Songs

That’s Days in the bag! I’ll have a little recap of it next week including asking you to sing through section by section, so do have a moment with the Resources if you’re able. All the usual audio parts are already up of course, plus the full Recap Video. I should have the third and final Rehearsal Video up at some point over the weekend. So, you’ll have a full set of Resources from early next week at the latest.

Our next song is a rather ambitious mash up of Mumford and Son’s I Will Wait and Haddaway’s 90s banger, What is Love. I’m looking forward to playing the whole arrangement for you, though those of you who were at the final rehearsal of last term will have already heard a snippet.

We’ll do a couple of weeks on it, then a week off for half-term, then a couple of weeks when we come back.

Lyrics and music scores (for those that use them) are already up at popclubchoir.uk/resources and the normal audio downloads will be there as soon as I’ve had a chance to play the whole track to everyone.

In the meantime, do familiarise yourself with the original versions. You can listen to them here:

• I Will Wait
• What Is Love

We’ve got one final week of work to do on Sound Of Silence. I’m enjoying spending time getting this one licked into shape and I hope you are too. I’m happy to hear your thoughts on what you’d like to tackle by way of our next ongoing Recap song – obviously something from this term’s set list – but it’ll be something more upbeat if only to provide a bit of variation.

You’ve shared lots of ideas for Hot Hopefuls which has been really useful. Some of them may come back as full-blown arrangements, others may never see the light of day again! This week we’ll be whizzing through The Proclaimers’ 500 Miles – making it a double Proclaimers term as our final song will be their fabulous anthem, Sunshine On Leith.

As always, the challenge is to find songs you can get all the way through with out any preparation. There are so many songs where we can all belt out the chorus but then when you get to the verse, or the tricky middle eight, no one’s quite sure what happens.

Gigs

The busy gig season is now upon us and can I encourage you to mark your availability at popclubchoir.uk/calendar and of course, to keep it updated if circumstances change. I don’t think it’s wide of the mark to say that Pop Club Choir has more gig opportunities than most and I monitor how many we’re doing relative to each of our four locations.

You don’t have to be a maths wizard to work out that it’s not going to be possible to have all the gigs be on your doorstep, unless you want to run your musical director absolutely ragged. I’d definitely encourage you to use the WhatsApp chats to organise car shares for gigs further afield and to ‘make a day of it.’ Most of gigs are at an event of some sort (I’m very much looking forward to Becccles Food Fayre. Yum yum!) so treat yourself to a day out with friends with a bit of singing thrown in.

I’m very excited about Sproughton Beer Festival this weekend. It’ll be Pop Club Choir’s third appearance here and you’ve turned out in force with a strong 60 people signed up.

I’m determined to get us lined up neatly in rows for this one. The image at the top of this post is supposed to represent how we’ll be positioned. If you’re coming along, have a think about whether you want to be on the front row or not, whether you’re using your words and how tall you are. The plan is to put you in position section by section. If I could encourage you to gather by voice part, stay off the stage area until we’re ready to get you in place and then I’ll bring you on and line you up in nice neat rows. Sadly, I’ve not got any military training but if there are any former Sergeant Majors among you then let me know!

Finally, a reminder that you don’t have to be word perfect by any means to come and do the gigs. I’m happy for people to use their words – and I suggest, if you’re still ‘on the book’ that you plonk yourself in the second row – and if you watch me, you’ll know what’s going on. So, even if you’re just mouthing the words, you’ll at least look like you know what you’re doing.

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