This evening, I attended the gospel workshop at Southampton Philharmonic Choir. This was much more fun than the motet workshop, for several reasons.
First of all, I switched from being a tenor to being a bass, which suited me much better. I just like the bass parts much more.
Secondly, a whole bunch of people from the Winchester Community Choir had decided to come along this week, so it was like a mini invasion by us. (Last week it was just me).
And, most of all, was the way it was taught. I wrote last week about how impressed (or intimidated) I was by the way they just handed out sheet music, and people seemed to be able to pick this up, and sing it! And even sing it well! Very professional singers.
Well. This week, it was a guest workshop leader, who taught entirely by ear. No sheet music. She started with movement exercises, then had us making animal noises and so on to loosen up, and finally singing a simple "hallelujah" by ear in 4 parts, just her singing it and us picking it up. Most of the serious singers seemed to struggle with this -- but at WCC, that's exactly what we do every week. So we were all completely used to it! At one point, she was covering a piece that apparently Mary J Blige had done, and sang us a bassline that just went "dum-dum-de-dum-dum". And then she said, "just improvise some bass parts over it if you feel like it". That's bread and butter to me, making up a bass line over a series of chords, but most of the basses seemed baffled and many ended up just singing the tune part in with the tenors.
So I had my revenge for the previous week, and much enjoyed it. Even if I can't really get down to low F.
