Vision in Voice, 22nd October 2009

Hi Again.

This is the first post of goings on at Vision In Voice.

We had a total of 12 singers today. We had one newcommer and 2 singers from Morningsong who joined in with us.

Today we learned a few new songs and sang some old favourites, (popular songs from previus Vision in Voice sessions. One of the new songs we learned was called "A Million Nightingales". Once we learn the song and its rythems, it will be sung as a 4 part round. Wow! That will sound unreal! It already sounded great today and it was our first run through.

We also learned a Jamaican song "Water Come a me eye", which we sing at Morningsong also. We sang it in a two-part harmony, where one group sang the words and the other group sang a melody at the same time. It was quite fun and we were amazed how good it sounded once we did it a few times.

Now we have 3 voice parts in our Choir. We've got quite a few Sopranoes, a couple of Tennors/Altoes and three or four Base/Baratone singers. Lots of the work we did today was learning the various harmony part for songs we already know.

As Christmas is approaching, we are starting to learn some Christmas carrols. One of these is "Angels we have heard on High". Today we mainly concentrated on the split harmony chorus section. We then practiced the second verse once through and will continue it next week.

My favourite part of todays session was "Improvisation". Jane gave us a short melody and we then repeated it. Then jane said we could fill in the gaps and sing whatever we thought would fit in and harmonise with the tune. Everyone could sing whatever they want and no one had to warry how it sounded or what was right or wrong. The longer we went, the more we got into the swing of it and went for it. Towards the end of the song, jane would give us the beat and gradually slow it down, signaling that the song was finishing. We then held our note for a few seconds to finish. WOW!! What a great, fun and free way to express ourselves! For a couple of minutes afterwards, we were all on a high and excited at how good it sounded.

We ended the session with one of the "old favourites". "Buneua", which is an african song, sang in the round. It was very energetic and everyone joind in in full voice. It was a fitting way to end a great time.

At 11:15 am the Vision In Voiced session for Thursday, 22nd October was ended and all the singers left the hall in a great mood. Several of us were humming or singing our favourite songs of the day. I was alternating between "A million Nightingales" and "Angels we have heard on high".

The rest of the day I had all the songs going around in my head. Whenevery anyone asked how my day went, I gave them a quick sing of some of our songs. I hope that everyone else enjoyed themselves as much as I did.

I hope that you enjoyed the first rundown of a Vision in Voice session, and that this inspires some of you to attend future Vision In Voice sessions and experience it for yourself.

Please email me with your feedback or post a comment.

josh
josh@visioninvoice.com