Songs For The Rest Of Term

We’re nearly finished with Dreams and it’s sounding fabulous. Hopefully you’re finding the Rehearsal and Recap Videos in the https://popclubchoir.uk/player section useful. We’ll complete the final outro section of Dreams next week.

I’ve been giving some thought to your feedback and lots of you feel that, whilst you’re confident about the more recent songs, you’d welcome a recap of some of the older stuff.

So for the last couple of weeks, I’m going to recap, or perhaps more accurately reteach, The Sound Of Silence. All the resources exist apart from a Rehearsal Video so it’ll be good to complete the set by adding that too.

If you have any time before next week’s rehearsal do have a listen to the audio parts and/or the recap video for your voice part. You can find those at https://popclubchoir.uk/player

Gigs And Socials

As always, there’s no need to have everything learned to come along and do a gig. You’re welcome to use your words (though I recommend you perhaps stand a bit further back if you’re doing so). Above all, come along and enjoy it. That’s what the gigs are all about.

Our next gig of the season is on April 18th at Thetford Cricket Club which, from next term, will be our new home for our Thetford Choir. It’s a lovely welcoming room and the club have strong links to the community and are, dare I say, pleased to have us.

And then in the evening we’ve got our fabulously fun Pop Club Choir Quiz 2026 at The New Green Centre in Thurston, just outside Bury St Edmunds. The bar will be open and you can bring nibbles for your table.

I’m suggesting teams of around six people. Tickets are available at popclubchoir.uk/shop and are £6 per person.

Lots more gigs have been added recently, including the Ipswich Half Marathon on 27th September, so do check the popclubchoir.uk/calendar to sign up.

I’m always pleased to hear your thoughts about gigs, and in particular whether you feel we do too many (or too few). I often remind myself that we’ve only been going two and a bit years now and as our performances improve we should be able to get better and bigger gigs.

I'm always slightly cautious about booking bigger events as I'm never quite sure how many people are going to turn up. I do often wonder if it might be better to do fewer gigs with more choir members at each one. I want to give you as many performance opportunities as possible but equally, I don’t want to do the choir a disservice by bowling up for a gig with just twenty people.

I keep an eye on how many gigs we do relative to each location venue – in case you’re interested, for 2025 it was as follows:

• Bury St Edmunds 21%
• Bungay 24%
• Ipswich 36%
• Thetford 18%

And for 2026 (so far):

• Bury St Edmunds 7%
• Bungay 20%
• Ipswich 33%
• Thetford 40%

As for social events, Bury host the quiz, Thetford the summer picnic and Ipswich the Halloween Party (though we might do something slightly different at Ipswich this year).

Bungay don’t yet have an all choirs social event so I’m looking into ideas for that.

Songs For Next Term

Bar a couple of tweaks, three songs for next term are arranged, recorded and mixed. Well, actually, you can look forward to another Pop Club Choir Mash Up for the middle song so technically, four songs in play next term. We’ll see how quickly we get through them and, pending your feedback regarding the end of this term, I may do a re-teach of existing repertoire, or let another new arrangement loose on you! To be decided!

If time allows I might make a little compilation of all three songs to play you on the last rehearsal of term. I’ll make the downloads available to everyone who comes to that final rehearsal straight afterwards and then they’ll go on “general release” a few days before the start of next term.

As usual, I’m guided by your suggestions at http://popclubchoir.uk/songs so do keep them coming.

Members’ Website

Having the songs for next terms arranged will free up some time to iron out the bugs and implement your suggestions for the website.

Our website is hard-coded from scratch which means I can tailor it to exactly what we want. However, if you’ve ever done any coding, you’ll know it’s not something you can dip in and out of. When I’ve not worked on the website for a while I frequently find myself looking at the code and having to workout what I’ve done. Ever have that feeling, “Did I write this?”

I'm really grateful to those of you who have taken the trouble to let me know about the bugs. Some of the more simple things I'm able to sort straight away. Others need a bit of an in depth look so might take a moment, so to speak.

Fliming

As you know, our wonderful team of volunteers come along and film at gigs. I know lots of you enjoy watching the performances back from the audience’s perspective.

We’ve also been doing a bit of filming at rehearsals too and many of you have been kind enough to share your thoughts in a little “talking head” video. Hopefully Tallulah will be able to get a few more of you on camera over the next couple of weeks.

At some point I’ll be putting this all together in a little promo video to show to prospective members to give them a little bit of a flavour of what Pop Club Choir is all about, both at Rehearsals and at Gigs.

If you have any ideas or would like to share your thoughts about I’d love to hear from you.

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