We’ve been having regular practice singings in Palo Alto since last summer — with a few gaps due to the various surges. I no longer write about every single singing, but I’ve been singing regularly.
Now we’re moving to Massachusetts, so I won’t be singing regularly with Palo Alto any more. This was one of my last local singings with these good people. I’ve gotten to know the other Palo Alto singers pretty well, and it’s going to be hard to leave. But the new job calls….
We sang at Palo Alto World Music Day again, for the first time since COVID hit. Actually, it’s not World Music Day this year, it’s World Music Month, with performances spread out over three or four weekends.
Our venue was on California Ave. on the street — not our usual venue under an overhang. I was a little apprehensive about singing in the open, since the sound can get lost, but it turned out fine.
In fact, it was one of the best singings I’ve been to ever Maybe it just feels that way because it’s only the second time I’ve sung in person since lockdown. But there were some fabulous voices who showed up, some really excellent singers. And the number of singers was good, too — about 16 I think — so there was good coverage on every part, but it was small enough that the singing was pretty tight.
For the first time since lockdown, we sang together in person in Palo Alto today.
We were outdoors, for COVID safety, under the solar panels over the parking lot. The sound wasn’t great but it was pretty good.
And it felt amazing to sing with other people in person.
Chris Thorman began singing Sacred Harp 25 years ago with the Palo Alto Sacred Harp singers. He came to sing with us today in honor of the anniversary.
A photo from today’s singing at Palo Alto World Music Day, downloaded from the event website — Thomson is leading:
The sound was pretty darn good under that overhang.
We had a good turn out for the singing at Palo Alto World Music Day. Location was good too, in a sort of pedestrian walkway with a roof overhead.
Since this was sort of a performance, we had a set list for the first six songs — we wanted to do songs that we knew we’d sound good on: 178, Dan; 99, Peter; 40, Leigh; 47b, Mark; 236, Paul; 193, Terry.
After that it was open call. This worked pretty well.
We didn’t have huge audiences, but a few people listened to us for extended periods of time, and a couple even joined us. We had a great time, needless to say.
We had eight people show up today for three hours of singing, including two out-of-town singers. We sang some old favorites that weren’t led at the all-day singing (China, Stratfield, etc.). We worked through a few tunes that we did sing at the all-day singing, but where at least some of us weren’t satisfied with the way we sang them yesterday — and we worked on them till we all felt reasonably happy with the outcome. I also introduced three new tunes that I had written, and the singers very graciously worked through them and offered useful comments (I’ll post those here as separate blog posts). And we ate leftovers from the Saturday night social — yum!
All in all, a pleasant way to wind down from the all-day singing.
AFter a month away from singing due to bronchitis and laryngitis, I was finally able to sing again this week. And what better way to get back into singing than with the Palo Alto singers.
The Palo Alto local singing has been getting really good recently. Some of these folks have been singing together for years and years, which means that the singing starts off with an advantage. But mostly it just seems like the singing is going well; every singing group goes through its ups and downs, and the Palo Alto singing seems to be going up at the moment.
What I especially like about the Palo Alto singing is the excellent intonation. When we’re singing, I can often feel the overtones from the good intonation vibrating in my chest and head. Why has our intonation gotten so good? Perhaps it’s because we have been leading tunes at somewhat more moderate tempos; perhaps it’s because we’ve been singing more than just a couple of verses of each tune, which gives us times to get the intonation exactly right. Mostly, though, I think it’s because we’re relaxed and we take the time to listen to each other. Good intonation requires good listening — you can get the rhythm by watching the leader, you can get the melody by looking at the book, but the only way to be in tune is to listen to the other singers.
We had two new singers today, and I don’t know what it felt like to them, but to my ears they both sounded great right from the start. Now both of them have done lots of other kinds of singing, so they were starting from a relatively high level; but it’s also true that it’s much easier to sing if the group you’re singing with is in tune and in rhythm with each other.
Even though I was still struggling a little on the higher notes — my voice hasn’t quite recovered from the bronchitis, I guess — it felt really good to sing today. It’s amazing what eleven good singers can do inside a room with wood walls and ceiling: I got carried away by the waves of sound.
Sue hosted the fourth Sunday singing at her house in Mountain View today. There were twelve to fourteen people in Sue’s music room — which just about filled the room — and it was a very good singing indeed. It was especially fun to have an out=of-town singer, JT from Austin, join us.
Of course we sang a lot of Christmas tunes from The Sacred Harp. In addition to those tunes, Paul and I each brought a different version of “Star in the East,” a Christmas tune from William Walker’s Southern Harmony; my version was Walker’s version with an alto part that I wrote, and Paul’s was a complete re-harmonoization of the melody, with a quite challenging and very interesting bass part. I also brought the three-part version of Lowell Mason’s “Antioch” (a.k.a. “Joy to the World”) from the Southern Harmony.
At one point, JT led a 4/4 tune in 4, and someone asked what was the difference in elading a tune in 4 versus leading the same tune in 2. We tried to explain how when you lead a 4/4 tune in 2, the class is going to tend to accent the first and third beats more heavily than if you lead it in 2. Finally JT said, “Let’s just try it.” So we did: JT led the same tune in 2, at the same tempo, and you could hear the much stronger accents on the first and third beats. When we finished, the person who had asked the question said they really understood the difference now. And I was glad we had done the experiment, too — you really notice the difference when you lead a tune in 4, then immediately lead it again in 2.
(I neglected to write up the fourth Sunday singing in September when it happened (a touch of bronchitis put me out of action for a bit), but I’ll post a few quick notes and back-date this to September 22.)
We were invited to sing at the Presbyterian church in Sunnyvale. Several of our regular singers couldn’t attend due to scheduling conflicts, which was too bad. But one of our regular singers, Marian, is a member of that church, and got some of her friends from the choir to come sing with us. They talked about maybe getting us to sing there regularly.
All in all, another good singing, even if we were a little light on tenors. I always enjoy it when new singers join us — and not surprisingly, since they sing in a church choir, today’s new singers picked it up quickly.