Today's Daily Lessons

Today is Wednesday, only a day before our Talent Expo concert, we completed a day of lessons. Before I go into that I want to mention how nervous I was about being prepared for the Talent Expo concert last week. I thought that we still needed to do a lot of work on our memorizing and learning our notes. I was wrong! I mean all the song still needed a little shaping, but were still well prepared. As I discovered today and over the course of the past few weeks the new and improved lessons of everyday class have well prepared us for quick and easy adjustments to our pieces of music. Today we started of class with moving our arms up in down to feel a beat of one two and repeating back what Mr. young says in doo's with ta, di, and shhh for rests. Then we moved on to make circles with our hands, resembling three beats. Like before we repeated back what Mr. Young said in doo's, but talk-kee-da, talk-kee, and shhh for rests. This is beneficial because it allows our chorus to improve on our timing during a performance. Also, we grow as members of the chorus because the opportunity of countering to where a specific part comes in as opposed to listening for a lyrical cue has been given. Since we began a new way of tackling out chorus warm-ups our sight-singing books have been put on hold. As a substitute we have what you could call sight-singing flashcards. This what we did next in our daily lessons. Mr. Young holds up a flashcard for all to see, and then places it down. After that we repeat what is shown on the card based on the starting note given. A big benefit I have from using the sight-singing flashcards is not following anyone, but doing it on my own. This true because we have to use the hand signs for each note we sing and if you look at someone else for the hand sign you would already be one step behind. This is also a great opportunity to grow as individual in chorus class, then when each individual grows the chorus may grow as a whole. After the flashcards we continued with more solfege exercises that work on ear training. Here we listen to what note Mr. Young signs or sings and find what note we are supposed to sing and how it is supposed to sound. This is another great way to become a better and more independent singer. Our last step before we moved onto our musical pieces was singing a few voice warm-ups of exercises to work on articulation, vowel shape, and consonant sounds. Finally we were well prepared for practicing our musical arrangements that will be performed tomorrow night. When we sang each song we worked on a few things to improve and learned what we need to do for our concert. I can't wait for Talent Expo! Today's daily lessons seems successful to me.