18 January 2018

This week song booklets were by the hall door, just to keep everyone on their toes. Or heelys, if you are my daughter. Before warm ups we had a whistle stop tour of the website. Sadly the blog couldn’t be shared because of the very important school firewall that keeps out all potentially naughty blog posts. 

Then everybody but me sang Dum Dum Diddley followed by some sliding nice lovely scales, and some of our more familiar warm ups. I can hum but I felt like my newly screwed down palate might vibrate off. 

Our first song, is only a bit new. We had sung the chorus before as a choir, when Harry used to come in and play ukulele and Ed was singing all the verses. Hallelujah! Ed played around to find the key and we sang our socks off. At the end there’s a big ad lib section and anything goes. Well, so long as it’s in tune! Ot was declared a work in progress. 

And bang up to date, How Far I’ll Go from the film Moana. YouTube gave us a preview and we all listened while a select few Moana fans sang along. For homework listen and learn, and maybe watch the film, it’s better then frozen anyway. This song is new to half of choir, but it does have a sea theme, and that’s good given this years charity of choice. 

And onto Voulez-Vous that we met last week. I think we remembered most of it. To do some harmony work, we sang with the keyboard beat and Ed conducting. Hmmm. The gentlemen were given a world or two about the execution of the ‘Ah-has’... and generally there was another ‘chat’ about timing. Not on the beat! So we stood to perform it, does it even have an intro? 

And to gentle it all down we sang The Rose, and with all the harmonies too. This song needs to build to a meaty middle and then ease down to a soft ending. 

And to get us going again Build Me Up Buttercup which we sang so well over in Normandy in 2013. Evidence is on the blog somewhere if you look. It’s still a rather good concert filler, and won’t take too much work.

And starting with just the men singing from their boots we launched into I Am What I Am! And Ed set listening to Perfect by Ed Sheeran for homework, but also sang some of it for us. I guess I will slap that one on my Spotify and dance with the dog. 

With the clock at 8pm, just for fun, we ‘sang’ Karma Chameleon and I felt very old. Once we got into it, it sounded pretty good! 

Well done DFS, I love you - keep signing! Cat xxx