Second Soprano Rehearsal Notes

Many of you noticed that I was not singing today, so I got to listen. It was interesting.

If you are old enough and local, you will have heard Liz Anker sing – fabulous alto!

She would always say, sing out, that way you can find your mistakes and fix them.

Even when we are learning, we need to sing with confidence.. Wimpy singing affects pitch too because it lacks breath support.

When we were rehearsing Alder with Jane, she extolled us to “be fiercer”. To sing with energy – scared singing does nothing for you.

When humming octaves Jane has us sing forward in the face. When we get higher, she said the placement changes. You can sing slightly back (more toward the top of the head).

We started in sectionals with Simon. First he had us sing in seconds with the first sopranos, swapping back and forth. He pointed out how the bottom note was getting flatter as we tried to get to a more comfortable interval. Simon said to embrace the dissonance, that it's a beautiful sound. Beth Denisch uses dissonance a lot. “Learn to really enjoy the second”. But, remember, no vibrato as the variation in tone that makes messes up the dissonance.

m. 5-7  Repeated notes tend to flat as the note is repeated, so it needs to be lifted.

m. 8 & m. 10 etc. Exact cutoffs.  The silences are just as important as the notes.

m. 14  “ts” on beat 3

m. 17  Good “K”

m. 20  “z” on beat 1

m. 27  Get off the “squ” quickly and get to the vowel

m. 28-29  Match the B flat and A of the first sopranos. Also match the “ih” vowel.

m. 33  Exact cutoff on the last 8th of the bar. Be aggressive with this rhythm. Don't work too hard to get the “sts” correct – make it quick.

m. 44  Make “mists” an eighth note followed by an eighth rest. 

m. 64  Change to a half note, quarter rest.

m. 74 etc.  This section is hard – there is lots of data like, the cutoffs need to be exact, all Fs need to be higher, get over the “w” of “one” to the vowel. The entrance is scary as it is exposed – on the recording the entrance had bobbles. Jane wants to get us past that.

m. 74  No “R”

m. 75  Shadow vowel on the “N” “wonɘ”.

m. 81  Match the G of the first sopranos.

m. 82  The rest is just 2 beats

m. 90-91  Very legato, connected. The “s” of “ambiguous” gets attached to “earth”.

Linde comment: The words are very fast. If you form the words with just your lips at the front of your mouth, so you use fewer muscles, it is easier to sing quickly.

m. 92  Note change.

m. 93  Higher C

m. 96  Ritard, watch.

Jane comment: What's critical is how independent you have to be.

Suggestion:  So, Susan LaBarr has set the text so it is very speech-like. Try reading the text like a poem, getting the cadence of it. Then look at how she has set the notes with that in mind. 

m. 26  Mezzo forte – go big.

m. 34  The sixteenth rest is just a lift for emphasis. You don't really have time to breathe.

m. 35  “aw”

m. 45  This is mezzo forte – strong, not soft and tender.

m. 49  Watch – we need to move with Jane.