Assimilation

One of the many delights of working at Manchester University is getting to chat with people from all walks of life on the train back home in the evening. One of the people who I often enjoy talking with is a speech and language therapist who teaches here in Manchester. And it's the conversation that I had with her which forms the basis of my blog for today. It's all about assimilation.

I suppose that I should start off by saying that this is my interpretation of everything that Fay said to me and is quite possibly completely wrong, but it's very seldom that I let the facts get in the way of something. So with all due apologies to Fay for inaccuracies, let me hold forth about assimilation as it relates to musical theatre.

It all started when I was asking Fay whether there was a reason why the ladies in the group appeared to be so much more competent at pronouncing consonants at the ends of their words than us guys appear to be. When I'm sitting there singing away I do try hard to remember to pronounce the T or D on the ends of words, and not to run words into each other. And it often seems that the ladies trill away merrily, effortlessly close off words and separate them with out any appearance of hard effort at all.

So how happy was I when Fay told me all about assimilation, which effectively means that I don't really need to worry about this at all!

When someone hears a word, they will fill in the blanks for themselves. Here's the example that she used "Handbag". Go on, give it a go. Say handbag. Did you pronounce the d? Could people tell what you were saying? This is assimilation. People will hear the word that you meant to say, even if you miss out the odd letter here and there.

It was with a joy filled heart that I went along to BMT practice last night, safe in the knowledge that I could sing "Teh me iss noh troo" and people would understand me perfectly.

And I guess that's the rub, as so often seems the case. People would understand me perfectly. But that's probably because the ladies are happily singing the missing consonants for me. As well as that, there's the fact that missing out those letter endings means that the song just doesn't sound quite as good.

So I will keep trying, whilst being relatively reassured that most people will know what I'm singing about anyway, because they will be busily assimilating it for themselves in the audience.

Purely because it made me smile, I guess that I should also add in here that ladies are being asked to tone down their consonation (is that a real word - meant to mean enunciation of consonants) in the middle of 'You are so beautiful' by putting a D sound in the middle. I think Terry was getting wet with all those lovely ladies spitting out the T in the word. So maybe there is another plus side to assimilation? What fun!

Not bad, not bad at all....

Praise is a wonderful thing.

But to be damned with faint praise, if we're lucky, appears to be the norm for the male section of BMT! We do try, honest we do, but it seems that whatever we aim for, the best that we can manage is to get a 'not bad'.

We do try to put a brave face on it, and not to cry into our coffee cups at half time. But just once it would be wonderful to get "That was cracking lads!"

We sit there and listen to the lovely tunes, passion and emotion that floats back to us when the ladies merge together in their wonderful harmony. Pete continues to fill up when the ladies sing songs such as "The King and I" medley and we are sure that people will love their "Wind beneath their wings" arrangement at this year's concert (have you bought your tickets yet?)

For us guys though, we will be hammering out "Mack the Knife", with nothing more than a "Not bad, not bad at all" if we're lucky.

And perhaps that's the problem? An over reliance on hammering out and a good splash of luck?

This week I'll make sure that I look at the music again before next week's rehearsal. That would at least work at reducing the luck element. After that perhaps reminding myself of the difference between pp, p, mp and FF - guess which I enjoy the most!

Belting it out

It seems to me that one of the challenges of singing in a group, especially when you have a great song, is knowing how loud you sound when you get to the good bits. And since it appears that men have louder voices than women, it's often us poor tenors who get told to tone it down a little when we get too enthusiastic!

So this time around we were being advised to reduce our volume as were worked through "Can you feel the love tonight" from the Lion King - another cracking song that's included in our Autumn Concert this year (tickets available - see the Cabaret page). I'm sure that you know the song and that if you're playing it as you drive along somewhere by yourself, with the tune playing on the radio or whatever, there are some parts where you know you just have to let rip and belt it out.

It's a great feeling as a singer being able to release and go for it. But apparently it's drowning out the sopranos, who are going for a little more class, sensitivity and overall elegance. Hmm.

Salsa and shimmy

Well who would have thought that an evening at Belper Musical Theatre could have so much in common with an aerobics session!

I had the text warning fairly early on that I needed to wear my frilly shirt and Cuban heels as we were going to be focusing on a spot of salsa dancing in between the singing at rehearsals last night. And how much fun it was.

A quick warning from Liz first that we needed lots of space, then straight in to a few hip rocking steps to get us warmed up and ready for movement. At which point it quickly became apparent that the reason for needing lots of space was that when your average BMT member is focusing on stepping left, behind, forward, flick, back, right, forward kick etc, they rather rapidly lose the ability to recognise if anyone is in front of them, beside them or behind them. So can  I just say sorry to everyone for the bruises that resulted.

As if it wasn't challenging enough to get us all engaged in this salsa swinging movement around the floor, Liz then called Stacey (star pupil) to the front of the room to give us a demonstration of how to shimmy. Liz found it difficult apparently. So Stacey is there shaking for all she's worth, quickly emulated by Dom who seemed to find it remarkably easy. And there I was at the back of the room discovering that an attempt to shimmy makes my hips wobble and I look like a real Dad dancing.

Ian was soon on hand to try to explain that it was all about stretching out your arms to make one longer than the other. And after a few moments of helpless laughter, he told me to try doing it sitting down so that I could reduce my apparent reliance on my hips to move my arms. So I discovered that whilst sitting down, and in very slow motion, I can shimmy. But as soon as I stand up again, the ability goes.

So that's my work in progress for the future then - shimmy practice. Left arm out, right arm out, hips stable - why is it so hard to dance?