So here's what went down on our Valentines' Day practice!
Mr Tay taught us a simple warm-up piece that he composed that very morning, sung to the lyrics "Won't you be my Valentine" throughout.
DDR MF MR MF MR MF MR D
ti-te-te ti-ti ti-ti ti-ti ti-ti ti-ti ti-ti ta
MMF SL SF S L SF SL SF M
ti-te-te ti-ti ti-ti ti-ti ti-ti ti-ti ti-ti ta
S S S SS SD DD S
ta ta ta-ah ti-ti ti-ti ti-ti ta
D D D SS SLT DD D
ta ta ta-ah ti-ti ti-te-te ti-ti ta
Nope, the ti's and te's and ta's aren't some aboriginal language, they represent rhythms. Look it up under the rhythm section of your choir booklets :)
So first we started off reciting the rhythm alone using the metronome. This is called metronome practice (wow who would've guessed it) and fosters a common sense of pulse. Then we added in the solfege, lyrics and finally sung the song in canon. The whole point of this exercise was to sharpen our rote learning (learning by ear and repetition), internalisation and dictation (translation of what one hears into notation) skills.
Next, we (tried to) put these improved musicianship skills into practice as we worked on improving our ensemble in the SYF set piece. The main problem was that we didn't keep internal subdivisions resulting in inaccurate offbeat rhythms. Remember that the vowel of a word always comes before the main beat (e.g. 'moon' at bar 31), and at the bars where we sing in unison our hearts must beat as one, to quote Mr Tay. We also worked on the last two bars, as we tended to break in between 'our home', did not bring out the cobra strike enough and were inaccurate in our tuning. We also need to be more conscious of phrasing, especially at bars 18-19 where the expression marking is 'legato, very intense'. This piece, along with Ave Maria, is to be memorised by 14th March.
For Ecce Crucem Domini, we managed to cover the entire piece with the soloists! The A section is especially difficult (namely for sop 1s who have to belt out high Gs) as our ensemble has to be perfect, with clean and precise entries and cut-offs, whilst maintaining a 'sempre f' dynamic and bringing out the tension. We worked quite a bit on section H, polishing up on the tuning of the two chords. This section should evoke an other-worldly atmosphere, and the soloists represent angels in heaven while the chorus represents the men on earth. The final chord of the piece also required some fine-tuning (pun intended). Sop 1.2s, be bold and don't be afraid to clash. On the whole, we have yet to bring out a lot of the dynamics and expression that is required of this piece, but now that we have the notes and tuning sorted out we are well on our way! This piece is to be memorised by the start of choir camp. :D
-Quianna
