Oh! What A Night
Welcome Back
After the great success of our Summer Gala Concert, we are now getting ready to thrill our audience for our Winter Concert on 26 November!
Elliot has stepped into the breach while our Maestro is busy doing exciting things elsewhere. He has set high standards and he aims to go through the whole repertoire so we will know the notes and Eamonn can then work on the performance side and not have to teach us how to sing the songs.
Be prepared to do your homework!
Lovely Day is a song by American soul and R&B singer Bill Withers. Written by Withers and Skip Scarborough, it was released in 1977 and was used in adverts for Tetley tea, again in 1999 for a Gap commercial and yet again in 2020 in ads for Good Morning Football on NFL Network, an Allstate insurance TV commercial, as well as an ad for Pandora Jewelers.
This song needs lots of energy otherwise it will fall flat. Keep an internal metronome going and it will help you keep a steady tempo with plenty of energy.
The first verse is sung by the Tenors and Basses
The phrases end with short notes as in ‘When I wake up in the morning love’ ‘love’ is short
Don’t forget the longer notes as in ‘.. and the sunlight hurts my eyes’ ‘my’ is long
Altos feel the beat with your ‘lovely day’. Keep ‘day’ short so there are small gaps in between.
Sops, Tenors and Basses take a big breath for your long ‘day’ in ‘Lovely day’. Think of it as a balloon slowly deflating and then filling up with air again for the second time round.
The solo part could be sung by a Bass or Tenor so put your name forward if you are interested.
In Bar 60 to 61 do not take a breath! That will be from the last ‘oohs’ into ‘then I look at you…’
We probably won’t be looking at this song for another 4 weeks, so please look at it at home and listen to the Dropbox Tracks and practise, especially the parts you are unsure of.
Scarborough Fair is a traditional Northern English ballad. The song lists a number of impossible tasks given to a former lover who lives in Scarborough, North Yorkshire
Paul Simon learned the song from Martin Carthy and along with Art Garfunkel recorded it in 1966
This song has long phrases, so make sure you sing them with intensity right to the end and don’t let them fade away.
‘Parsley, sage and thyme’ comes in very quickly, so be prepared. ‘Be’ and ‘me’ are long notes and ‘blossom’ is very long!
Alto don’t have the most exciting notes to sing, but make them enchanting and not boring.
Daydream Believer is a song composed by American songwriter John Stewart shortly before he left the Kingston Trio. It was recorded by the Monkees, with Davy Jones singing the lead. John Stewart recalled: "I remember going to bed thinking, 'What a wasted day – all I've done is daydream.' And from there I wrote the whole song. I never thought it was one of my best songs. Not at all".
This song needs boundless energy, but not like a football chant! Keep it light and exciting at the beginning with no sliding on ‘alarm’ in ‘…the six o’clock alarm would never ring…’
Make sure you sing the vowel sound with the long notes as ‘The shaving razors cold and it stiiiiiiings’
All one breath in the section ‘oh what can it mean to a’ then you can breathe before singing ‘daydream believer and a homecoming queen’
Sop1s with your Doo section over everyone else, make it two ‘Doos’ two notes on the first ‘Doo’ and two notes on the second ‘Doo’. Make sure you keep these notes on track and don’t let them drift and go off pitch!
It may seem like a whirlwind to some, but we have hit the ground running and work really hard in this short term to be concert ready. Do your homework and prepare. You can do it!
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