The Order of Songs For Our Condert

1. Come Join the Holiday Season
2. O Night Divine
3. One Small Child
4. And the Angels Sang
5. Hymn of Angels
6. Roundelay Noel
7. Cartoon Christmas
8. Sending You a Little Christmas
9. What is This Brightness Shining?
10. What Child is This?
11. Mary's Lament
12. Dance With Me, Santa
13. I Want a Hippopotamus For Christmas
14. Holiday Craziness
15. Bell Carol
16. Listen to the Silence of Night
17. Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

Singing With Expression and Emotion

Hello Singers,

Paul and I had a discussion after rehearsal on Thursday which began with Paul saying, "I need to figure out how to emote more when I sing." I gave him some ideas about what helps me, and then I reasoned that others in the choir may have the same need. So, I asked a few choir members and did a little internet research about singing with expression and came up with the following list of 10 things that will hopefully help you:

1. Learn your music, both the notes and the words. This has to be number one because, unless you know your music, you'll be so busy focusing on trying to get that right that you'll look like you're studying for an exam...which may be a big part of the problem we're seeing in our choir.
2. Connect with the message of the song you are singing. Think about what you're singing. Are you singing about something sad, or something joyful? Are you singing about something soothing, or something exciting? Many of the songs we sing are about the Savior. Be mindful of the fact that you are literally bearing your testimony through the things you are singing.
3. Imagine yourself being in the scene of the music. For example, when singing "Hymn of Angels," imagine yourself singing with the choir of angels at Christ's birth. There's a good possibility that you were actually there. When singing "Holiday Craziness," imagine yourself in the wonderful craziness of the Christmas season, and think of how, in spite of mishaps, it's still a joyful time with family and friends. Have fun with it! When singing "Come, Join the Holiday Season," I imagine I'm in the Lawrence Welk choir singing at the mall and I want everyone to stop and listen to us. I'm not sure why that works for me, but it does.
4. Sing to the 3-year-old in the audience, and tell them the story of the song with your face. You're right, there isn't one there right now, but imagine there is. Young children have very short attention spans, so you have to make your face and body interesting while you're telling them anything. Remember what it was like when you read to your little children and incorporate the same skills of making your voice interesting into your singing. If you don't know how to do this, ask your bishop if you can be the Primary chorister for a couple of weeks!
5. Pick an audience member during a performance and sing to them. I do this, and it really does help. During rehearsals, when there's nobody in the audience, I imagine someone there. Maybe it's your mother or your child. It changes your singing from being an impersonal experience to a one-on-one exchange, where you're trying to tell just that one person the things you're singing.
6. Practice looking in the mirror while you sing. At first this will seem awkward and embarrassing, but do it anyway. It will become easier and you'll learn a lot about how you look while singing.
7. Try speaking the lyrics with expression. What are you actually trying to say? The lyrics are not just a bunch of pretty words strung together. They're a sermon; a poetic expression of an idea. Practice saying the words in a way that they make sense to someone who's never heard them before.
8. Sing in the shower. You're undisturbed in there and you can just let yourself go. Try different things to see what sounds more emotive while you sing.
9. Practice emotions. Write down different emotions on cards and pull them out randomly. Look in the mirror and show that emotion with your face. Limber up your face first by trying to make it tall or wide, flat or long. Get your face used to moving.
10. Above all, don't fake it. I know that sounds kind of contradictory, but it looks really bad when someone tries to fake an emotion they're not really feeling...which is why #2 is so important. So, the idea is to learn to express through your face and body the emotions you are feeling, not to force feelings that really aren't there.

Reminders From Thursday

Just a reminder that Cory promised that if we have worked hard and gotten our pieces where they should be by Sunday, the 23rd, he won't make us rehearse on Wednesday, the 26th--the day before Thanksgiving. So, work hard on your pieces. I'm trying to get the most recent files up on the blog for you to practice with.

Also, particularly practice "Roundelay Noel," as it was not worthy of even finishing on Thursday, and it's not going to be dropped, and "Cartoon Christmas," which is on the chopping block and will be dropped if we don't sing it better on Sunday.

See you Sunday!
Karen

Crunch Time

Hi Singers,

It's November! Our concert will soon be upon us! Cory has urged us in very direct language to buckle down and work hard, practicing our music so that our concert will be one we can be proud of.

Last Thursday we removed two more songs from our folders. If you haven't done so yet, please remove "Never a Brighter Star," and "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks."

This Thursday, November 6, is the absolute deadline for knowing your parts on every song. If you do not know your part, Cory will be randomly bringing up 4 people to sing their part as a quartet. There's no hiding behind anyone else in your section when that happens! Additionally, he will be mixing us up, so that we won't be near anyone who sings our part. so learn your music now!

Be prepared to calender in additional rehearsals on Saturdays or Sundays between now and December 6.

Be sure to talk to people and invite them to our performance!

Okay, here's something kind of cool. This is the audio file for "Hymn of Angels," loaded into my editing program. This is what it looks like after I've edited it and neatly, cleanly spliced all the stops and starts together to form one continuous song. What I want you to notice is the dynamics. The taller the spikes, the louder we're singing. Look at the difference between the beginning and the end, when it's soft, and the middle, where it is loud. Even at the very end, where the line is almost flat, we're still singing. This song has some of the most noticeable dynamics of all the songs we're singing. I just thought you'd enjoy seeing it. I'm a very visual person, so I think it's pretty cool to see it like this.

See ya soon,
Karen

Halloween Party Pictures

Alice and the White Rabbit

Gangsta

Dead Greaser

Clark Kent and Lois Layne

Hippies

Dorothy

Hippy

Vampiress

Scarecrow and Ref

Penguin

White Rabbit has a tail

Polygamists

Professor

Table

Clyde and Bonnie

Queen of Hearts

Mario

Wonderland Cohorts

Updated Alphabetical List of (30) Songs

•  A Christmas Blessing
• And the Angels Sang
• Bell Carol
• Carol of the Snow
• Cartoon Christmas
• Come Join the Holiday Season
• Cradle Carols
• Christmas Eve Carol
• Christmas in a Minute
• Dance With Me, Santa
• Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
• Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
• Holiday Craziness
• Home for the Holidays
• Hymn of Angels
• I Want a Hippopotamus For Christmas
• Is There Room in Your Heart for a King?
• Listen to the Silence of Night
• Mary's Lament
• Never a Brighter Star
• O Night Divine
• One Small Child
• Roundelay Noel
• Sending You a Little Christmas
• The Family at Christmas
• The Hands That First Held Mary's Child
• What Child Is This?
• What Is This Brightness Shining?
• While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks
• Winter Beautiful

So Great to Sing With You!

It was wonderful to get together and sing the beautiful music Cory always selects for us.

Here are some YouTube helps for the songs in "Cartoon Christmas."

• Rudolph the Red Nosed Raindeer

• Put One Foot in Front of the Other - from Santa Claus is Comin' to Town

• Heat Miser - From The Year Without Santa Claus

And here's an alphabetized list of our music so far (22 pieces). There will be a few more that we'll add to the list, hopefully by next week.

• And the Angels Sang
• Bell Carol
• Carol of the Snow
• Cartoon Christmas
• Come Join the Holiday Season
• Cradle Carols
• Christmas Eve Carol
• Christmas in a Minute
• Dance With Me, Santa
• Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
• Hymn of Angels
• I Want a Hippopotamus For Christmas
• Is There Room in Your Heart for a King?
• Listen to the Silence of Night
• Mary's Lament
• O Night Divine
• One Small Child
• Sending You a Little Christmas
• The Hands That First Held Mary's Child
• What Child Is This?
• What Is This Brightness Shining?
• While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks
• Winter Beautiful

A New Christmas Season!

Hi Everyone,

We're coming up on our 2014 Christmas season and Cory has been busy selecting music for us to sing. He had decided to re-visit some songs that we've tried and pulled before, so please look through your music from the past couple of Christmas seasons and pull out the following pieces:

• The Hands That First Held Mary's Child
• And the Angels Sang
• Christmas in a Minute
• Cradle Carols

Our first rehearsal for this season will be Thursday, August 28th at 8 pm. I can't wait to see you all again and sing beautiful music together!

~ Karen

Now We're On YouTube!

I've uploaded a music video to YouTube of us singing "Places Deeper In My Heart." Go check it out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiNpBPd3DdA&index=2&list=HL1402955406

Awesome Spring Performance!

Our spring performance was a great success! We received much positive feedback from our audience.

Here are some of the pictures that we had taken before our performance. I apologize for the low resolution/blurriness.

 This first one was the best of the "serious" pictures. Everyone looks great!

I think this is my favorite because half of us are serious and half of us are goofy. It makes me laugh every time I look at it!

And this one is totally goofy, except for a few who just don't seem to know how to be goofy! This one also makes me laugh!

Germaine

We were saddened last Thursday to learn of the passing of one of our sopranos, Germaine Wahl. We will miss her voice and her colorful personality. We know she is still singing with us in spirit.

The shocking news made for the most chatter-free rehearsal we have ever had.

Viewing

Wednesday 6-8pm

Starks funeral home

3651 S 500 E

Salt Lake City, UT 84106

2nd viewing

Thursday 2-3:30pm

LDS chapel

14919 S Eagle Crest Dr

Draper, UT 84020

Funeral services

Thursday 4-5pm

LDS chapel

14919 S Eagle Crest Dr

Draper, UT 84020

Grave dedication 

Thursday 6:15-7pm

Salt Lake City Cemetery

200 N Ave

Salt Lake City, UT 84111

The Spring Program

Here is the list of songs, in the order we will sing them, and those who are introducing them:

Teri

• That Old Time Need of Prayer

Ally

• Plenty-A-Music
• Soon I Will Be Done
• Precious Lord, Take My Hand 

Mark

• Heaven Bound
• Lead Me Home
• Elijah Rock

Stephanie

• Sing and Shout Together, Children
• Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho
• Listen to the Lambs

Doug

• There is a Balm in Gilead
• Until I Found the Lord
• I'm Gonna Sing and Shout

Mitch

• Places Deeper in My Heart

Our Ten Day Break

Hi Singers,

This is the largest gap between rehearsals that we've had for a long time. I miss you all and look forward to seeing you on Sunday!

Meanwhile, here are the things that Cory has asked us to work on, which he formed from listening to snatches of the blog files from prior rehearsals:

Men-basses: You have a tendency to confuse depth with bass-drum heaviness. You cannot do that. It sounds awful. You’ve got to support your notes and get energy behind them. Without it, you’re bottoming out note-wise. Watch your pitches and listen to each other.

Tenors: You’re a Victrola. There are about four songs that have parts where you are completely lost. Places Deeper in My Heart. There’s a spot you miss every time. That Old Time Need of Prayer, there’s a spot you miss every time (basses too on that song).

Altos: you have a good blend among you. What you don’t have is support on the lower notes. It sounds blaring, like a horn. There’s no warmth or movement on the note. On the upper notes, you are a little bright.

Sopranos: Wow. Top notes: Bright, bright, bright the holly berries. Holy Mackerel. Wow. Open it up on the top notes. Watch how bright it is. When I ask you to warm it up, that doesn’t mean throw a vibrato onto it. Support the high notes. If you’re buzzing in your nose, your placement is wrong.

Seconds: Be very careful not to sacrifice tone to volume. It often is a very young sound. It’s not every time, but sometimes. Like on the song Until I Found the Lord, bottom of page 10.

As a whole, you need to sing together; listen to each other. Get your parts down. No excuse to not know your parts at this point in our season.

One compliment for you: Leslie loved your final song last Sunday, “Places Deeper in My Heart.”

Remember to practice and connect emotionally with the messages of our songs on THURSDAY night!

Singing and Shouting

As I was listening to the recording of last Thursday's rehearsal, I heard again the story Cory told about the special needs woman singing with great abandon and enthusiasm, "The Spirit of God Like a Fire is Burning," in the middle of the congregation during church.

I thought about the words to that beautiful hymn, and discovered something rather surprising. So, you know how we all don't do a lot of "singing and shouting" in our church meetings? Check out the chorus to "The Spirit of God..." Yep: "We'll sing and we'll shout with the armies of heaven!" There it is, right there! We should sing and shout. Yes, you, conservative Mormon person. You should sing and shout!

So, feel free to follow the special needs woman's example and the words to that famiar hymn and sing with enthusiasm. Feel it! Enjoy it! Show it!

Happy singin' and shoutin,' people.

KD

Party & Schedule Update

Please note the new schedule in the column on the right ------>

Hey!! Next Saturday is our choir party!!! We're going to have yummy food (provided by you), and fun games! Bring a spouse or a friend and come to the church where we rehearse at 6:30 pm.

Here are the food sign-ups:

Main Dish
Ally
Dan
Teri
Rain

Side Dish
Stephanie
Joan
Anne

Dessert
Jared & Cindy
Germaine
Mark
Harold

Other
Morgan
Dave - chips

Teri and Ally, I appreciate your willingness to bring more than one thing, but I'm only putting you down for one. Cory and I haven't signed up yet, and I think we'll be fine. If that changes, I'll let you know. - KD

Let's Get to Work!

This is Cory's instruction to the chorus on April 17, 2014.

And, here are a few motivational quotes for you:

Altos Won the Stunning Section Award

A couple of weeks ago, the alto section won the Stunning Section Award. Rain took it home, and it has been on some adventures! Here are the highlights:

 After a violent weekend storm, the SS Award helped survey the damage to the Jeppson's fence from the safe vantage point of the nectarine tree.

 The award also got to help welcome home the Jeppson's newest family member!

 It helped in the garden with the beautiful spring flowers,

 and spent some time enjoying the sunny disposition of the forsythia bush.

Best of all, the SS Award got to go camping in the backyard!

See what the SS Award can do at your house--win the award with your section and ask to bring it home! It loves adventures!

On Editing Files

I thought maybe some of you were curious about how I go about creating the audio files each week. Here's a little run-down of how I do it. I use an audio editing program called "Audacity." There are other programs out there, but this one is free and I'm used to it, so I can get through things more quickly than using another program.

Here's an image of last week's rehearsal audio file, as downloaded into Audacity, and then saved as an MP3 file, then re-opened into Audacity. You can click on it to see a larger picture. I've tagged the different sections of the rehearsal. There are two tracks because I record in stereo. Where the line is narrow, that's talking, which is quieter. The dark sections get wider as we sing louder. The numbers on top are minutes, adding up to roughly 2 hours of rehearsal.

My next task is to separate the rehearsal into single-song sections. I usually will eliminate most of the talking at this stage in my work after listening to it first, to make note of any important announcements, or notes about the songs that I will post in the "Song Notes" section of the blog.

Once I have the songs separated out, I will pull each one individually back into Audacity and edit them. Here is what "I'm Gonna Sing and Shout," which is the 4th song, looks like in Audacity. Again, you can click on the image to see a larger version. I've zoomed in (stretched it out) so that I can see where I need to make edits.

You can see where we stopped and started a couple of times to correct things. I have to splice those sections into one continuous version of the song. This is not easy, but, with practice, I have become pretty good at it. My goal is always to make the splices undetectable. Sometimes this is impossible, given that we often start without the regular accompaniment, and often we start out mid-song quieter than we originally were singing that section.

Once I get the songs all edited, I save them as individual MP3 files and upload them to my Google Docs cloud, then link to them on the blog.

How long does all this take me? Well, it depends on how many times we start and stop and how many songs we sing, but it takes a good portion of my Saturdays. Hours. Just so you know. At the beginning of the season we sing fewer songs, but have more starts and stops. Towards the end of the season we start & stop less, but sing more songs each week. So, it all amounts to about the same amount of work for me. I am happy to do this, as I believe it provides a very useful tool in rehearsing at home (or in the car), but please, appreciate and use it. You can make my editing job easier by learning the music so that Cory doesn't stop us as often. Just sayin.' :)

Stunning Section Award Has Been Busy

 The Stunning Section Award helps us practice our music

And helps us bake yummy sourdough bread!

 

 Next, it assists with the blog...

The SS Award does St. Patrick's Day!

Rehearsal Notes From March 13, 2014

In our last rehearsal, Cory emphasized that we need to learn our songs by the end of March. This is so that we can spend the remainder of our time getting the style down and not have to go over notes anymore. Here's what Cory wants us to do: Practice, practice, practice.

We'd also like to recognize that the tenors won the Stunning Section award last week (03/06/14), and the Sopranos won it this week (03/13/14)! Congratulations to these sections!

There is a NEW ADDITION to our audio files page. Two of them, actually. At your request, I have provided zipped files of all of our songs. There is a parts version and an accompaniment version. Enjoy!

As a little heads up, we'll be planning a PARTY next month, so start gettin' in the mood! We'll do a sign-up for food as we get closer to the day.

See you Thursday.
~ Karen

The Balm of Gilead

If you're like me, you have only a vague understanding of what the "Balm of Gilead" refers to. Here's what the Bible Dictionary says:

An aromatic gum or spice used for healing wounds (Gen. 43:11; Jer. 8:22; 46:11; 51:8). A bush producing the resin from which the balm was made grew so plentifully in Gilead in Old Testament times that the balm came to be known as the “balm of Gilead” and was exported to Tyre and Egypt (Gen. 37:25; Ezek. 27:17).

The prophet Jeremiah asks:   "Is there no ^abalm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?"

The balm of Gilead is symbolic of the healing power of the atonement of Jesus Christ, the Great Physician. Through the atonement we can be healed from all sickness and afflictions, particularly those of a spiritual nature.

15 Reasons You Need to Sing Every Day

1. Singing releases endorphins, which make you feel instantly happier.

2. And when you sing you also release oxytocin, which is a natural stress reliever and is found to alleviate feelings of depression and loneliness.

3. You'll also sleep better, as a result of being less stressed

4. Tests have shown that singing improves heart rate visibility, which reduces the risk of heart disease.

5. And, when singing with someone else, your heart rates can even sync together.

6. Your posture will get straighter and you'll gradually look more confident.

7. And your feelings of safety and confidence increase when singing in a group.

8. It's actually a good workout. You'll work out your lungs, improve your circulation, and tone your abdominal and intercostal muscles.

9. Singing has also been proven to boost your immune system.

10. Even if you're already sick, just hum a little number and you'll open up your sinuses and respiratory tubes.

11. It's really good for your brain and will enhance your mental awareness, concentration, and memory.

12. You'll develop healthier breathing patterns, which can help cope with various lung diseases.

13. It's been used as an all-natural way to help treat dementia, lung cancer, depression, and chronic pain.

14. You'll probably live longer, in general.

15. So raise your voice, because the benefits are endless.

Welcome to Spring Season and Song List

Welcome back, singers!

It was great to see you all and sing together again. I have missed it!

Remember there is no rehearsal this Thursday, the 6th, due to Cory's 29th birthday. So, we will resume rehearsals on Thursday, the 13th. Cory will be sending us an email about how much the music will cost. Please bring money for your music on the 13th.

Here's a complete list of the songs we're singing this season, in alphabetical order:

• Elijah Rock
• Go, Tell It on the Mountain Pulled 04/03/14
• Gospel Magnificat  - Pulled 03/27/14
• Heaven Bound
• I'm Gonna Sing and Shout!
• In That Great Gettin' Up Mornin' - Pulled 03/27/14
• Joshua Fit de Battle of Jerico
• Lead Me Home
• Listen to the Lamb
• Places Deeper in My Heart
• Plenty-A-Music
• Precious Lord, Take My Hand
• Soon I will Be Done
• Sing and Shout Together, Children
• That Old-Time Need of Prayer
• There is a Balm in Gilead
• Until I Found The Lord