Mostly musical weekend
Jun. 29th, 2008 11:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lyornThis weekend was mostly taken up by (much needed) choir practise. We'll be doing two concerts in July, with mostly new songs, and have been feeling comfortable with less than a handful of them before.
I opted out of one song, which is not something I normally do. But it's a very complicated, fast thing with a lot of major seventh and worse things in the harmonies. Plus, the middle voices are expected to switch every two lines from singing with the outer ones to singing on their own. Which would be bad enough, but both weekends where we practised this before, the first soprano was very weak, and I got assigned there to help out. For the concert I'd have to sing second, though. I cannot do it with the sheet music right in front of me, and being able to learn to do it from memory within two weeks -- I do not see this happen. So I guess I'll have to admit defeat.
I came up with a bunch of moves and the intro lines for another song, but as my speaking voice is unable to command attention and my gesture is worse, someone else will have to do them -- if they haven't forgotten about it by now.
We had a choreographer who came up with some completely insane moves, like standing with your back to the audience (the acoustics in the place where the concert will be allow for that, but, eh, silly?), and sing while looking over one shoulder. I have no idea how the others, most of whom are older than I am, manage -- I can barely breathe when having my chin in line with my right shoulder, singing even in a very weak voice is hard enough to make me dizzy, and how I am supposed to be moving with the rhythm when I need every muscle in my body to keep a posture is a mystery to me. The bigger mystery is why everyone else seems to be able to do it, but as this happens to me all the time, it's just another reminder that my coordination and gross motor control are off the low end of the scale for a non-disabled human.
The singing part itself was fine, though. We made a lot of progress, none of the songs is actually hard on the voice, so I still had a lot of energy and control even after eight hours of practise, and I can do most of the songs for the concert from memory now.
I opted out of one song, which is not something I normally do. But it's a very complicated, fast thing with a lot of major seventh and worse things in the harmonies. Plus, the middle voices are expected to switch every two lines from singing with the outer ones to singing on their own. Which would be bad enough, but both weekends where we practised this before, the first soprano was very weak, and I got assigned there to help out. For the concert I'd have to sing second, though. I cannot do it with the sheet music right in front of me, and being able to learn to do it from memory within two weeks -- I do not see this happen. So I guess I'll have to admit defeat.
I came up with a bunch of moves and the intro lines for another song, but as my speaking voice is unable to command attention and my gesture is worse, someone else will have to do them -- if they haven't forgotten about it by now.
We had a choreographer who came up with some completely insane moves, like standing with your back to the audience (the acoustics in the place where the concert will be allow for that, but, eh, silly?), and sing while looking over one shoulder. I have no idea how the others, most of whom are older than I am, manage -- I can barely breathe when having my chin in line with my right shoulder, singing even in a very weak voice is hard enough to make me dizzy, and how I am supposed to be moving with the rhythm when I need every muscle in my body to keep a posture is a mystery to me. The bigger mystery is why everyone else seems to be able to do it, but as this happens to me all the time, it's just another reminder that my coordination and gross motor control are off the low end of the scale for a non-disabled human.
The singing part itself was fine, though. We made a lot of progress, none of the songs is actually hard on the voice, so I still had a lot of energy and control even after eight hours of practise, and I can do most of the songs for the concert from memory now.
