You have chosen to participate in an exciting Thursday evening when the Clwyd Clippers are running their Learn to Sing course. It's great to see you here.
Singers are happy people, they live longer, they are healthier and they make friends easier!1.
For this week and for the following five weeks, you will warm up, learn vocal craft and be taught some of songs. Members of the Clwyd Clippers will be experiencing the course with you as they will also benefit from the course and are in a position to provide you with support.
The Clwyd Clippers rehearse on a Thursday night from 7.15pm to 10.00pm. The first hour and three quarters of that rehearsal time will be devoted to our singing course. At 9.00pm, or thereabouts, the course will finish and the the Clwyd Clippers will continue until 10.00pm with their normal rehearsal schedule. You are free to leave at 9.00pm, but if you’d like to stay and listen to the chorus rehearse you are more than welcome. They love singing to an audience!
Over the period of the course we will be learning a song in four-part harmony. The only people who already know this song are the section leaders and the Director of Music. Everyone else is starting from scratch! We will use this song to put our knowledge into practice and we will sing it as part of a mini-concert, on the final evening of the course.
You will be given a quick voice test to determine which voice part (basically lead (singing the melody), bass, tenor (both obvious) and baritone (filling in the missing bits !) is your natural range. We don’t want to damage anyone’s voice by putting him in the wrong place!
Each week will follow a similar pattern as follows. There will be a handout for each week and you will have been provided with a folder to store them.
- A physical warm up.
We do this just to shed the cares of the day and to loosen up a bit.
- A vocal warm up.
Just as athletes do some exercises before getting serious, the voice needs coaxing into action.
- A craft session.
Each week we will address a different aspect of singing and do some exercises so that we can feel what happens and understand the need for it.
- A Section rehearsal
...in which we split into the four voice parts and spend 15-20 minutes learning notes to a section of the new song; then everyone back into the room where we put the song together and try out some of our craft.
- Coffee and end of session.
- On the final week,
... you are asked and encouraged to bring friends and family along to witness the results of your hard work. We will do a slightly shortened class and then stage a mini-concert where the The Clwyd Clippers will sing a few songs and then ask you to join us on the risers to perform the new song that you have learned.
And Afterwards???
What you do with your new found skills is, of course, up to you. We just hope that you enjoy our course and that you don’t let the time you spent with us go to waste. Find somewhere to express yourself in song and don’t forget you will always have a warm welcome at the Clwyd Clippers.
Disclaimer: The evidence for these things is all anecdotal and not supported, as far as we know, by scientific research. Anyway, if any of them are not true, we think they ought to be!