Monday - Harmony College - The Challenge of the Whiny Ballad

Jane says Sweet Adelines ballads are often sad songs about lost love. It's a trap to treat the story as a single event, and instead we should explore the many varied responses we have in real life (eg sad, angry, relieved, vengeful, nostalgic)

On stage the audience wants to see conflict, angst, and the evolution of the story and the characters.

Northern Beaches Chorus sings I Never Meant to Fall In Love. Jane asks them to imagine the character of Rose, in Titanic. It's a juicy movie to work with because it's social commentary as well as a love story. Rose says that Jack saves her in every possible way.

The scene in the car with Jack (steaming up the windows). A lot of emotion - differentiate 'hope' from 'despair' - 'rapture' is a sexy word - 'turn my world around' is almost teasing - 'shattered' is another strong word - 'to lose the fight and toss the glove could be all wrong' is an important realisation

Karen says that we need to pay attention to the introduction of a ballad. It is an expository preface to the underlying emotions - start the story at the first note and don't stop until the last note.

Make the ballad a dialogue - Rose is singing this to Jack.

Jane gets the chorus to sit on the risers and she sits on the floor with them. The chorus sings the song very softly and she takes the role of Jack, responding as if Rose was talking to him. We watch the expressions on their faces and hear the different inflections on the words.

Jane says doing it this way, quietly on the floor, gets them out of 'performance mode'. This is a useful rehearsal technique when developing the song.

The song has lots of feelings - affection, surprise, wonder, heartbreak, conflict, anger, defiance, irony, teasing, regret, making a decision.

What's underneath the words is what pushes the song along. This exercise will also unify physical expression. Having a story with a beginning, middle and end helps forward motion. The chorus loves getting emotional unity. Karen says 'we joined because we love to feel the music in what the words say@.

Someone asks about choreo moves. Gina says the test is 'would you do that if you were talking to me?'

Jane shows us a video that she's compiled which has scenes from Jerry JMaguire and Something's Got to Give and 'If I Give My Heart to You'

All this stuff that goes on is more interesting when it's complicated. A key phrase in If I Give My Heart to You is 'think it over and be sure'.

You can replay scenes or lines or make up your own dialogue for the movie, to feed visualisation and emotional content.

People have different level so ability but you never stop working on it, whatever level you're at.