Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Class Discussions and The Great Making of Music

Choir,

Great discussion today during class and a fine rehearsal also.

A few reflections:

1. Learning what we've already learned. Don't be discouraged at having to relearn things that we learned the last time. It happens with every piece that we work on. It will help if you NOTATE the changes that we make in the music and STUDY outside of class, of course. However, it happens with every piece of music in every choir, and we get better every time. Overall, I'm very pleased with our progress.

2. We made excellent music on ITYJ today. The things we put back in place: singing softer, exploiting rhythmic differences in Alto, Tenor, Bass.

3. Mate Saule: finding our loud voices for the ending was spectacular.

4. Daring to be the best. To win you must risk. To risk you must have confidence. Confidence comes from "flipping a switch inside" and preparing ahead of time. Get your head on right, everyone: I want to win.

There is an aggressiveness that we need to find in the next couple of rehearsals--a commitment to passion and "putting it out there". Let's find it tomorrow.

5 comments:

Mr. Henry said...

And remember guys...make it "pop!" YEAH...hahaha

Katie Mo said...

yo.
We tried to translate Der Tanz, and it definitely didn't work. Looks like you're gonna have to go digging to find that, Dr C, because it's definitely not on the internet. And please don't say I wasted two hours of my life and Rob's trying to find that dang poem.

oh well.
See ya tomorrow.
I felt awake today for the first time in months! it was incredible.
"I feel like my old bony self again, and I, JACK, THE PUMPKIN KING..."
righto, so bed time.

Unknown said...

Note to Carlee: we aren't even close to arrogance. Overbearing pride? If we get anywhere close to overconfident and overbearing I promise I will reign us back in!

Jessie said...

Speaking of all this pre competition confidence and what not, I think it wouldn't be a bad idea if we all started taking our Flinstones. I mean, I know some of you already take multi-vitamins (Patrick) but we need to be getting healthy! I don't want anyone to be getting sick when we're trying to kick other people's, well you know. So head out to Wal-Mart or your nearest drug store and pick up some bacteria fighting supplements!

Ryan Kelly said...

Phil,

Thanks for posting your regular blog comments. I was reading through them this weekend, and gleaned some vocabularly from you that I decided to use with my Chorale this morning.

You wrote, "There is an aggressiveness that we need to find in the next couple of rehearsals--a commitment to passion and 'putting it out there'. Let's find it tomorrow."

Every conductor has their own buzz words...one of mine is "energized singing"...yet, if we don't adjust our vocabularly sometimes our students "tune out" these phrases. I thought your concept of "agressive singing" was excellent and something I wanted to try with my Chorale.

This morning (giving you the credit, of course!), I told my choir to sing agressively - to breath agressively, to articulate agressively, to phrase agressively, and to make music agressively.

I can't TELL you how much of a world of difference these instructions made on their singing. And they recognized the difference, which is the added bonus. Hooray!

Our final concert/tour is coming up next week....Tuesday-Sunday.