I will really miss the Seniors!  I truly hope that they keep music and singing with them for the rest of their life.  I hope that they have gained some skills throughout their years in choir that will make them the ones people want to “sit next to” in order to get the right part when they sing in various choirs.

I also hope they stay in touch.  As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, we had our “first annual” party today.  Well, we also had the “first annual” Alumni Concert in the Fall.  Our “Seniors” are now our “Alumni”, and I hope to see them at next year’s Alumni Concert!  Well, that’s all for now.  It’s time to start planning for next year. . .

Number 1 – Figure out where you are going to breath! We learned our sol-fege first – and we breathed wherever we wanted. In real music, like this piece is, you need to breathe when there is a period or a comma – if at all possible.

Number 2 – Sing with expression! Music is all about expression. Georg Friderich Handel, who wrote Hallelujah, was writing for Kings! Think of yourself as singing for the King’s Court in the mid-1700s in England! He wrote this piece for an elaborate occasion in which the King and his court would be the main audience. This is the same audience that heard his other famous pieces like “The Messiah” in which the “Hallelujah Chorus” is found.

Number 3 – Watch the dynamics! Learning the notes is only the first part of learning a piece of music. Then, you have to sing with all the dynamics that are marked in the score. This is what really brings a piece of music to life! Sing WITH the music – but mainly look at the dynamics and articulations. Make sure you are following ALL of them – and try to figure out why the composer put these dynamics there. What was he trying to express with these dynamics??

Number 4 – Improvise music in sol-fege. Improvisation is like talking. You are limited in your talking by the words you know. Likewise in music, you are limited by the notes and rhythms that you know. Quiz yourself with the types of notes and rhythms you know will be asked in the sight-singing portion of the audition. First – KNOW that you can sing steps well. Go up and down the scale and CORRECTLY match the sol-fege with what you are doing. If you go UP the scale, but your sol-fege is going DOWN – correct it! Eventually the notes you sing will match the sol-fege you sing. Then work on skips to the tonic triad. Then work on skips to the dominant triad.

Once you can sing steps well with quarter notes, and you are working with skips to the tonic triad – start singing harder rhythms with steps. RHYTHM IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF MUSIC!! It is also the hardest to get right when you are sight-singing. So – start with steps after you know you have mastered them with quarter notes. Once you have mastered singing steps with dotted quarter-notes, eighth-notes, etc., learning how to sing these rhythms with skips to tonic and dominant is not really very hard.

By the way, patching the beat is VERY important here. You have to be GROUNDED with rhythm.

Well, that’s about it.

You are well on your way to becoming an All-State singer!!

Good luck!!

Dr. Moody