to stretch their arms and concentrate on their breathing, pointing out the muscles that should be working so they could later feel where to squeeze! Then we started a chromatic ascent singing "Wonderful, Marvellous, Fabulous" in a neutral, dreamy voice at first building up to a joyful volume by the end. Then it was time for some work!
We started off with "Lord Have Mercy (Come Here Jesus)" which is quite gentle. A lot of it is in unison so it gave us a chance to hear what our voices were like together and then to experiment with a simple harmony. Of our four men, two sing bass so they were an octave below the tenors and the danger was of having a sound more like a Gregorian chant than joyful bells at the end. Even with such simple words everyone was stressed by their wordsheets. This got worse as we moved on to more complex texts such as Kurt Carr's "God Great God".
I had intended to have them just learn the beginning of this song but things went well and everyone wanted to finish learning it so we spent a good hour on it. The greatest difficulty (apart from the words) was for the three voices to find their notes as we were singing unaccompanied. By the end of the session, though, we had managed to memorise it pretty well. The bass singers pulled a face when they heard some of their high notes but they compromised with the octave again which actually gave quite a rich harmony in places. We managed to sing the whole song through by the end without too many problems apart from one or two ropey moments for the altos.
I could see people were getting pretty tired (it was around 10.15 by now). They'd been concentrating quite hard both on the foreign words (complete with pronunciation input from me) and music. But mercilessly I wanted to get them started on a third song : "Jesus On The Mainline". Just the first verse, go on...
It took a while for the altos and tenors' voices to get in place as firstly I missed the starting note (whoops) which took us on the wrong path, and secondly there are a lot of accidentals which they felt odd about singing. But the result was great! By the end I had them on their feet stepping and clapping and singing the three-part harmony. I can't wait to teach them the rest of it. With the help of Ben (pianist and 'gospeller') and Mary (musician and choir director) I hope, who will shove me back on key when I miss!! (Names have been changed to protect the innocent!!)
Then we were all fed cake by our hosts and given a glass of wine to recover from our exertions (this is France, remember!).
I tried to get a bit of feedback from the singers to see if they'd enjoyed themselves but they just returned the question and asked how they'd done!!
Very well, I must say. From a dots-and-staves point of view. There still has to be a lot of work on vocal technique though as there is little if no nuance. But that will come. My unfathomable problem at the moment is how to get them to lose the wordsheets. They all sit/stand with their noses in the words even though I'm singing them all and articulating like some crazy cartoon character, so they don't look at me and miss entrances etc. I'll have to think about that one.
One disappointment was that the cassette of the rehearsal I had recorded for revision purposes was completely blank as the 'tape' function on my stereo wasn't on!! Now we'll all be counting on memory next time.
Then in the pitch dark (streetlights are off at eleven sharp in our village to save money and there was no moon!) I tried to find my car and came home. After seven straight hours of back-to-back teaching (I'm a secondary school teacher by the way), two-hours' driving, family obligations and two hours of gospel I slept like a log!
Gospella
So, last night at 8.30 I set off to join the others at the house of one of our singers. Cars were parked both sides of the street and people headed into the dark recesses of the basement. I joined them as they huddled in a circle giggling that it was like some clandestine sect meeting! Actually the basement was very well lit, heated and spacious - which was just as well as there were over twenty of us. Our friend's husband scoured the house for as many chairs as he could find but I reminded them that gospel music is best sang standing anyway!
There were a couple of unfamilar faces - two teenage girls who wanted to join us and a couple of other new recruits, but mainly people who are already used to singing together. We only mustered four men - who did a good job but who could do with reinforcements.
I was pleased to see my fellow gospel 'students' who proved to be invaluable with the harmonisations they remembered from the summer course. Also our regular choir director who was sitting discreetly with the altos. Haha : a chance for revenge for all the jibes she sends our way on Tuesday evenings (all in good humour, of course). :-)
I decided to start by a short speech outlining the origin of the idea for the group and the short-term objective of basically being a musical experiment. Then I gave a quick introduction to the sense of gospel. I said this was religious music and that no-one should feel uncomfortable at that idea if they were going to sing it convincingly. I explained that I was a Christian and that just as Christians try to show their faith by the way they are, gospel music must inhabit you if you are going to get the impact of its message across. I wonder what anyone thought of that little comment? It was hardly a moving testimony but I didn't want to preach a sermon. Perhaps they just ignored it? Anyway, I then said a bit about the sort of music it was (i.e. modern rather than negro spirituals) and we started warming up.
The warming up is, I think, essential before a good sing and recently I have been delegated this job at our Tuesday choir practice. I don't know why me but everyone seems to enjoy it. They're particularly fond of the facial massage I ask them to do and yesterday I only had to say "Let's warm up," and some of them were already rubbing their cheeks!
I got them to stretch their arms and concentrate on their breathing, pointing out the muscles that should be working so they could later feel where to squeeze! Then we started a chromatic ascent singing "Wonderful, Marvellous, Fabulous" in a neutral, dreamy voice at first building up to a joyful volume by the end. Then it was time for some work!
We started off with "Lord Have Mercy (Come Here Jesus)" which is quite gentle. A lot of it is in unison so it gave us a chance to hear what our voices were like together and then to experiment with a simple harmony. Of our four men, two sing bass so they were an octave below the tenors and the danger was of having a sound more like a Gregorian chant than joyful bells at the end. Even with such simple words everyone was stressed by their wordsheets. This got worse as we moved on to more complex texts such as Kurt Carr's "God Great God".
I had intended to have them just learn the beginning of this song but things went well and everyone wanted to finish learning it so we spent a good hour on it. The greatest difficulty (apart from the words) was for the three voices to find their notes as we were singing unaccompanied. By the end of the session, though, we had managed to memorise it pretty well. The bass singers pulled a face when they heard some of their high notes but they compromised with the octave again which actually gave quite a rich harmony in places. We managed to sing the whole song through by the end without too many problems apart from one or two ropey moments for the altos.
I could see people were getting pretty tired (it was around 10.15 by now). They'd been concentrating quite hard both on the foreign words (complete with pronunciation input from me) and music. But mercilessly I wanted to get them started on a third song : "Jesus On The Mainline". Just the first verse, go on...
It took a while for the altos and tenors' voices to get in place as firstly I missed the starting note (whoops) which took us on the wrong path, and secondly there are a lot of accidentals which they felt odd about singing. But the result was great! By the end I had them on their feet stepping and clapping and singing the three-part harmony. I can't wait to teach them the rest of it. With the help of Ben (pianist and 'gospeller') and Mary (musician and choir director) I hope, who will shove me back on key when I miss!! (Names have been changed to protect the innocent!!)
Then we were all fed cake by our hosts and given a glass of wine to recover from our exertions (this is France, remember!).
I tried to get a bit of feedback from the singers to see if they'd enjoyed themselves but they just returned the question and asked how they'd done!!
Very well, I must say. From a dots-and-staves point of view. There still has to be a lot of work on vocal technique though as there is little if no nuance. But that will come. My unfathomable problem at the moment is how to get them to lose the wordsheets. They all sit/stand with their noses in the words even though I'm singing them all and articulating like some crazy cartoon character, so they don't look at me and miss entrances etc. I'll have to think about that one.
One disappointment was that the cassette of the rehearsal I had recorded for revision purposes was completely blank as the 'tape' function on my stereo wasn't on!! Now we'll all be counting on memory next time.
Then in the pitch dark (streetlights are off at eleven sharp in our village to save money and there was no moon!) I tried to find my car and came home. After seven straight hours of back-to-back teaching (I'm a secondary school teacher by the way), two-hours' driving, family obligations and two hours of gospel I slept like a log!
Gospella
posted by Gospella @ 10:14 am
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