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You're on the Tune until you're Not!

Trills on a Tuesday


'Tenors then have the tune for a whole two bars until they don’t!'

All I can say is that the Tenors must have a lot of love to give as they are always giving the Tune away (a bit of poetic licence).


Oscar Hammerstein, knowing he was dying, met with some friends a few days before he died. One was Mary Matin (the original Maria and mother to JR Ewing) in the stage version of The Sound of Music. Oscar wrote something down on a piece of sheet music, folded it up and gave it to her but told her not to open it until he had passed away. After he passed away, she opened it, and it said:


A bell is not a bell until you ring it.

A song is not song until you sing it.




He was telling Mary that if it hadn't been for her terrific singing and selling of the Sound of Music, no one would have ever appreciated it. The song wasn't included in the film version of The Sound of Music.






Elliot was back in good voice with acute hearing again!

 

A warm-up with 1, 121, 12321, 1234321, etc, with a missing number.  A good exercise so you learn to sing the missing number in your head is good practice for finding your notes in songs by listening to the other parts and singing it until it is your turn to hit the right note!

 

We now have three songs in Dropbox, a couple of Gospel songs and a Cilla Black number. 

All sounds so simple, but don’t be fooled.  Be warned, they are not simple at all!

 

Generally, all three songs have:

At least five-part harmonies

Difficult, mixed timings and rhythms

Changes of key

Lots of words to fit in

Everyone singing the tune at some point

Repetitive once the first part is learnt

 



A blast from the past. We started with Down by the Riverside at a slower pace than written to enable us to learn these tricky notes.

 

Tenors & Basses starting us off can be a bit raucous (but don’t get carried away!)

Diction can be relaxed without the crisp ‘t’s and d’’s etc

 

Sops & Altos, give your ‘Aahs’ more expression and come in confidently so it is an extension to the tenors & Basses ‘more’ fading out in ‘study war no more’.  Keep the ‘Aah’s bright.

 

When it comes to the chorus, ‘I ain’t gonna study war no more….’ The timing of ‘study is still not quite right.  It is not a clipped even ‘study’. The ‘stu’ part is slightly longer than the ‘dy’ Please practice this as it is sung many times in this song and must be right!

 

Keep up the energy in this song.

 

Peace in the Valley is much slower, even slower than you think, so don’t be tempted to rush. 

Many times in this song you will find one word has more than one note!

 

DO NOT slide on ‘Oh, yes’.  Keep it clean with two definite separate notes.

 

With the ‘Ooh’s, even if they are the same note, give them a little push when sung the second time so it can be heard as if it is a separate note.

 



Enjoy another blast from the past "Anyone who had a Heart" is a song written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, originally recorded by Dionne Warwick in 1963. Her version reached the Top Ten in several countries, including the US, Canada, and Australia, while Cilla Black's rendition became a UK number-one hit for three weeks in early 1964. Cilla Black's version was the fourth best-selling single in the UK that year, with around 950,000 sales. Burt Bacharach presented the song to Warwick in an unfinished state during rehearsals in unfinished form while she, Burt Bacharach and Hal David were rehearsing in Bacharach's Manhattan apartment for an upcoming recording session. He later backed Cilla Black to record it after Warwick's success with the song in America. In 2010, a BBC Radio 2 study recognised Cilla Black's version as the biggest female UK chart hit of the 1960s.


'Too Doo Be Or Not to Doo Be?' that is the question.

Another great challenge Elliot has set us with this song with many different time signatures, not to mention ‘Doo Doo be dos’ which need to have a muscular sound with short vowels (usually we are told to lengthen vowels!), making it like a full stop.

 

There are three ‘Doo, doo, doos and a ‘be doo’, then a count of ‘and a one and’ before a ‘Ba doo be do aah’.

 

Make the ‘Aah’ crescendo before going into two ‘Doo, doos and’ be doo’ followed by ‘Ba doo be do aah’.

 

Tenors then have the tune for a whole two bars until they don’t!

 

Not a bad attempt at all the songs.

 

We must listen and follow our Musical Director, not chatter while he goes through the other parts. It is distracting for everyone else,

You can learn from listening, even though it is not your tune, as it may be later in the song.


If you have a question, wait and ask the person who will know the answer (Elliot at present)

 

Next week, we will work in reverse and start with Anyone who had a Heart, working our way back through all the songs, so check your voice parts in Dropbox and familiarise yourselves with them so we can impress Elliot that we have done our homework




And remember, listen to our musical director, Elliot. How lucky are we!

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Where:

Royal Mid-Surrey Golf Club

Old Deer Park

Twickenham Road.

TW9  2SB

                                        

         When:

         Tuesdays 

         7.30-9.30pm

 

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