New member’s information from Choir leader Geoffrey.

Rehearsals

The choir meets regularly Every Wednesday at 8 PM (except for the first Wednesday of each month when we hold section rehearsals usually in nearby members homes) from about Late February to early December, usually in The Boyd Meeting Room on the first floor of the Carnegie Library (Map).
We rehearse for about 90 minutes with a short break.
Occasionally, if the library room is not available, we meet in a choir member’s home.
(Keep an eye on our Google rehearsal calendar)

Not sure what voice part suits you? Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass?

Don't worry. We'll work it out as we go along. We don't have any sort of audition process.
We invite you to just turn up, and sing with us for 3 weeks or so,
to see if you like it, and then we'll ask if you'd like to join up. Members pay by term (10 weeks) which averages about $15-20 a night, depending on numbers

What's the repertoire of the choir? What sort of songs do we sing? >>

How do we rehearse?

Don’t worry if you can’t “officially” read sheet music. Most of our members are not very experienced sheet music readers. The sheet music can be downloaded as PDFs along with audio recordings (MP3s) of your harmony parts from this website.
Follow the music with your eyes as you listen to the recordings and you will end up sort of reading the music without realising you are doing it! Sometimes, we work with just a lyric sheet.
Occasionally we make up harmony parts on the spot as an exercise in improvisation.

Are the recordings important / necessary? "I'm not sure I'll have time to listen to them"

Experienced choir people often talk about "note-bashing". Sounds like fun, doesn't it? (NOT!)
This is where somebody will sing or play a harmony part over and over to help one group of singers "get" their part. It is a bit boring for the rest of the choir waiting around to hear THEIR part, so I make recordings to help you learn your part in your own time before you get to rehearsal. Less "note bashing!"

On your part recording, you will usually hear your part played quite loudly on a voice-like synthesised instrument. Now, I’m not saying you have to sit around for hours carefully studying the sheet music while you listen. Many people have discovered that by simply having these practice recordings playing in the background while they do the dishes, exercise, drive to work, even just humming along with them as best they can, it DOES help them learn their part faster.

HINT: I usually post recordings of EVERYBODY'S parts all together too, so you can sort of 'test' yourself, before you get to rehearsal, seeing if you can hold to your part with the other parts happening around you. The more everybody listens to those recordings in between rehearsal times, the faster we ALL progress!

Website

At the bottom of the choir group emails, you will see a link to the Carnegie Choir Home Page. (It is part of my personal website) If you haven't received choir email, let me know and I'll put you on our list.

Look at the Google rehearsal calendar to find out when and where our next rehearsal is happening and how to download sheet music and practice recordings from the website. We use some dedicated Dropbox folders for this purpose. If you are not experienced with downloading from Dropbox, printing PDFs and working with MP3s, DO read the explanatory information carefully. If you have problems, feel free to contact me directly nearest tech savvy friend.

TIP: If you’re preparing to come to your first rehearsal, have a go at downloading a rehearsal recording MP3 and sheet music for one of the songs, just so you know you have got the technology organised. You may have to ask someone to help you. I would suggest “Let it Go”
a song we sometimes use as a warm-up. Start by downloading the 'melody only recording'
BEGIN HERE

Some Bits and Pieces

I suggest you organise a dedicated folder for your sheet music and bring it all with you.
Using sticky tape, tape the pages of each song into a 'book' so you can easily turn the pages and not get lost!

By the way! If you have a spare music stand hanging around,
it might be a good idea to bring it along. We never seem to have enough!

PS: Not everything we work on is new. Occasionally we will run through one of our old favourites. Obviously as a new member, you won’t know the music. I suggest you just follow along with your eyes on someone else's music, as best you can and see what you can pick up. I will usually give the choir a bit of warning as to which one of those old favourites we are going to look at to give everybody time to download the sheet music and recordings.

Songs we are working on at the moment HERE

Feel free to contact me with ANY questions
Geoffrey - Choir Leader