Thank you to everyone who came and sang last night! A lovely feeling of a new term, some great energy and high quality voices. Here’s what we got up to:

We had a long introduction for our 25 new people about fire exits, choir etiquette and how we do things etc. 

Just to reiterate – mobile phones need to be either off or on silent. If you need to use your phone or even look at it during rehearsal, please be courteous to other members by taking your phone either outside in the hallway or by the tea area. It keeps disruption to a minimum and enjoyment to a maximum. We also brought up the ‘talking between songs’ issue which comes and goes. I’ll give you a lovely long tea break to chat to your friends if you could please keep the chatting between songs to a minimum. I hope everyone agrees this is a good way for us to operate. Thank you.

Warm up – Push Up! by the Freestylers. We really thought about the pulse of the music and where the beats in the bar landed. Essential for good musical understanding. We then did our vocal warm up 1, 121, 12321, etc ascending and descending. It sounded really nice! Well done!

Viva La Vida – we sang it beautifully. I will go through the parts in more detail with newer members over the coming weeks. It’s always a song full of energy and wonder for us and I still enjoy hearing you sing it.

Chasing Cars – so beautiful. We sing this in 4 parts and again, I will go through these in rehearsal and as live tutorials in time.

September – our new song this term! It’s quite diverse in its range so the guys/blues are able to drop the octave especially on the chorus. We worked on a few parts for this including a harmonised ba do do ba do do section which I’ll run through again next time.

Can’t stop now – Remember to keep this choppy. It sounded really slow tonight – so I think I’ll speed it up a little bit especially for the Marathon gig where I think it’ll be appropriate. We did well to keep in time for it – so well done for that.

The Fear – we did loose timing in this at points but WE GOT IT BACK! and that is a sign that we have really developed and grown as a choir. We know what we are doing – well done. Love this song!

Thorn in my side – we simply must be crosser about this song. It’ not about someone who slightly narked you, it’s about someone who has ruined your life! Find that inner emotion and let it out in the words. The difference when we tried this was really clear.

Just like Heaven – we did really well on this apart from the line we always struggle on -but we went back over it and it was good. New people, there are live videos on the parts for this song and recordings of each part. We also looked at the ending – REDS I need to go over this with you again.

Creep – possibly the best we’ve sang this. Beautiful. Thank you to the 2 pink ladies on this one.

Sweet Disposition – a really cracking go at this one! Again, there are all of the parts for this knocking around in this group and they will be on the website too. If you’re unsure of your colour on this one, I’ll go through it again soon.

Thanks as ever to the dream team Nicola Norman Tore Norman Lucie Gregory Janet Merryweather Rebecca Finch Rachel Cox and to you all for coming!