GOS Practice 16 July

National Day performance is on 6 August! That's just a little over 2 weeks left as of writing this post. It's Isaac posting again. We had full attendence on 16 July. We started practice at around 3.16pm with some warm-ups. However, this lessons' warm-ups were different, as they were led by two of the choristers! These two brave souls were Diana and Ragavi. They led us through some breathing exercises as well as stretching.

After warm-ups, we introduced something called "Story Sharing". Wenye started things of with a story about his ice-cream cake, then Darren came up to share his story. He started out with how he was excited to come to school, then when we asked if anything interesting happened that day, he mentioned about how a water bottle dropped and broke. Shaun's turn came, this time talking about the opening ceremony that took place the previous week. He didn't go for it, and was instead sleeping and playing at home. He also mentioned how he was happy on stage during the Chinese New Year song! Noel spoke about what she saw when she was on stage, as well as expressed her excitement of being on stage. She saw the mics, as well as her parents in the audience which made her happy and excited. Ravin mentioned that it was his first time performing, and that he enjoyed the clowns at the opening ceremony. It's heartening to see the kids happy about all the small things in life, while to some of us, performing on stage might just be a 10minute affair to put up a show for the audience (of course, I myself personally cherish my stage time and can't get enough of it).

At 3.32pm. we proceeded to lessons proper. We did a recap on the techniques, namely tone, breathing and posture. Then, we got the students to turn and face the mirror so that they could observe themselves as they sang. A few points for them to note were to make sure they were smiling/mouth in yawn shape, that their posture was correct, and that they were breathing correctly (i.e. chest should not jerk and shoulders should not move). This would help them when they are practicing at home as they would know what to look out for. Wenye then gave all of us a surprise when he started teaching on respiration. I, for one, was personally amused because I had bio that day and we had just received a detailed labeled diagram of what he was showing on screen.

After the short bio lesson, we proceeded to a short activity to teach the students on how to constipate the sound. We got them to imagine they were pushing something heavy, and then got them to turn around and push against each other palm-to-palm (no children were hurt in this activity). We then added in the "hee!" sound to finish it off. Wenye made a comment at this point that got all the members laughing "Make a 'hee!' sound like a sumo wrestler BOXING" yippee. Back to business, we also got them to ensure that they were suing their stomach to make the "hee" sound. We spent a short while on tone (I scored zero marks/one million to 1-3-5-3-1) thereafter.

At 4.01pm, we proceeded to We Are Singapore. We recapped a few details, then proceeded to sing through the song. The first attempt sounded out of pitch, but the second try sounded alot better. After that, we gave a few pointers, namely:

• Roar when singing "roar"
• Ritatando at the last "Singaporean"
• Sing with pride and patriotism
• Pointed out that some were shouting instead of singing
• Noted that singing slower does not mean sadder

We then had a short break, and resumed practice at 4.21pm. Our back from break activity this time was the ball throwing activity. We got them to sing "Wheee~~", but this time with different sized balls,with size proportional to volume. Hence, the volume would increase as the size of the ball increased. Then we got them to breathe out "underwater", and also do different animal laughters like chickens and dogs. We went back to "We Are Singapore" once, testing them on remembering their pitch, and then moved on to "This Is Home".

Basically for "This Is Home", some knew it well, but some didn't. Hence, you could hear uneven and uncertain singing. We noted to them that this was an emotional song, about being thankful to Singapore, as compared to We Are Singapore. After working on the song, we removed the lyrics. This led to split pitches throughout, which was a sign that some of them were still uncertain about the song. We moved on to recaps, before Miss Phoon conducted an activity so that we could hear each of them sing.

Recap:

• Warm-ups
• Breathing
• Open mouth
• Smile
• Sit up straight 

Miss Phoon's Activity:

The game consisted of 4 lines:

1. Hello Doggy, where's your bone? (5-5-3-3-5-5-3)
2. Someone stole it from my home. (5-5-3-3-5-5-3)
3. Who stole your bone? (5-3-5-3)
4. I stole your bone. (5-3,6-5-3)

Basically, the whole choir would sing line 1, and then a chosen student (the Doggy) would stand infront of the choir, back facing them, and sing line 2. Then choir would then sing line 3, and a selected student (thief) from in the choir would sing line 4. Then the Doggy had to guess who the thief was. This allowed us to hear each student sing individually, as well as get the choir to know each others voices in a fun and interactive manner.

Okay, this is Isaac, signing off. Bye!