We are expecting a sell out concert again, so get your money and orders in early. Send the money to Jan with your guests’ names and they will be marked off the list on the night. There are no physical tickets!
Merry Christmas Everyone is a festive song recorded by Welsh singer-songwriter Shakin' Stevens. Written by Bob Heatlie and produced by Dave Edmunds. It was released on 25 November 1985 and was the Christmas number one for that year. Ever since it has been included on many top-selling Christmas collections and received frequent airplay every Christmas.
It was originally supposed to be released for Christmas 1984, but when Shakin' Stevens heard about Band Aid and Wham!'s big Christmas songs, he decided to wait a year.
Our version will be an encore and we will invite the audience to join in. However, there are a few tricky little harmonies that been sneaked in, especially for the Sops who are not used to this!
Keep the starting Ooohs bright with Basses keeping to their middle range rather than too low!
It is a pop song and should be short, bouncy and colloquial mainly, but when singing ‘songs’ and ‘year’ just before the bridge, make it swell and get bigger.
Generally, it should sound like we are having a party
Note the key change and we will lead the audience into this seamlessly.
Keep the same speed at the end. Do not slow down.
Carol of the Bells – on page 2 at bar 29 is where we start to end the second time around. As Sops sing ‘their joyful tone to ev’ry home’ you will hear a short chord played before ending with the Ding, dong, ding dongs.’ Emphasise the ‘ng’ of dong as you hold the long last note.
You’re a Mean One Mr Grinch was sung at a slightly slower pace. This gives more time to annunciate the deliciously disgusting words. On the second time of singing Do be do wah; keep the ‘Wah’ very short.
However, Sops hold on to ‘peel’ but only for six counts and stop before the Altos and Tenors sing their ‘wah’
The Bahs need a little work! Homework!
The Parting Glass – this week we concentrated on the second verse. The notes are the same as the first verse, but the dynamics are different.
This verse starts loud and fermatas are not going to be followed, so we just sing through ‘…. all the comrades that e’er I had are sorry for my going away…..’ and ‘…all the sweethearts that e’er I’ve loved would wish me on more day to stay…’ as if they were one long sentence.
Do not be tempted to slide your notes; keep it clean!
Start to decrescendo on ‘That I should rise and you should not…..’ so it slowly gets very quiet.
When you reach the repeat line ‘Goodnight and joy be with you all’ it should be very, very quiet, so it can only just about be heard.
Next week Act One
We will have had the running order sent, so please put your music in the correct order.
We will run through all of Act One before the break and then go through the songs that need most work.
At this stage we should all know the notes in the right order and we will now start to work on the performance of the songs. Bring a pencil to mark your score accordingly. These nuances cannot be learned from Dropbox.
A Big Thanks
Sarah (Soprano) would like to thank us all for these beautiful flowers
And remember DON'T SLIDE !
