Congratulations.... Final Post - for now

The Children's Choir of the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, supported by Andre's cantor's group.

Congratulations to all the members of the Children's Choir - you all did an excellent job last Saturday. Apart from Father Henry's very positive comments, and the applause from the congregation, there were many individual people who came up to us to let us know how well you did and how impressed they were at such a special addition to the Church.

My personal thanks also to Andre's group of cantors for helping out in the Mass, including putting aside a practice session for it the Monday before. I hope that there will be future sessions for other masses with this wonderful musicial and spiritual combination. And when that happens, hopefully this blog will become active again to help connect the members online.

All the best!

Welcome Back

Practice, inside the main church building.

So, we're back from the school holidays. Yesterday was our second-last rehearsal, and we used the main building for the first half of the session, to get a feel for things.

Important announcements:

1. Next week's rehearsal (right before Children's Mass) will be 4-5pm in the main church building. Please arrive a few minutes before 4pm.

2. Attire will be anything bright-coloured, with a uniform pattern (eg. without Mickey Mouse logos) - for boys black pants with a brightish shirt would be good. If bright-coloured materials are not available, white will be fine.

Things we worked on this week:

1. We must aim to PROJECT, or push the sound to someone far away, sitting at the back of the church.

2. Remember that singing comes from SPEAKING, but in a way that makes every "t", "s", "d" and all the other last letters as clear as possible.

3. When singing, always remember to look up, especially at the end of a line, so we can all finish the last sound/word together. Glance at the whole line, read ahead, and then sing looking up.

4. Singing in tune - listen to the people around you, and check your pitch (up or down) with them.

5. When there is a verse that is sung by the cantors and not the choir, remember to keep standing straight and pay attention.

6. If you forget a part of a line, don't guess, but sing quietly and look at your booklet.

Next Saturday should be a lot of fun, and we will probably be adding in some microphones for the choir. Remember to study from the HS Hymnals and the printed lyrics, and to bring back the yellow books to return to the church. Have a great week, and see you soon!

School Holidays

The Children's Choir is currently on break for the school holidays, and will resume practices on the 17th of June, 2006.

Important notice to members and parents: we have only two practices left before singing during the Children's Mass on the 24th of June. The venue will likely be moved to the Church (and not the Children's Liturgy/RCIA Room) for these practices, and in such a case a notice will be placed at the original venue.

The proposed dress code for the 24th of June is all white for the girls and white shirt/black pants for the boys.

My apologies for not being able to add on any new mp3s as the cantor's group has been busy lately - myself included. Here's hoping everyone enjoys the holidays, and looking forward to seeing you all again on the 17th!

Fourth Session

This was an important session, because we will be missing many sessions due to the school holidays. We covered some additional choir skills, and quite a number of songs.

In the past two sessions, we worked on approaching the text - specifically:

How to Read and Memorize Lyrics

Reading lyrics in a choir is quite different from the regular reading we do in school and at home every day. This is mainly because we have to keep the position of our head the same so that our singing will go in a steady direction. We also cannot block the singing with the song-book. So, we do the following:

1. When looking at the song-book, move only your eyes, not your head.
2. When reading lyrics, read a whole sentence or phrase in your head, and then sing it from memory.
3. To memorize a short passage, try to remember just the first two words of every line. When we sing it through many times, these two words will help us to sing the rest of each line.

Also important is to use the song-books and not the screens in the Church, so that the choir can watch the directions of the conductor.


Learning to memorize lyrics

Also today, we covered the remaining hymns, though some were done only briefly due to time contraints. The focus was on pronunciation again. The first selection was the chorus from City of God, for which the lyrics and download can be found in the archives of this blog - on the sidebar to the left. The lyrics to the other two are listed below - I hope to have downloads in later weeks.

CHRIST BE OUR LIGHT (Chorus only)

(Strong voice) Christ be our light,
Shine in our hearts, shine through the darkness (get softer at the end of the line)
(Strong voice) Christ be our light
Shine in your Church gathered today. (get softer at the end of the line)

THE CANTICLE OF THE SUN

CHORUS:
The heavens are telling the glory of God,
and all creation is shouting for joy
Come, dance in the forest, come, play in the field,
and sing, sing to the glory of the Lord

1. Praise for the sun, the bringer of day,
He carries the light of the Lord in his rays;
The moon and the stars who light up the way
Unto your throne

2. Praise for the wind that blows through the trees,the sea's mighty storms,
the gentlest breeze;
They blow where they will, they blow where they please
To please the Lord

3. Praise for the rain that waters our fields,
And blesses our crops so all the earth yields;
From death unto life her myst'ry revealed
Springs forth in joy

Enjoy your holidays, and see you when classes resume next month!


Special thanks to the early arrivals who helped by setting up the chairs and the books, on their own intiative!

Sorry, no post this week

There seems to be a problem with the file hosting site that I've been using to upload materials for this blog. I hope there it is just a problem with the site management and not a complication with my accounts as I am managing a separate account on behalf of the Church, but which may be misconstrued as a violation of some part of the user agreement. Anyway, for this reason, this week there will be no posting, and I hope to get back to it come next week with problems resolved.
Post-Script: To avoid confusion, all the materials on this blog have been consolidated into one account, and the other account closed.

Third Session: Posture

In this session, we reviewed some of the basics of singing in a choir, using last week's Here I Am Lord. We also tried out the beginning of "Glory and Praise to Our God", of which lyrics will be printed in a future posting with a download link, when we have studied it in more detail.

SINGING POSTURE

1. When sitting, sit in the front half of your chair so you don't have the tendency to lean back in the chair. (Extra note: you could sit regularly so long one sits upright).

2. So, sitting forward in one's chair helps to ensure that the back is straight.


This picture was taken from this link, which explains the reasons behind good posture, though personally I don't put any stock in the idea of specialized chairs for the purpose.

3. Have the shoulders back as well, and not slumped down or forward.

4. Breathe all the way into the belly, not into the chest.

5. When reading the lyrics, glance down with the eyes only - try not to move the whole head. Also, try to remember a whole phrase or sentence, and not read and sing word-by-word.

6. Remember the letters that end words - like the "d" in "Lord" and the "t" and "Christ".

Second session

The choir in preparation

Overview
Our second session had two focus areas:
1. Basic breathing technique for singers
2. Here I Am, Lord

Breathing Technique
First is how long we can make a breath last - knowing how long a phrase of music is and making sure we don't use up too much breath too early. We can practice this just by reading a long sentence slower and slower but with the same number of times we take a breath.

The second thing is not singing from the throat or from the upper chest area (like Superman!)but all the down in the belly/diaphragm.


Singing from the diaphragm

A website that has been recommended to me is Vocalist, and you can find the specific link HERE.

Here I Am, Lord by Daniel Schutte

This hymn was selected because the acclamation before the gospel for the Children's Mass will be from Samuel, and the lyrics for this hymn seem to match up pretty well. The audio clip for today is a little large at 2.8MB, and as there is a limit to the amount of downloads per day - if you can't download today, please try again tomorrow.

Download here

Lyrics:

I, the Lord of sea and sky, I have heard my people cry.
All who dwell in dark and sin, My hand will save.
I, who made the stars of night, I will make their darkness bright.
Who will bear My light to them?
Who shall I send?

Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord?
I have heard You calling in the night.
I will go, Lord. If You lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart.

I, the Lord of snow and rain, I have borne My people's pain.
I have wept for love of them,
They run away.
I will break their hearts of stone, Give them hearts for love alone.
I will speak My word to them.
Whom shall I send?

Chorus
Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord? I have heard You Calling in the night.
I will go, Lord. If You lead me.
I will hold Your people in my heart.

I, the Lord of wind and flame, I will tend the poor and lame,
I will set a feast for them,
My hand will save.
Finest bread I will provide, 'Till their hearts be satisfied.
I will give My life to them.
Whom shall I send?

Chorus
Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord?
I have heard You calling in the night.
I will go, Lord. If You lead me.
I will hold Your people in my heart.


See you all next week!

Welcome!

Welcome to the blog of the Children's Choir of the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, Penang.

This site is scheduled to be updated weekly, on the days immediately after our regular Saturday rehearsals. It is meant to be a way for parents to keep in the know about how our sessions are going, and the ways the choir members can prepare for the next rehearsal. Photos of the choir will also be posted here on occasion. Thank you for your participation and support.

APRIL 23 FIRST SESSION

We focused mostly on working on simple choir exercises. Only half of the members got the exercise sheets (the others shared) because it was the first day and we didn't know how many people were going to turn up. The response was very encouraging and we will have additional exercise sheets for those who did not get them last week.

Main points:

• Not to shout when trying to sing loudly
• Learning to watch a conductor while also looking at the printed lyrics (not at the LCD)
• Sitting straight, with the shoulders back - the start of good singing posture

We also tried out the chorus of the song "City of God" by Dan Schutte. The following Monday, the cantor group headed by Andre Ong recorded this chorus and it is available for download at the link below:

Download here

Let us build the city of God.
May our tears be turned into dancing.
For the Lord our light and our love
has turned the night into day.

My thanks to Andre and the group, as well as to Geraldine who is helping to coach the choir. See you all next week.

Andrew Filmer