In the mind of a recitalist...

Recital Day: 10th May 2012

Getting ready for my recital sat in the practice room, all comfy and relaxing listening to a bit of Bananarama, 'Only you can set me free, 'cos I'm guilty, guilty as a girl can be,' very happy and content singing to myself.

So I move to go and find my warm up room and accompanist, but bumped into Leanne on the way with David (the accompanist). We wished each other good luck and they went on their way so Leanne could take her chances on the dreaded RECITAL.

So I find the room, most importantly, I'd never been in this room before. So, I decided to have a nose around and found an electric drum kit in the little room next door. Two words. GET IN! Had a little play on those, had a little play around on the piano, playing some random shit and then I had to sing through some of my songs.

David returned after playing for Leanne and we had a little sing song through my songs, then just just had a little chat about the difference between singing in a church choir and being a solo artiste!

Ros summoned us to come in.
okay, this was it. Just keep cool, oh my god, it's boiling in here. Black woolen dress and blazer is no good in sunshine and high temperatures. Okay, lets forget the weather and let's sing. Eurgh, my mouth is soo dry. It's okay, let's begin.

I hand over the books and programme, and slowly and calmly walk into place.

I breathe slowly.      In, then out.        In, then out.

As I turn and nod to David to begin.
I really don't know how I could stand there and do what I did. I just went completely into overdrive, especially in the first song.
Comments were:

• This was a pleasant and pure sound.  In general, the intonation was secure and the high notes were well supported.  You decorated the da capo appropriately and you communicated expressively.

No idea how i did it. Total blur. 

The second song, the really only fast song I was doing, so that couldn't come sooner enough. I really needed a drink and was so hot! But this is what it came out as. 

• You obviously understand the text and the Italian is good although some consonants could be lighter (t’s are a bit wet). 

yes, I know my italian isn't great thanks. 

I then sang a German song which went quite well, and was alright. 

But the dreaded song of the whole recital, Voi Che Sapete. Even typing it make me twitch. 

Being up at 2 o'clock the night before panicking as I couldn't remember the stupid words, really made me not want to do it. 

But this is what came out of it.

• This was well prepared and your interpretation was very characterful.  Your legato was ofgten good but your Italian needs checking for detail

It was done. Thank. God. 

The other two just seemed to fly by, 

with comments of 'Good atmosphere and good German.  This was a convincing interpretation.  The German b’s were too dry and sounded like p’s.  But this was a lovely heartfelt performance' 

and 'Attractive – sweet sustained lines with some moving piano singing' 


I've got some comments to work on, 'You are a naturalperformer with great vocal potential.  However, at the moment, the sound is rather small and pressed and you need to use your whiole body and open up your vocal tract to create a freer and larger sound.' So plenty of work to do! 

I couldn't wait to get out. I literally ran, and bought some chocolate and had a cold pint at my favourite local Leeds pub. 

All good. :) 

Singing your heart out

Recently we've had a specialist project week.

Now there were many choices of project you could have done; advanced pop harmony, yoga for musicians, Tudor choral workshop, collaborative composition. 

But I chose the fun option of Gospel Choir :) 

A week of sunshine and singing fab uplifting songs, yes please. 

So the week began on Tuesday with our first session. We met Nikki Allen who was leading the project week and she explained to us that we would be doing a short concert Friday afternoon. We had a little discussion of a couple of songs we wanted to have a go at. so we began starting off with a bit of oh when the saints, and swing low. Then we tried a song called leave it there. It went good for a first go at harmonies and singing together as a choir. After trying it through a couple of times we got into the swing of things and picked it up straight away.

So we cracked on with more songs learning them from memory and a few lyric sheets. It was great learning it this way, it gave so much flexibility and we loved learning the songs. Starting off with a simple song called, Leave It There, which is quite a nice song.
Moving onto, sister act songs, obviously, and some new ones we hadn't heard of before.

Through these we learnt the art of ad libbing. Oh yes, ad libbing. That was a fun time! People did really well and had a ball with it.

The best bit was the concert. We were all in high spirits as we got in our lines and got ready to sing our first song. The solo's were great, the ad libbing was brilliant and I hope we get to do this again!

http://youtu.be/jWGjqBS5tNQ check out the video of us!

Angus, thongs and a lot of laughter...

So we (Laura, Steph and myself) didn't have anything/one planned for valentine's day. How lovely! :/
What were we going to do?
Anything?
Nothing?
Fuck all?

No. We'll go and see the biggest singletons play ever!

Angus, Thongs, and Even More Snogging.

Oh yes, we went.

So, that day, I took Steph on the worst date to Nando's ever. The food was good, but the date was so awkward and I was not interested in her at all! hehe    :D

So we got ready for the theatre and we met Laura at our flat.
We walked over to the West Yorkshire Playhouse not knowing exactly what was going to happen.

We got a drink and took our places. The stage looked fab.
The actors were out on full force getting kids onto the stage to do a dance and it was hilarious seeing the dads dragged up to join in. The looks on their faces just seemed to say, mortified.

The began with a lot of giggles and huge out bursts of laughter throughout, even if the younger sister was a freaky puppet and the cat was basically a tiger.
Every time that stupid cat came on, I was like, oh fuck off with that horrible cat, oh flipping heck not that bloody cat again. It wasn't long for the saddest part of the story to come along.

The mother, who is also Alison in Miranda, yeah, I know, cool huh, phones Georgia to say her cat has been ran over. Everyone in the theatre was awww-ing, and I just cannot help but piss myself laughing. I thought it was the most hilarious thing in the whole show and I just couldn't help myself. I was shaking trying to keep it in and will never ever forget it.

the sow was fantastic and if anyone gets a chance to see it, please go, it's frigging hilarious!

Dedicated to Izzie

Well, I have been doing Beethovens 9th! Yay!

The Choral Symphony! Woo! Fucking wonderful!

So, we have to do it! It's compulsory but that's not the problem really, it's the way they are doing it with us!
They gave us a choice of what to do, this or Damien Harrons thing of weird chanting stuff. But the choral symphony is compulsory for classical students how lovely!

So we start off with the warm doing all weird shit like, giving each other massages, doing funny actions with our hands and rubbing our face, and the ball thing! oh yeah! The ball thing is my highlight of choir and Lisa loves it too! You pretend to throw a ball and have to make the noise yourself and go from as high as you can go to lowest! Bloody brilliant!

Dane, the rehearsal choir master as actually quite good, but he seriously takes the piss with the numbers thing!

COME ON!!! WHAT'S THE POINT!!!

Anyway, we always go off into sectionals with Angela! Woo!
Take the piss time!
Poor woman takes some shit! But it's so funny and so bad! But the best is her singing soprano top G haha! Bless. Repect about the whole perfect pitch thing! Hat's off to that! But that still doesn't help the fact that you can't sing that high babe!

I know a few of us come away from choir feeling pretty much like we've done nothing or its just been faffing around but I'm just not motivated at all for it!
We just end up laughing and joking around.

COME ON!! We even put chicken in the music for goodness sake! That's when you know it's going bad, when you resort to singing random shit.

Anyway, this was for Izzie, I hope she liked it! Well, she better, hopefully I'll add to this after tomorrow's practice!

BRING IT ON!!!!!!


Hope Mc xxx


P.S It's also for Lisa who beared the pain of my massage last week in choir and helped me take the piss during the rehearsal! Love you x

Full up....

I said in my last blog that I had other loves other than singing growing up.

Dancing, football, church and history were what I found most enjoyable and fulfilling.

I grew up constantly wondering what people think of me, trying to fit in and be cool.

I failed. For certain.

I just can't I can't do the perfect make up thing, I'm too boisterous for it to stay on my face. I can't do the fashion thing, if it's not comfy, it doesn't get worn. My hair is either up or down, no fancy plaits or anything.
My Mum always says I have the worst taste in clothes, and my close friends will know I have the worst taste in knickers that are humanly possible! Even Primark's cheap funky knickers are too glamorous for my taste. I love horrible fluorescent green ones or ones that have chillies on with hot hot hot on the waistband. now theyre pretty funky! (Although I have told myself I need to grow up and me and the Liberal Ginge are going to buy some proper grown up knickers!!)

My nursery school was pretty boss. East Prescott Road Nursery School. Legendary, so legendary in fact, my brother also went there too! I loved this place, being creative, being a kid, and also, being introduced into music for the first time! There's a brilliant picture of me with a boy call Andrew with some drums and a tambourine. The head of the nursery used to play Grieg to us on a regular basic, and the odd Fur Elise! This is where my taste for classical music came from.

So to Moss Pits School I went. Where music was basically singing in assembly, being made to sing in your class assemblies and singing along to stupid tapes! We sang Over the Rainbow in our year two class assembly! Lovely! I now hate this song :|

I remember one lesson was air guitaring to a rock song! That was good!
Or in PE where they had the tapes that said you had to do certain dance moves to the song.
The best experience of that is the teacher that everyone hated. Mrs Story. Who got suspended for a month. Who also blamed the keyboard van because she fell over a coat. Who smashed Mrs Rutherford's Door. Who swore at a class. Yeah, she was a bit mean. We had to pretend we were an alarm clock and run around when the music was on and shake when the alarm went off. Now I literally (not really) pissed myself when she decided to join in!

I joined the choir in the junior school with Mr Raffell running it.       This is your note.      Go.    

That's all that can be said about that!

So all through my life I've been full up with different types of music, it even helped me when I was in hospital when I was ten. I could listen to music and sing songs from choir in church and feel pretty cool.

That's all really!

Hope Mc xxx

Feeding my mind

When I was growing up it never even crossed my mind about trying to do something musical with my life. It was just there, I just enjoyed doing it.

Simple as.

I started off as a dancer, in a Saturday morning dance class, with the tutus, the shoes, the frocks, the bags, the lot! I loved it! All I used to do was dance when I was younger. If music was on somewhere, I would dance, at home, supermarket, I would dance. There's an infamous story of me dancing to Wannabe in my nan's local Sainsburys. Fab! My mum will not let forget it!

Even when my brother was born my mum would stick on the Spice Girls album and stick my brother in the car seat and he would just sit and watch for hours. He would cry if I stopped and I would try and explain to him that I needed to have a five minute break like superstars do when they perform on TV so the adverts can play! haha! I was such a little know it all, emphasis on the was!

I loved my dancing, and with it carrying on in drama over the summers after I had left dancing it was still apart of me even though now, I do feel I'm such a dad dancer.

I moved onto to loving football after finishing dancing, totally fanatical! Played util I was 17!

Loved it!

Well, if you know me still! Liverpool! :)

But when I got the music spark, I knew that I could stumble across learning about it I had to feed my mind.

I was 10 and too wise for my own good! I was sick of just remembering songs in choir

So, as I had had piano lessons now, I could read music so would challenge myself to follow the music up and down and try and count the notes. It took me a while to do this, seeing as I was only ten! But I've learnt that if someone plays an accompaniment, I can figure out quite well how a tune goes :) yay! Go me! It makes things a lot easier! But by the time I was 13, I knew everything (mostly!) about what was going on in the music, note lengths moving up and down dynamics, speeds and accents! All by my little self.
I swore by it, it helped me learn songs quicker seeing as when I was 13 I was head chorister of my church choir! :D cheesy grin is in order I think.
I was the first ever head girl. Move aside Jonny, move aside Dan, I was head chorister now.
Uh oh responsibility! Uh oh in charge! Uh oh have to live up to previous boys expectations! Eeek!

That was the scariest part.
Even now, I will look to Jonny for singing pop, not classical (definitely not his forte! Haha!!!) as he works so hard at it. I definitely had to make my mark.
When I was about 15 and music had starting growing on me and I had joined choirs at school, I had definitely took music more seriously. Trying to get stuff perfect, trying to go down to every last detail, trying not to miss rehearsals and having sneaky practices on my own in the Music department. I made sure I would challenge myself with songs, teaching myself Think Of Me from Phantom Of The Opera, and reading up on history of some composers.
At this time I had a big conflict in subjects. Music, PE, RE and History.
I adored PE at school! I'm sooo competitive when it comes to sports, I love football, hockey, netball and rounders! I could sit and watch for hours! Sometimes I wish could go back to play some school hockey! Would be fab!
History, I grew up bring so interested in history. It all started when I was in year 2 at school and we studied the Victorians, learning about all the antiques the way they lived and all the facts, I adored. I think that because I could ask questions on it and find out more and more really excited me. All the way through primary school This was the thing I loved the most. Break from the boring maths, English and science, I could find out what happened in the past. I remember getting over excited about writing about thomas Edison, I wrote 15 pages (handwritten) about him and received a special achievement award from school! At secondary school, I was exactly the same, but I was kinda the know it all kid, in year seven, with Mrs Mutch :(, I sat at the back in the middle the cool kid that sat at the back and knew the answers. Year 8, with Mrs Coulthard, sat at the front with my hand up in the air through the whole lesson. Year 9, with the same teacher, saw our summer exam going to the full two hours as I wrote 6 pages on the suffragettes and everyone had finished half an hour early and had to wait on me! GCSE saw me being the most annoying history geek, with even the student asking, 'you read your own books on history? Are you a geek? Your a geek?' thanks who that student teacher was, but you were a bitch! Also, this saw the rise in the how many questions could I ask Mrs Teesdale 'til she begged no more. She had to be my favourite teacher. I loved her so much. In As, I had her again with the hated (by me) Mrs Mutch! I hate/d this woman with a passion and she clearly gated me, at As I got an A in Mrs T's and an E in Mrs (bitch)m's, she said, 'what happened there? Don't you like me or something?' for me to answer, 'well I like her more? Yours is boring.' After being in a class with her for a year I decided that doing history at Uni wasn't for me! Especially after A2's consisted of me skipping her classes because I was ill clearly, hating both my new teacher who replaced Mrs T, I think I actually cried a little when I found that out, and couldn't stand being around Mrs M.

Around GCSE time, I got really into Christianity! Going to God camp, reading my bible again, not swearing, trying not to sin etc etc. I even fasted a few days over lent to get really into the spirit of things. Reading churchy books, praying a lot, even considering going into the church to do a theology degree! Eek! With help from people from church I was well into it. But luckily saw my senses and it's not too full in now, I don't think. I don't think I need to rub my religion in peoples faces and can be totally chilled about it.

I knew during A level music that I definitely had to put more effort into it.
So I took up playing the drums, asking for a kit for that coming Christmas and got teaching myself with help from playing in the light music group, also playing in the Jazz band and  orchestra. I loved having a breath of fresh air playing the drums. It urged me to take up piano again and get playing and working out pop songs.
I adore Music Theory, honestly ask my friend Joeleen from work, she had it from me all the time! She even comes to me for advice.

I'll  carry on talking about this at another point in the next couple of days.....

Hope Mc xxxxx

Settling Back In.

Well, I haven't blogged for over a week as I've been too busy worrying over flipping assessments. And I know every one who has been reminded me of this I'm sorry :/

DONE AND DUSTED!

This is what it consisted of:

• Technical Assessment: only had to do one song not two (thanks Jane, grrrr...), major, harmonic and melodic minor scales (fine!) and dreading sight singing which was quite a good song (so that was fine), and stupid questions, which I hope I answered ok :/
• Business Presentation: one word, pointless.
• Business Presentation Peer Assessment: three words, even more pointless.
• Duet Assessment: oh flipping heck, I can't believe I pulled this off! What on earth was I thinking when I agreed to singing Wicked?? Thank god to karaoke for I know him so well, and well done to Sam for learning Panis Angelicus in a day!

Well, I'll follow on from my last blog now;

So I had done all these competitions and now it was time to start my grades, whoopdeedoo!

I had never ever ever done a music grade before, even though I started singing many years before. I started by taking my grade 6 on the trinity exam board as I couldn't do ABRSM without my grade 5 theory, so I had no choice.

Ok, if you haven't done trinity board singing, you have an Italian vocal exercise (might exercise semitones, or jumping 6ths or something like that but with italian words), 4 songs, unaccompanied sight reading and then an aural exam.

I can hear the ABRSM people wincing now about the unaccompanied sight singing, it really isn't that bad, you literally just have to roll with it. (Exact quote from my teacher.) The vocal exercise was literally a vaccai and basically just another song you had to learn, easy? The aural exam actually was a bout music things, cadences, keys, chord stuff, so I couldn't argue with that. The song choices aren't that bad either, they are sightly harder than grade 6 ABRSM but the aural's harder to make up for it.

Well, I did that not knowing what was going to happen. Worked with Richard Lea from the Metropolitan Cathedral in Liverpool as my pianist and then turned up for my exam sang a bit, muffled my way through my aural and sight reading and got a really good grade! :)

So grade 7 couldn't come sooner, better songs, bigger challenges!

I stuck with trinity as I had was taking my grade 5 theory in the spring term, but doing my grade 7 and didn't want to push my luck!

But I taught myself grade 5 theory with the fab little red book, first steps in music theory grade 1 to 5. I swear by it even now, and when I taught it was a god sent!

So I got a distinction! Get in! I was, in my eyes, officially a music geek after teaching myself it all from 1 to 5 the proper way and not my how can I read the music to help my singing from when I was about 10! This made my life!

Well, choosing my songs was again my teacher going do you like this (her singing it) me going, no, next.

Then finding the 4 I wanted. Then tackling the vaccai, ooh leaps of 6ths, wonderful! And doing some aural practice! Cool, sorted!

So I took the exam went well and got 7 off full marks damn! all in my sight reading.

BUT.... this would not have been the case if someone hadn't checked the examiners sheet. Ooooh the silly examiner forgot to add one of my song scores onto my overall mark only giving me a merit! It had to be sent to London to be changed and checked and signed by a big boss with a letter of apology! Brilliant thank you!

hmmmm Grade 8. After discussing the whole snobbery thing with my teacher, we thought it was best to go with ABRSM on this one.
So here we go, with a totally different approach as they want different things from your singing, they have a stupid folk song part of the exam which is pointless, the aural exam is just horrific?! why oh why do I have to learn to sing against a tune? why do I have to do this absolute rubbish, but ok the sight singing was accompanied ok!

well great, one of my songs that I did for my grade 7 Trinity was on grade 8 ABRSM great there's one song, but I was so shocked to find that I did domine deus for my grade 7 and it's on diploma ABRSM?? woah! A song that I had to learn for something else on the ABRSM syllabus, great two down, a terrible song my teacher convinced me to have and then green finch which is a pretty cool song! :)
Then the folk song, 'do you know any folk song's?' said my teacher.
'Do I look like I know any?' was my answer!
Pointless I tell thee pointless.
Well, I was working when I did my singing exam, great moral support from people in work.
'Your a classical, aww that's fab' 'haha! I bet your crap!' 'Eeee what do you do that for?'
Lovely!
So the day before I would sit in the office listening to my songs to myself practising to have Sally Ann (one of the students) ask me about everyday. This was the day it went horribly wrong.
'What happens if you go wrong? What happens if you fail or your rubbish?'
I don't how or why, but I seriously felt the urge to vomit. So I politely excused myself and legged it and literally threw every up, I'm sure I forced up my stomach while I was there! Eurgh, every time someone talked to me about it I just vomited! Not good.
That evening I had a lesson, no singing happened just aural work! I don't think I would have got through an hour of singing!
The exam came, walked in, got it over and done with and walked out.
flipping heck, it was over and done.
I got home after being all cool and calm and as soon as I walked into the utility room completely broke down on the floor between the wall and the washing machine knowing that everything I'd put into this was over in half an hour. I sobbed for about an hour with my mum trying to calm me down after finding me half an hour after I'd started. I knew I had failed.

Couple of weeks later I was at my singing competition in Crosby (just on the outskirts of Liverpool), had four classes. This is one of the strictest places I know for festivals. Coming first in three classes! Yay! but the best was coming 2nd in the German lieder class (beaten by someone actually german so I kinda see it as a win) and beating a 60 year old woman who beat me in Liverpool the previous year saying how she was an expert on german lieder and how amazing it is etc etc, and then for her to come up to me and go, 'wow, Hope, I can call you you Hope, you've come on so well, since last year, oh it's great fantastic.' For me to go 'thanks so much it means so much beating you. I was sick of her!
So a little celebratory meal and Lynne texts me saying hey, you've got your grade 8, for me to answer piss off!
NO JOKE!
I had done it, at that point I realised if you try your hardest you can surprise yourself!

Hope Mc xxxx