Boooooooorn freeeee - as free as the wind bloooooows!
We had our first official practise today of the medley we're doing for the Born Free wildlife charity's 25th anniversary concert at the Albert Hall - in London, baby! ;-)
The home-rehearsal tracks were already up on the website, so I'd been listening to them all last night - as anyone who was talking to me at the time knows ;-) It's gonna be hella fun to perform, but we are going to have to put so much work into rehearsing! We've got about six weeks or so (we never seem to have much time to get ourselves up to speed!) and we're only supposed to be practising every other week, in our lunchbreaks.... If my manager starts getting funny with me, I think I may cry.
Anyways, today we had a very fast run-through of the whole thing without attempting any harmonies, to get a feel for how it all gels together, then we just about had time to work on three sections of it; The Lion Sleeps Tonight, Set Them Free and Eye of The Tiger (spotting a theme here? *grins*) They're not difficult, but I was surprised at just how tricky The Lion Sleeps Tonight proved to be! All we're doing is a handful of the 'Whimaweys', one verse and the 'whimaweys' again - the sopranos and the men have to do the little trilly stuff over the top too though! Hee! But the men's 'whimawey' is pitched disconcertingly close to ours, which always throws us off a bit - hey, it's not like we're pros! Thankfully they moved us from the middle of the choir to the opposite side from the guys, which helps so much! Now we don't have the men booming away on our right and the sops trilling away to our left! *grins*
I'm a little frustrated about 'Eye Of The Tiger', though; they appear to have googled the lyrics and, tragically, the first website on the list has the words wrong! For example: "It's the Eye of the Tiger, it's the cream of the fight"? Surely that should be "Thrill of the fight".... and that's not the only error in the song. *sighs* It was driving me nuts as I can't help but sing the words I know, but they've gone to all the effort of making the practise MP3s and lyric sheets and stuff.... how pissed off would they be if we pointed it out? *sigh*
There were also a couple of reps from Born Free who turned up to tell us a little more about the gig - which sounds like it was something of a Waynestock as they booked the Hall claiming they had all these celebs taking part, then crossed their fingers they would actually agree to it! *laughs* If you book them, they will come....
Their plan is also to get everyone on the stage at the conclusion, to sing the charity's theme song 'Born Free' - which means that I would be on stage with all these famous people! Like Bryan Adams! Nick Knowles! Gail off of Corrie! Ronny Corbert! *faints* ;-)
I'm really looking forward to this now, though I can imagine that in about a month I'm gonna be sooooo pissed off with 'Can You Feel The Love Tonight' - the harmonies on that are heartstoppingly complex for a group at our level. But we can do it! *determined nod*
The home-rehearsal tracks were already up on the website, so I'd been listening to them all last night - as anyone who was talking to me at the time knows ;-) It's gonna be hella fun to perform, but we are going to have to put so much work into rehearsing! We've got about six weeks or so (we never seem to have much time to get ourselves up to speed!) and we're only supposed to be practising every other week, in our lunchbreaks.... If my manager starts getting funny with me, I think I may cry.
Anyways, today we had a very fast run-through of the whole thing without attempting any harmonies, to get a feel for how it all gels together, then we just about had time to work on three sections of it; The Lion Sleeps Tonight, Set Them Free and Eye of The Tiger (spotting a theme here? *grins*) They're not difficult, but I was surprised at just how tricky The Lion Sleeps Tonight proved to be! All we're doing is a handful of the 'Whimaweys', one verse and the 'whimaweys' again - the sopranos and the men have to do the little trilly stuff over the top too though! Hee! But the men's 'whimawey' is pitched disconcertingly close to ours, which always throws us off a bit - hey, it's not like we're pros! Thankfully they moved us from the middle of the choir to the opposite side from the guys, which helps so much! Now we don't have the men booming away on our right and the sops trilling away to our left! *grins*
I'm a little frustrated about 'Eye Of The Tiger', though; they appear to have googled the lyrics and, tragically, the first website on the list has the words wrong! For example: "It's the Eye of the Tiger, it's the cream of the fight"? Surely that should be "Thrill of the fight".... and that's not the only error in the song. *sighs* It was driving me nuts as I can't help but sing the words I know, but they've gone to all the effort of making the practise MP3s and lyric sheets and stuff.... how pissed off would they be if we pointed it out? *sigh*
There were also a couple of reps from Born Free who turned up to tell us a little more about the gig - which sounds like it was something of a Waynestock as they booked the Hall claiming they had all these celebs taking part, then crossed their fingers they would actually agree to it! *laughs* If you book them, they will come....
Their plan is also to get everyone on the stage at the conclusion, to sing the charity's theme song 'Born Free' - which means that I would be on stage with all these famous people! Like Bryan Adams! Nick Knowles! Gail off of Corrie! Ronny Corbert! *faints* ;-)
I'm really looking forward to this now, though I can imagine that in about a month I'm gonna be sooooo pissed off with 'Can You Feel The Love Tonight' - the harmonies on that are heartstoppingly complex for a group at our level. But we can do it! *determined nod*