Things I love about Thursday nights
Mar. 16th, 2012 10:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahn(Every Thursday night I sing in this Catholic choir and it is awesome. Especially now that we have dragged out the Holy Week and Easter music. Especially since I am actually going to be in town at Easter so the director felt comfortable bringing out the hard stuff!)
1. Polyphony. Polyphony. Polyphony.
2. I get to use my superpower of reading music well (well, these thing are all relative; I would probably rank as an average sightreader as an instrumentalist and I know I am a terrible pianist sightreader -- but compared even to my teacher DK (see 3.) I am a superhero singer sightreader) for the powers of good! (The literal powers of good, I suppose, if you are a Catholic.) Also, I really get a kick out of sight-singing difficult stuff.
3. My singing teacher, DK, is the soprano section leader. This means she gets solos. This, combined with the choir director's (admittedly quite unfortunate) penchant to run through music instead of deep working it, means I get to listen to a professional-level soprano, the kind of person you would ordinarily have to pay to listen to, sing solos pretty much every week.
4. I get to tell people what to do. So, I normally hate telling people what to do, because I don't like responsibility and I don't like either being wrong or clashing with someone else's preferences. Where choral music is concerned, I apparently undergo a complete (internal, at least) personality change where suddenly I have Decided Ideas About the Way Things Ought to Be, and if you do not agree with me I am sorry, unless you give me a really good reason, it is because You Are Wrong. ...I mean, I don't always push my ideas on everyone else (I am not the choral director, after all, ALTHOUGH IF I WERE, I WOULD DO A REALLY AWESOME JOB AND WHIP THAT CHOIR INTO SHAPE <-- see what I mean?) but let's just say that we are doing a lot more Watching the Conductor and Dynamics (my rules one and two of choir) than when I first started with the choir.
5. Sometimes I get to sing solos. I act all shy about it and all, but my dirty secret is that I secretly love showing off my voice. Hey, it's a nice voice. And actually the other good thing about it is that it's forced me to remember how to sing, which I got really sloppy about the first several months I was in the choir (when I sing soprano I have to have good support or else I can't reach the notes, but when I sing alto it's so easy to slide back into chest voice and get lazy about supporting).
6. And sometimes -- it happened last night -- the right people are there (it's a small enough choir that if the keystone person isn't there, the section is totally lost) and are listening to each other and the polyphony happens together instead of sounding like separate voices doing their own thing and everything just works and YAY FLAIL FLAIL FLAIL. It just makes me so happy I can't even describe it. (And makes me wish I could be in a really good choir again, because this is a PALE SHADOW of what happens in a choir that's any good, but hey, at least I have this.)
7. I get paid for this! A pittance, but still!
8. It's definitely the most friendly choir I've ever been in, and I've always been in friendly choirs. But this one is a little mini-community, and it's accepted me as a member of their community even though I'm not even Catholic. It's lovely and a bit humbling.
9. D always has really cute stories about E when I get home. And E loooooves having special daddy time!
There are of course quite as many complaints I could make about it (starting with the aforementioned unfortunate tendency never to actually work the music in more than the most superficial learning-notes ways, and going on to the unhappiness that is the bass section; not their fault they suck, but they still do suck, especially the week when choir director (himself a bass) had laryngitis, and ending with the SADNESS that I will never ever ever with this choir be able to tune with anyone but DK or have that feeling of total togetherness, which makes me SO SAD) but really put it all together and it is a FLAIL of capital-letter happiness.
1. Polyphony. Polyphony. Polyphony.
2. I get to use my superpower of reading music well (well, these thing are all relative; I would probably rank as an average sightreader as an instrumentalist and I know I am a terrible pianist sightreader -- but compared even to my teacher DK (see 3.) I am a superhero singer sightreader) for the powers of good! (The literal powers of good, I suppose, if you are a Catholic.) Also, I really get a kick out of sight-singing difficult stuff.
3. My singing teacher, DK, is the soprano section leader. This means she gets solos. This, combined with the choir director's (admittedly quite unfortunate) penchant to run through music instead of deep working it, means I get to listen to a professional-level soprano, the kind of person you would ordinarily have to pay to listen to, sing solos pretty much every week.
4. I get to tell people what to do. So, I normally hate telling people what to do, because I don't like responsibility and I don't like either being wrong or clashing with someone else's preferences. Where choral music is concerned, I apparently undergo a complete (internal, at least) personality change where suddenly I have Decided Ideas About the Way Things Ought to Be, and if you do not agree with me I am sorry, unless you give me a really good reason, it is because You Are Wrong. ...I mean, I don't always push my ideas on everyone else (I am not the choral director, after all, ALTHOUGH IF I WERE, I WOULD DO A REALLY AWESOME JOB AND WHIP THAT CHOIR INTO SHAPE <-- see what I mean?) but let's just say that we are doing a lot more Watching the Conductor and Dynamics (my rules one and two of choir) than when I first started with the choir.
5. Sometimes I get to sing solos. I act all shy about it and all, but my dirty secret is that I secretly love showing off my voice. Hey, it's a nice voice. And actually the other good thing about it is that it's forced me to remember how to sing, which I got really sloppy about the first several months I was in the choir (when I sing soprano I have to have good support or else I can't reach the notes, but when I sing alto it's so easy to slide back into chest voice and get lazy about supporting).
6. And sometimes -- it happened last night -- the right people are there (it's a small enough choir that if the keystone person isn't there, the section is totally lost) and are listening to each other and the polyphony happens together instead of sounding like separate voices doing their own thing and everything just works and YAY FLAIL FLAIL FLAIL. It just makes me so happy I can't even describe it. (And makes me wish I could be in a really good choir again, because this is a PALE SHADOW of what happens in a choir that's any good, but hey, at least I have this.)
7. I get paid for this! A pittance, but still!
8. It's definitely the most friendly choir I've ever been in, and I've always been in friendly choirs. But this one is a little mini-community, and it's accepted me as a member of their community even though I'm not even Catholic. It's lovely and a bit humbling.
9. D always has really cute stories about E when I get home. And E loooooves having special daddy time!
There are of course quite as many complaints I could make about it (starting with the aforementioned unfortunate tendency never to actually work the music in more than the most superficial learning-notes ways, and going on to the unhappiness that is the bass section; not their fault they suck, but they still do suck, especially the week when choir director (himself a bass) had laryngitis, and ending with the SADNESS that I will never ever ever with this choir be able to tune with anyone but DK or have that feeling of total togetherness, which makes me SO SAD) but really put it all together and it is a FLAIL of capital-letter happiness.
