Welcoming new contributors

When I set up this blog for Belper Musical Theatre the intention was to offer people a chance to see how much fun we have in putting together our shows and concerts and share with you a little bit of insight into the challenges that we face in trying to do the best that we can.
Belper Musical Theatre has loads of members and it kind of concerned me a little that readers would think that I was representative of the group at large.
So I am really pleased that I have invited some new contributors to be authors on the blog and I'm looking forward to seeing more thoughts and different points of view coming across.
Anyone is welcome to make comments on the different blogs that we write on here and I would love there to be a real dialogue going on between the group members and our wider audience.
I'd also appreciate it if you could share our blogs through Facebook, retweet them through Twitter or just raise awareness of who we are and what we do with your friends.
You'll realise from this that another reason for the blog is to offer us some publicity!
So share what we write, hum the different songs to yourself, then phone Andrea and book your tickets!
Thank you,
Matthew

The long vowel

When I decided to write this particular post to the blog I had a moment's pause (that's quite a long time for me!). Those of you who have read other sections on this blog will know that I've explained about assimilation, or to put it another way I've told you that my consonants may have a tendency not to be clear. So when I then decided to write about the apparent problems that I have with enunciating my vowels, I did stop to think.

If I can't do vowels and I can't do consonants, what exactly do I do when I open my mouth to sing (I can feel some thoughts on pitch and tone coming along soon!).

But really here I wanted to spend a couple of moments considering the length of a vowel. You see notes have different lengths, and since consonants are invariably short (staccato) beginnings or ends to a word, then the note length changes the length of the vowel sound. And that is not always easy.

Take our bolero driven 'The Impossible Dream' as an example. If you ignore for the moment the 9/8 timing and the need to come in on the upbeat of the bar, each phrase has a long vowel right at the start. The first line is 'to dream the impossible dream.' Two dreams, different vowel lengths. And this style continues throughout the song. When we get it right it sounds fantastic. The chorus, accompanist and conductor all in sync and wonderful harmony. But it's not easy.

So this week I intend to try my hardest at practising long vowels, followed by appropriate consonants.

I do hope that you'll be coming along on the 23rd or 24th of September to find out how we get on!

High kicking with hats!

One of the many great songs that we’re performing in our Autumn concert this year is ‘New York, New York’. You’ll hardly be able to resist joining in with us when that one gets going will you. Anyway it’s the sort of song that you can’t sing without flinging aside all of your caution and with wild abandon grabbing hold of those nearest to you so that you can all kick your legs up - occasionally even in time with the music.

So given that is my usual approach to the song, you can probably imagine my worries when I found out last night that this time around I have to perform controlled movement, without grabbing hold of anyone and just kicking my legs in the air.

You know from my previous blogs that getting the movement right is always a challenge - I wonder whether a lack of synchronicity is hard wired in to the male mentality. So it was a huge relief last night to discover that occasionally ladies suffer from the same worries about lunging when they should be doing heel raises, or swaying when they should be doing step digs. Hooray, it’s not just me.

So there we all are with the delightful, and not at all scary, Liz choreographing us from the front of the room, quietly muttering to ourselves walk, two, three, dig, walk, two three dig, when there was the sudden realisation that we should actually have been singing something more on the lines of “those little town blues!”

Ah well, I know that with a few more weeks work, and repeated practice of the song, the whole thing will sound and look fantastic at the show.

Tickets are now on sale and are going quite fast considering we’re in the middle of school holidays. So if you haven’t had chance to call Andrea and get yours just yet, then now is the time! Give Andrea a call on 01332882909 and get your order in. We can guarantee you a great performance and a real toe tapping sing along show.

Back from Holland!

Hope that you all enjoyed the break in blogging - I was away on holiday in Holland. Back now, so will be blogging again soon. Please feel free to comment and ask questions....