The aim of these notes is to:

• Enhance your enjoyment and musical experience
• Maximise what we can achieve at each rehearsal

Seating Plan

It would be very useful both for the conductors and other singers for you to assemble in the format below each week.

If you are unsure of which voice you are please feel free to approach either Malcolm or myself and we will help you to decide.

It is important that you stick to singing the same voice. This helps tremendously with the ‘logistics’ of the choir, particularly acoustic balance, concert seating and decisions regarding suitable music.

You may find it helpful to try sitting next to a different person each week. This will let you get to know more people within the choir and is good musical practice. You should use the opportunity to listen to your own voice and those around you. This will help

• your intonation (tuning)
• build confidence in your own singing ability
• you & the choir produce a richer sound.

Weekly Rehearsals

There is a danger that weekly rehearsals become tiresome and monotonous which in essence means unenjoyable.

It is helpful to approach each rehearsal individually. Try to think about weekly personal goals. For example you may wish to focus on warm up exercises one week, breathing another week, intonation and timbre (sound quality) the next week and so on.

Remember that singing is not just about getting the notes right. In fact, as I have often commented, it is better to use the rehearsals to make mistakes, and do so with confidence! (We don’t know if something is going wrong if we can’t hear it). Use rehearsal time to practice your performance and technique.

You may also find it interesting to spend some time during the week in between rehearsals finding out about the music we are singing. You can start with the RFM website (www.rfms.org) which has many useful links to relevant sites.

Other useful resources include the Camden library (which has a comprehensive music section), the British library and the internet – personally, I use the BBC website (www.bbc.co.uk) as a first port of call and then use a search engine such as google (www.google.co.uk).

Rehearsal Schedules

We will endeavour to produce a rehearsal schedule for each concert by the first rehearsal. This will always be subject to change at short notice (mainly determined by the number of singers present at each rehearsal).

To optimise the rehearsal schedule it would be helpful if you could look at the music before the rehearsal. Remember that nearly all of the music we perform is available in practice form on the website. A good habit adopt is to read the words before a rehearsal, even if you only do it once – that way they don’t come as such a surprise and you can concentrate on the notes. It will also give you a feel as to what the piece of music is all about.

If you are unable to attend a rehearsal you know which part of the music you need to work on. This is often highlighted in the summer when we tend to perform a concert of shorter pieces. These are often only rehearsed once before the day of the concert. It is therefore imperative that you look at any music you may not have rehearsed.

Note Learning

The choir prides itself on not auditioning its members. There are advantages and disadvantages to this. The emphasis has always been on making music enjoyable. This applies to all members, regardless of their musical background.

Malcolm and I always try to be inclusive in our rehearsal technique which is not easy given the diversity of musical experience. Where appropriate, music will be broken down into its component parts for the purpose of note learning. This may not always be necessary for the majority of the choir. However, we will always offer the opportunity to cover individual parts in more detail at most rehearsals.

If you would like to go over a specific part in more detail please do not hesitate to contact either Malcolm or myself and we will try to resolve any problems. I strongly encourage members of the choir to go to the website rehearsal pages to hear individual parts in more detail.

And finally…

If you have any comments on rehearsals or the Music Society please do not hesitate to contact Andy Rochford, Malcolm Johnson or Andy Miller.

Download this text as a PDF file (95K)