Practice Makes Perfect
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We started by recapping Have You Ever Seen the Rain which showed we had done our homework and was in a better place than last week.
Ensure you can hear ‘the’ in ‘Have you ever seen the rain’ otherwise it sounds as if you are asking Have you seen Lorraine!
Remember when the song gets quieter it doesn’t mean it gets slower, so keep the tempo going.
Make ‘I know’ loud like a big burst of sunshine
Altos, ‘Yesterday and days before, sun is cold and rain is hard…’ ‘is’, ‘cold’ and ‘and’ is on the same note
In Bar 63, Sops, Altos and Basses sing ‘Oh’ (not ‘Ooh’) which is a much richer sound.
‘It can’t stop I wonder’ – ‘wonder’ is short.
Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat is a song written by Frank Loesser and published in 1950. The song was introduced in the Broadway musical Guys and Dolls. In the context of the show, gambler Nicely-Nicely Johnson recounts a dream about being saved from Hell in order to bring together the members of the prayer meeting.
The timing on this will be guided by Eamonn on his return, so remember to watch his direction.
For now, we will learn the notes and fit in all the words.
It is quite repetitive and needs lots of energy, so pace yourselves so you can still keep it up at the very end of the song.
Don’t be perfect with your ‘t’ and make it a ‘d’ as in ‘Sid down your rocking the boat’
‘I sailed….’ Are two separate notes of even length.
Keep vowels long on ‘resist’, especially if you don’t have the moving notes. We don’t want to hear hissing snakes!
No sliding on ‘…as I sank…’
After the loud, ‘…hollered someone save me!’ it goes very quiet on ’That’s the moment I woke up…’
With all the repeats of ‘sit down, sit down, sit down, sit down you’re rocking the boat’ make it sound like ‘dahn’ and it will be easier to sing.
Monday, Monday is a 1966 song written by John Phillips and recorded by the Mamas & the Papas, with backing music by members of the Wrecking Crew. Phillips said that he wrote the song quickly, in about 20 minutes. However, after he initially presented it to the group during the late 1965 recording sessions for their debut album, he was met with strong resistance from band members Cass Elliot and Michelle Phillips, who hated it and called the song's subject matter 'pretentious'.
Eventually, producer Lou Adler stepped in and took John's side.
In the lyrics, the singer dislikes Mondays because the person he loved left him on that day: "Oh Monday mornin', you gave me no warnin' of what was to be."
Singer Denny Doherty later recalled, "I liked the opening background vocals, the 'bah-da-da-da-da-dum,'...I thought that was cool. But nobody likes Monday, so I thought it was just a song about the working man. Nothing about it stood out to me. It was a dumb song about a day of the week. By the time the rehearsals were over for the vocals, I thought, 'Thank god that’s over!'"
On March 2, 1967, the Mamas & the Papas won a Grammy Award for the song, in the category Best Contemporary (R&R) Group Performance, Vocal or Instrumental.
We discovered that this song is more complex than it first appears. Make sure you can clearly hear the ‘Bs’ and ‘Ds’ on the ‘Ba das’ to give a percussive sound.
Sop 2s keep it bright and you will stay on the note.
Sop 1s keep going to the end of your ‘da’ and don’t let it go down at the end.
Altos sing out so you can heard.
In Bar 32 -35 Sop 2s are on the top line and Altos are on the bottom line.
‘Every other day…’ is cannoned, so make sure the timing is right.
Tenors and Basses with your second ‘other day’, ‘other’ comes on the beat, so emphasise it as in’ Every other day, every other day, every other day of the week…’ and that will help with the timing.
This section should be loud and clearly enunciated.
‘all of the time’ – ‘time’ is short
Next week will sing:
Poor Wayfaring Stranger
Those Were the Days
And revisit:
Lovely Day
Daydream Believer
Scarborough Fair
Plus any others we have covered.
Please listen to the tracks on all the songs. If everyone does their homework and works hard, it will pay off in the long run and we can then move on and learn some new material before Eamonn returns in November.
Josh Slovick, I Am A Poorwayfaring Stranger title track. Sam Mendes’s 1917 follows two young British soldiers, Lance-Corporals Blake and Schofield, on a desperate mission to deliver a message that could save 1,600 men of the Devonshire Regiment from a German trap. For Blake, whose brother is among those at risk, the mission is deeply personal. Their perilous journey takes them through trenches, tunnels, ruined villages and the corpse-strewn horrors of No Man’s Land.
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