Half Term

Firstly a quick reminder that next week (week starting 19th May 2025) we'll be taking our mid-term break. I'm whizzing off to Italy for a couple of days with Dearest Daughter Number 1.

However, we do have a gig next Saturday, 24th May, that is the Saturday before we come back for regular rehearsals.

We'll be singing at Beccles Food Festival so we're expecting a very large audience! As per our gig at the beginning of the month, we'll very much be hoping to attract new singers for our Bungay Choir. Numbers are a tiny bit low at the moment so I, and the Bungay members, would be so grateful if you're able to come and support this event. Nip down to the Calendar section below and sign up!

I'm pleased to say that we've welcomed five new members to Bungay since our performance at the Earlsham Hall event and I'd love to do similarly well for this one. It's always so much nicer singing in a bigger group!

The Sound Of Silence

I'm very excited about how fantastic you're making The Sound Of Silence sound. It's always so nice to hear my arrangements being sung by real singers. I'm never quite sure how things are going to sound until I hear it live!

The usual range of downloads are of course available right now but I'm probably not going to do a video recap lesson until I've taught another week of it as I think it'll just be too short. Another week should finish it off so expect to see the next recap video lesson at the end of our first week back after half term.

After we've finished The Sound Of Silence I'm hoping not to divide the choir too much by starting Giant. I've delayed it so many times! It's been a while since I've looked at it so I can't even say how difficult or otherwise it will prove to be. It will however be very nice to have a more modern song in the repertoire for some of the events where we have a younger crowd, such as the All Out Festival in Thetford in the Autumn.

Gig Set Up

Thank you to everyone who came along and sung at the Midnight Walk and/or Sproughton Beer Festival. I lugged a whole load of lights down for the former so I hope that was useful for those of you using lyrics.

Sunday was something of a crush for you and I know some of you felt a bit stuck at the back. I'm only just getting to grips with "travelling light" so I'm not planning on bringing staging to gigs! Maybe we can all bring some of those aerobics steps and have the people at the back stand on those? LOL.

The tricky part is that some people like to stand at the back and be hidden and others like to stand at the front so organising the choir in terms of height, front to back, is not really practical. I'd be keen to encourage anyone who's using lyrics to consider standing a bit further back if possible, but as we keep saying, Pop Club Choir is about having fun and most definitely not about rules.

It's been suggested that we try having taller ones towards the outside and shorter ones towards the middle. On the face of it, I think this could work so perhaps we'll give that a try on Saturday 24th May at the Beccles Food Fair.

One of the strengths of our public performances is that we have so much fun. I don't know much but I do know a little about how to entertain a crowd. Having fun (or at least appearing to have fun), is in my view, one of the reasons we get such great feedback. I'm less concerned about us all being in matching "uniforms" or whether people are using their lyrics or not.

This will no doubt spark much debate and I know there's a wide divergence of views so perhaps it's one for a future questionnaire or even a Facebook poll.

New Music Player (beta)

The beta version of our new music player is now live at popclubchoir.uk/music. As the word beta suggests, this is very much still being tweaked so do please take a look and let me know what you think and where the inevitable bugs are!

You can build your own playlist and sort source songs by type. So if you just want to listen to the very loud versions, or the left-right version for those using headphones, you can easily do so.

Look for the icon for instruction on how to use it but here's a quick overview of what some of the buttons do.

Merchandise

New merch has now been ordered and should be with us fairly soon after half-term.

I've updated everything that's on it's way at popclubchoir.uk/shop so that it's available to pre-order should you wish. As always, if you'd struggling to find what you're after then just give me a shout. I'm very aware that because I'm in and out of the popclubchoir.uk/shop all the time, I find it very easy to locate stuff. You folks however are almost certainly not so it may not be quite so obvious!

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 X