HOW WE PREPARE FOR GIGS AND COMPETITIONS
WRITTEN BY
ALEXANDER ARENA
THURSDAY 20 08 20
U nderstanding and relating to the music and the message behind what we are singing is extremely important for us as a cappella singers. Even the most basic ooo, dat or ah should deliver the same emotions portrayed by the soloist or soloing part. To achieve this, our music team works hard to source music that reflects the style and personality of our current members. As a university choir, we are always growing and changing, so when sourcing our music, we like to also grow and change to keep our repertoire relatable. Holding collaborative workshops on the musical interpretation of our songs is another way we like to unify the story we are telling the audience as we sing.
As individual singers, we all work hard at home to prepare our music to a high standard so we can use rehearsal time to polish our blend and performance. We use sectionals, lead by our music team members to help fix musical and stylistic issues before workshopping a song with the whole choir together.
In relation to gigs more specifically, we as a group like to meet up roughly an hour before a performance to warmup together and run through our set for the event. We have accumulated quite a few vocal warmups which we use to prepare our voices in different ways. In particular we are partial to a warmup about a small alligator named Alfred, and another about a ghost named Tom.
When preparing for competitions, we aim to present a set of music that promotes our musical strengths whilst having a lot of fun in the process. We aim to draw in the audience by engaging our face and body to tell the story that we are singing. Video recordings are a useful tool which we use to listen and watch ourselves back, we like to reward members who are particularly enticing to watch. We strongly believe that if you aren’t enjoying yourself whilst performing you’re doing it wrong, and that’s one of the main things we strive for, even in a competition setting.
