Second Soprano Rehearsal Notes

Good evening,

Well, I think we learned it is going to be cold in the church from now on. Brrr.

We started with soprano sectional, with warmups designed to find the headspace for the difficult C to F natural range. Here is what I wrote while Jane was talking:

Too much weight and we overblow, and are sharp. Not enough support and we're flat.

F sharp and above is easier as it's easier to find that high space.

Warmups for it = humming, whiney, air in the face exercises, all of which are nasal, to show you how the air can be placed.

Whine, with no pressure and your tongue lying low and staying loose.

Start on a high note and slide down. This will pass you through the difficult space with no pressure. This keeps you from having pressure on the chords; helps you through your break points. You can hear the break points as skips in the sound, it's when you run out of air.

Try a whiney “Guh” to have an easy attack (if you are tight on the attack).

“z” and “v” are semi occlusives. They require a lot of air and propel the breath into the vowel. Explosives, “p” and “t” do not. Try sirening up and down on “zee zee zee”… or even “zz zzz zzz”…

Make sure to put the “x” at the end of each “lux”; with Jane.

m. 15  Jane will conduct in 6, but Forrest wants us to feel it in 2, in groups of 3.

m. 24 etc. More in the body, more space (in your head I think she meant).

m. 25  Keep it very high

m. 27  Crescendo on the rising notes, phrase these 3 measures.

m. 30  Less weight

m. 33  Crescendo the rising notes

m. 34-35  Less vibrato

m. 38  A quicker 2

m. 63  Light, crescendo starting on the D

m. 80  In 4

m. 81-82  Keep the G up

m. 86  Watch for the cutoff (she doesn't trust us to do it 🙂

m. 87  Only 2 short beats til we come in – on the lower staff

m. 88 Be strong.  ** When we sing on the lower staff sing out more **

m. 104  Watch!  In 2.  “Looox”

m. 106 “x”

m. 110  In 4

m. 111-112  Learn the Gs, they are not quite on point

m. 128 – 129  The transition is from G minor to G flat. To find our E flat we just have to use repetition to learn it.

m. 137  A teeny bit faster

m. 142  Strong

This section is all 2s against 3s. The 3s are in the piano, don't follow him, but sing the duple.

m. 144  Cut off on the tie to get a big breath. Turn early or mark your next note as we are not coming in correctly in m. 145

Also “eh ahm” no diphthong

m. 155  Light

m. 161  In 2.  Short words.

m. 168-169  This is only a half step (key change). It's also forte.

m. 186  Watch. A good “x” cutoff with Jane. This is also the last measure (we are not going directly through to the next movement).

We sang through this.

m. 81  Sing strong.

m. 90  Mark the G on “cel”. (I'm pretty sure I heard a B there)

Keep up the breath support, it will be less tiring.

m. 21  Mark it so you remember it's Latin

m. 22  In 3.  (I subdivide my count for the dotted quarters to cut off correctly).

m. 35-36  Light on “when”, the pickup, lean on “the”

Less vibrato here.

Remember, arrive (quietly) at 10:15 next week as the altos get their sectional.

See you then, 
Linde