Sunday, 16th May - continued

Now, where was I?

BLACKJAQ singing Sweet Adeline
KH: Great leads have to open their voices enough to let other voices in - takes more air
LS: [the lead starts this song solo , and after a few bars the tenor joins her] lead should acknowledge the tenor when she joins in
KH: on 'picture' you have to include each other in your sound
KH: typically of basses when you have to come in on a low note you tend to bear down on it
KH: instead of just working on our own stuff vocally, we need to include each other
LS: to move to the next level, you need to know about each others parts so you can help them
KH: this quartet is in synch about 50-60% of the time - the solution is for everyone to sing the lead line in unison. The lead decides how she wants it. Once you're in synch, then you can sing your own part
LS: Use your body
KH: When you sing a harmony part you don't know what the lead is doing so you have to sing their part to understand
[Quartet member : is this better? Kym: It's not just better, it's right]
KH: A good lead doesn't exactly know what she's doing, but the other parts have to do what she does. Talking about it analytically will make her stop, which is not good,, so singing the lead part together is good. Synch errors can be fixed by repetition in unison.
KH: Unison is the best self teaching tool I have ever used - it's tedious but well worth the effort. As well as fixing synch you also take some of the lead's quality to your part so the blend is better, and also the vowels are better matched, and your movements are more in synch. Do a bit of the song at a time, record it and listen to it individually and mark the areas where synch is a problem and work on them. Do it with your music in hand so you don't get lost.
KH: Synch is judged in all four categories (and so are energy, vocal skills, words and notes)
Question: how does this apply to choruses?
KH: In choruses it's the Director who's in charge, not the Lead

BlackJaQ sing "Like a Song"
KH: keep your eyes open - if you close your eyes for too long you exclude the audience from your emotion
KH: we tend to sing songs the way they're written on the page or the way we've heard other people do them, but think about the message of each phrase before you sing it.

After the Master Class on Sunday morning we all went separate ways. I went to the Finance Coordinators lunch in the Senior Citizens Centre and had interesting discussions about abstruse topics such as Escrow, paying international dues, credit cards, high interest bearing bank accounts, and cash vs accrual accounting. I won't test your patience by reporting the detail!

There were supposed to be markets on the foreshore, and a music festival with performances by some of the choruses and quartets, but there didn't seem to be much going on so I went back to our room to catch up on the blog.

Later Pippa came by and invited us to her and Steph's room for drinks. Vicki came too and read us the judge's comments on our video evaluation. I'm going to let her tell you about it when she gets back, but I can tell you that the judges liked our new ballad and the comments were positive and encouraging.

We had so much fun we decided to skip dinner and keep partying until it was time for the evening class with Lynne Smith and Kim Hulbert.

More about that next time - now we're off to our 9 am class - Vicki is leading Music in the Morning so we can't be late!


KH: The lead cannot be out of synch - but she can be inconsistent