McEarworm for 300 please

Hi everyone

Week 2 of ‘Here’s to the Heroes’ is with us already. We were a bit topsy turvy this week with more upstairs than downstairs isn’t that an essential requirement for being a good singer? but the sound we were making had us all buzzing. It’s good to mix things up every now and again, and it certainly keeps us on our toes. Although I hope there isn’t a need for an emergency exit from the building at any time, as I’ll be running around lost and shouting “am I upstairs now or downstairs? Help I can’t remember” or words to that effect possibly a bit shorter.

As we are all a jiggle, I can’t keep track of the whereabouts and names for each part of the choir – e.g. the previous upstairs ladies originally and once again known as the downstairs ladies, the balcony ladies, the men up top, and even the ladies on the floor as it was last night – and have wracked my brains on how to do this. Then it came to me that if I used voice type it might be more logical, sensible and well just bleeding obvious, so I might resort to that naming convention if the mood takes me later 🙂

We did some operatic warm ups for the end of ‘You Raise Me Up’ engaging our diaphragms supposedly and pulling our hands not each others apart a la diva style. Just to reiterate that’s DIVA style and not DEIDRE style.

Deidre style – you could hold party nibbles and canapes in those neck muscles

Diva style – not a peanut or pickled onion in sight

Then came one of Gary’s cruellest tricks of all, a McEarworm in the form of ‘Scotland the Brave’.

This McEarworm will cause me the following problems:

• I’ll be constantly woken to the howling, swaggering, thrum of bagpipes being played in a never ending loop in my overactive imagination
• I feel compelled to make up my own version of the words, which once written down will become the only words I know
• My work colleagues have just recovered from my lovely rendition of ‘Silver Bells’ and now I am starting again with ‘Scotland the Brave’. But even better, for them and me, I have accompanied ‘Scotland the Brave’ with dancing the Highland Fling (which is quite difficult with a cup of coffee in one hand, a work file in the other, and a dodgy back)

Just one quick question the pause at the end (bar 58). Shouldn’t that be a “hold”?

Hold ……… Hold …….Hold ……

I didn’t have time to listen to the CD between rehearsals, so I goldfished my way through a lot of ‘Here’s to the Heroes’ and ‘Dare to Dream’. I’m quite pleased that I was so unprepared as they both took me off guard and gave me a slight lip-wobble moment, imagine if I’d really put in some effort I would have been carried out on a stretcher.

Look for the signs and you’ll know if I’ve been word learning

I really enjoyed this rehearsal, though I think it will be a challenge for me as I don’t know that many of the numbers. I enjoyed Gary’s little snippets of learning, such as the Deidre/Diva diaphragm exercise, but also his explanation of ‘f’ for forte ,’ff’ for fortissimo, and ‘fff’ for fortississimo. So to change the dynamics to get louder add an ‘f’ and a ‘issimo’, or I suppose you could say that’s the same as  saying “have an effing ‘issy fit”.

Well I’m off to learn the words to ‘Scotland the Brave’, my work colleagues are going to love me!

There’s a chantoose loose aboot this hoose

See you all next week x