top of page
Search
Trills on a Tuesday

Chuffed to Bits


Song for Ukraine


We recapped Hallelujah from last week with reminders of not breathing in the middle of the word ‘hallelujah’ and to make the ‘lu’ part sound like a train whistle. Don’t forget to smile while you do this!


Hallelujah is coming together well and once the notes and rhythms are right the next stage will be working on the nuances of soft, loud etc.


Mr.Blue Sky made it to end of the song at last!


So many ‘do, do dos’ and ‘Ba ba bas’ to interlink with the different voices making them sound crisp and sharp. Eamonn wanted it to sound a little like the Antiques Road Show. This song needs so much energy from start to finish, it is like running a marathon at a sprinter’s pace!


Those Were the Days was looked at as a new song, although the majority of us had sung it before.


Eamonn O’Dwyer has arranged his own version of this song and from the tenors point of view, they sometimes have the tune and sometimes they don’t. This tends to be a running theme for them! As this can happen within the same line they need to know when to put on their ‘melody hat’ or their ‘harmony hat’.



As the’ La la las’ need to be very muscular for everyone, you can see the benefits of the warm ups we do before we start singing.


Verse three has the first sopranos singing an echoing ‘Ooh’ like a ghostly wind to add atmosphere. We should be able to complete this song next week and sing it from the top.


Mary Hopkin's 1968 debut single of "Those Were the Days", which was produced by Paul McCartney of the Beatles, and arranged by Richard Hewson, became a number one hit on the UK Singles Chart.

The song appears in the 1953 British/French movie Innocents in Paris,


in which it was sung with its original Russian lyrics by the Russian Tzigane chanteuse Ludmila Lopato. Mary Hopkin's 1968 recording of it with Gene Raskin's lyric was a chart-topping hit in much of the Northern Hemisphere. On most recordings of the song, Raskin is credited as the sole writer, even though he wrote only the later English lyrics (which are not an English translation of the Russian lyrics) and not the music.


All our hard work paid off and Eamonn was chuffed to bits with how well we’d done and was really pleased with all the effort we have made. You always know we have produced some good sounds if Eamonn is happy!


We will not be taking a break this Easter as there are enough singers available to come next week to make it worthwhile.


Have a very happy Easter and keep up the good work!


23 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Commenti


bottom of page