Thursdays from 12th September 2024 at 7.15pm
| Singing is good for you – and it’s great fun to sing with other men. We at Shannon Express are always keen to welcome new singers into our chorus. Our next 5-week FREE Sing In Harmony course – starting on Thursday 12 September – is intended to give potential members a head start in the process. The course leader is an experienced harmony singer, chorus director and vocal skills teacher. He’s run many of these courses before. The course will cover the main singing skills needed to sing in a four-part harmony group, so you won’t be asked to sing on your own! To help you along, you’ll have an experienced ‘buddy’ in the Shannon Express chorus to talk to and ask questions. Each week will start at 7.15pm with a short vocal and physical warm-up. The rest of the time (up to about 9.00pm) will be a mixture of instruction and group practise. We’ll use two short songs as the vehicles to consolidate learning. These will be I’m A Believer and All My Loving. At the end of each session, we’ll have some social time with the Shannon Express chorus – and sing the course songs. You don’t need to be able to read music: we sing from memory anyway! We’ve all learned loads of songs throughout our lifetimes simply by listening to them. Our process is the same – but over a much shorter time! To help you learn the two songs, you will access ‘teach tracks’ on our website that you can download or record onto your mobile phone. We’ll show you how to do this. There is quite a bit to get through each week, so you will have some practice to do at home to learn your allocated harmony part for the two songs. Your buddy will be available to help as well. We prefer to do most of our singing standing up, but let us know if you have any mobility issues so that we can make it easy for you. This is what we’ll do over the five weeks: 🎵 Week 1 - (12 September) After some introductions, you’ll join the Shannon Express chorus for a ‘warm-up’ and some unison singing. We’ll see if your voice is naturally high, low or in-between: this will show us which of the four voice parts might suit you best. We’ll show you how to stand properly for singing and also how to breathe well. You will sing a short ‘tag’ in four-part harmony before you go home. You’ll have some homework to do! |
| Week 2 - (19 September) We’ll work on making your voice ‘big’ – what we call ‘resonant’. We’ll start work on the first of the two course songs – both separately with all the men in your voice part, and then as a group. We’ll join the Shannon Express chorus at the end of the session. You’ll need to keep up with the homework, but you’ll learn the songs easily if you practise each day. |
| Week 3 - (26 September) This week is the opportunity to really get familiar with the two songs and develop confidence in singing your part. You’ll do this in groups – with your buddies – and then in with the Shannon Express chorus. |
| Week 4 - (3 October) It’s important that we have good unity of notes and words, so we’ll look at the way we shape the sounds to get a good blend of voices. We’ll apply this to the course songs and work on them ready for concert week. |
| Week 5 - (12 October) This is concert week. Friends and family can hear you sing the two songs with Shannon Express – maybe twice! – before tea and cake! You’ll rehearse first with Shannon Express and then, after a short break, Shannon will sing a few songs before you join them to perform the two course songs. |
| After that….Week 6 - (17 October) If you have enjoyed it so far and want to find out more about singing regularly with Shannon Express, come along and see us again and we’ll explain what’s involved. Shannon will be carrying on with its normal rehearsal which ends at 10pm. Some men go for a drink afterwards at a local pub… |
Our sister chorus, PHOENIX, meets on Tuesday evenings in the same Stratton School venue.
Barbershop choruses and quartets generally belong to BABS, The British Association of Barbershop Singers. www.singbarbershop.com
