31 January 2019

On a very soggy night only the hardiest of DFS arrived to sing songs about snowflakes...

Ed encouraged all to move forward and snuggle up to conserve heat, and anounced the future loss of plastic bottles for sale, and the possibility that Up Where We Belong might not be where we belong at all, in terms of finding a key to fit us. Tonight’s raffle is also cancelled due to weather conditions. 

After a very short warm up, I’ve Been Waiting For you was our first song, and after a song through we looked at some harmonies. Coming along nicely, declared Ed, before peeling some sheet music to our medley. 

We attempted Up anyway. Then we popped it on the back burner, with the gas up quite high. And lit. 

So we settled into our West Side Story Medley some with fresh music, but not before a news update - snow was beginning to stick in Westham and Southill. Ed and Jack almost left in a panic. Ed had an extra part for the men, during I Feel Pretty. It had some nice little echos/overlaps. We worked hard really breaking lots of things down and we also really had a lot of fun with it. 

One last song, How Deep Is Your Love before our treat of Any-oke... a treat we had not tasted for a long. And as it turned out, were not going to nibble at tonight either. As mobiles alerted us to proper snow, we jumped up to look at the white world and hurried off to our cars .... 

Wow what fun we had, sitting in a school hall with snowfall all around. We missed you, the rest of DFS. Hope you are warm and safe, reading this. Cat xxx 

24 January 2019

Ed thanked everyone once again for last weeks birthday party, and hoping for more I am sure, he introduced two new songs, but first we were all in need of a good warm up following recent frosts in our fine town ... 

But it was only a short warm up, because Ed was in the mood for singing. That’s fortunate. We began with the West Side Story because it was bound to be one million times stronger than last week on account of all the homework we had been doing. 

And then an announcement, there are three hampers left over from our Xmas concert so please bring one pound next week to be in it to win one of those fab hampers. And choir are looking into a trip for us this year, and don’t forget we are singing towards a nice chocolaty Easter Concert. 29 June is the date of Preston rectory garden party, in the afternoon, if you can make it. 

Back to some analysis, with the piano on backing track, and Ed conducting from the front. Ignore the bit were the piano ignored the pitch transpose. That just counts as extra warm  up, and after singing it through again we were given some feedback from the end to the beginning. The feel pretty section is optional for men, and the beginning still sounds lazy. It must sound like tonight is kebab night! Feel that excitement dear choir! The Dorset twang popped up again, when we found outselves Aaarf-way there.... 

Back at the piano again, and again without it, we had a run through America! 

All Of Me has some smashing be-bop-doey things and was the first of our new songs tonight. It’s best to tackle it based around the melody and in the manner of Ella Fitzgerald. Someone mumbled that we sounded like chickens ...

And a quick reminder of the harmony part before singing I’ve Been Waiting For You and off we went. I particularly like the spontaneous three part banana harmonies at the end and much better than ... 

And we show How Deep Is Your Love and do Bee Gees impressions, well ok, maybe that was just me? Ed demonstrates the harmony again. 

Singing at DFS I think we are Up Where We Belong. And that being our finale, we stood to air our bottoms and sing .... 

Well done DFS I think you are fab, Love, The Cat xxx

17 January 2019

The one where the blog was 10 years old! 

And a happy new year to all, also a happy birthday song for Ed, sung before we had even warmed up. He opened Fulvia’s goody bag and we all ooohed and aaaahed at the pink wrapped objects therein. 

We had an exciting goody bag ourselves of new songs and a brand new medley to get our teeth into, so into the warm-up we went, and then our West Side Story Medley. Ed gave us an oral run thru, and didn’t make it sound hard at all. The whole thing fits on two sides of A4. We gave it our best, before breaking it down as we always do. 

The start needs some exciting bubbling under the surface, and the perfect sounding of the T’s. The ‘feel pretty’ section splits into men and women’s parts and that section was particularly fun. America really needed some careful explaining too. 

Not many of us really knew the vow section very well, but a few sang it like a sober hymn. 

The finale is a song choir has done before, so we all dived happily in. And we stood to perform! 

Then resting our voices we listening to I’ve Been Waiting For You on you tube, the Mama Mia version. After that we sung it all lovely like we are a real proffessional choir. 

Next How Deep Is Your Love using a karaoke track in the original key, which was challenging, so Ed sat at the piano to drop it down a bit. I thought of my dad, trying to sing it in the olden days. We were not so sure of that key ....

And for our happy ending, Blue Moon, something super fun to help us sing our socks off! And didn’t we do well. Keep singing, I love you xxxx