It was a slow start to the rehearsal this evening, between the heavy heat and the excitement of the solar eclipse, the last thing we were in the mood for was singing. It was lovely to see everyone though, and after a few little matters we soon got into the swing of it.
After a quick warm up we launched into one of our favourites, Can't Help Falling In Love (Elvis Presley). It's very familiar as it featured in our Songs of America concert in July. The alto section did really well considering they were severely outnumbered by the Sopranos, about 4 soprano singers per alto!
We went over the notes for Chapel of Love again before putting it all together, and the soprano 1 section mentioned they found it hard because there's a lot of the note A in it, and it can be a very uncomfortable note to sing. This gave me a huge opportunity to launch into an explanation about how it often feels like there's a big gap between the lower register (the one we mainly use for talking, and used to call the chest voice) and the upper register (the high notes or head voice - or Hyacinth Bucket voice). I got so carried away explaining how rickety that gap can feel that I didn't really describe how to combat it - we'll have to come back to that in September.
After that slight digression we flew through all the other songs in out pack and before we knew it, the time had come to sign off for our well-earned summer break.
Ta ra everyone, until September, when we launch into our Christmas concert! Surely not in this heat?!
Written by Katy Bradley