Dreams

Fantastic work on Dreams everybody! We've now completed the whole song. If you missed any sessions or just want a refresher you'll find Recap Videos and Rehearsal Videos in the popclubchoir.uk/player

If you're new here, you might appreciate a bit more explanation. Recap Video are taught on a part by part basis. So, you’ll see the Recap Videos for each song for just your voice part. Rehearsal Videos are recorded at rehearsals, usually towards the end of each week when I ironed out any tricky corners of the teaching. I usually edit out any particularly embarrassing fluffs I make but, other than that, it will be exactly what happened in the rehearsal.

Obviously the focus is to make the sound as clear for you as possible on the night, rather than get the best quality audio for the recording. What works well in a “live” scenario is almost never what works well in a controlled, studio environment. So, where time allows I try and add subtitles. However, as with all things video-related, adding subtitles is anything but rapid so it does mean it might take me a day or so to get it out.

As always, PDFs (scores, lyrics) are in the popclubchoir.uk/resources section only, video is in the popclubchoir.uk/player section only, and audio is in both.

Next week, the plan is to do a re-teach of The Sound Of Silence but inevitably, I’ll be wanting to sing through Dreams once more. If you have any time and can have a quick listen through both songs on the day of the rehearsal it makes my life a lot easier (and your learning too, in my experience).

Teasers

I hope you’ve enjoyed my cryptic and not so cryptic teasers of the songs we’ll be learning next term. Check out our socials, facebook.com/popclubchoir and instagram.com/popclubchoir if you’ve not yet had a guess.

However all will be definitively revealed at next week’s rehearsals in the form of a short audio montage (is that a thing?). I absolutely love playing our new arrangements for you and I’m excited to see what you make of them.

Gigs And Socials

We could definitely do with a few more sign-ups for our next gig on April 18th at Thetford Cricket Club. As mentioned last week, Thetford Cricket Club will be our new home for the Thetford Choir from next term so it’d be great to have a good turn out for the gig so we can make a really great first impression.

Do grab tickets for the Pop Club Choir Quiz 2026 which is taking place that same evening (18th April) at The New Green Centre in Thurston, just outside Bury St Edmunds. I’m looking forward to hearing your amusing team names and crowning the 2026 Quiz Champions with some fabulous t-shirt based prizes!

As always, the bar will be open and you can bring nibbles for your table.

Teams of around six people – either make up a team with others, or just come along and we’ll organise you into a team.

Tickets are available at popclubchoir.uk/shop and are £6 per person.

Website and App

With the arrangements done for next term I’ve managed to have a few days on the website player page this week. I won’t bore you with all details but the highlights are as follows:

• New small, medium and large buttons so you can more easily resize the player
• Individual files are now sortable by name, type and date-added
• Large transport controls and styling tidied up so they look the same on all devices
• Fixed a bug with the looping control
• Increase the fade out time for the transport controls

Finally, I’ve added keyboard controls (when using the site on a computer) which should make the site more accessible. Thanks to Ipswich Lower Alto, Tanya, for her wise counsel in this matter. I’ve spent quite a bit of energy trying to get the site as accessible as possible so I’m hoping this will be a really useful addition to anyone without 20:20 vision.

Sighted-users may also find the controls easier than diving in with the mouse:

As well as these visible features, I’ve also done a lot of work on trying to make playback a bit more reliable, particularly on a mobile device. Until the dedicated smartphone app is completed this will never be 100% reliable but it should now play a bit more nicely with Car Play and there’s fair to middling chance that, when your phone locks automatically, the audio will keep playing.

Merchandise

If you’ve seen my WhatsApp messages, this won’t be news, but the prices we’re paying for hoodies and polos has shot up with the most recent order. So sadly that means I’m going to need to edge prices for both up by a fiver. Obviously, I don’t want drop this on you without warning so it won’t happen until the end of this month. Do get your order in now if you’d like to beat the price rise.

Incidentally, one option that a few of you have suggested is that we set up a shop whereby you order directly from the manufacturer. Obviously this would cut down the admin from my side, and free up a considerable amount space in my rather pokey study/studio. However, it looks like this would end up being quite a bit more expensive for you folks (and you’d be buying at “one-off” prices). So, for now we'll keep things as they are.

If you have any questions then do get in touch. You can email me at ed@popclubchoir.uk, or WhatsApp, call or text on 07973 110075.

Ed