competition done.

It was okay. We came second last.

And second.

There were only 3 choirs in our heat.

The christian kids beat us. (As they should have. They get more singing practice.) They got 89%. We got 88%. The other choir got 87%. They gave us all silver awards. I think they grouped us with like choirs. I watched some of the heat before ours - two of the three choirs in that heat were seriously good.

I had arranged the kids into 5 rows. Every child had a row number and position number. The altos were at one end and the sops at the other. Something went wrong when they filed onto the stage and there were only 4 rows. The sops and altos were all mixed in together. I couldn't lead the different groups. I realised when it was too late to fix. I think everyone ended up singing anything.

But they behaved so well. Every eye on me all the time. All 58 of them. No wriggling. Champions.

keep your lambs trimmed and burning

This afternoon Joel asked if I could buy Keep Your Sheep on itunes so he could listen to it. We sang it on Friday at choir and he likes it a lot. It took me a while to work out what he meant.

Bill Grogan's Goat

Bill Grogan's goat
was feeling fine
ate three red shirts
from off the line.


Bill took a stick
gave him a whack
and tied him to
the railway track.


The whistle blew
the train drew nigh
Bill Grogan's goat
would surely die.


He gave a groan
of awful pain
coughed up the shirt
and flagged the train.

trad.

I taught this to my year 1-3 choir today. Worked.

a question

Do African American and Hispanic kids have deeper voices than Anglo kids? I've been you-tubing around and Anglo children's choirs seem to be singing half an octave higher than AA and H choirs. What's this a reflection of? A biological thing? Or the fact that Anglo choirs are using repertoire from back in the good old days when people wanted to sing high?

I prefer the deeper sound.

Baningati Bye Away

I might try this with one of my choirs this week.

From here.

first song for year 1-3 choir

top 5 songs I'd like my choir to sing in 2011

1. I'll stand by you (Pretenders)


2. Shackleton (Paul Jarman)


3. Something I write. Maybe with a planetary theme.

4. La-ti-do-re

5. Abide with me

long legged sailor

This is how my choir sounded in their warm up at 7.30 this morning.

bad songs

As I've mentioned, I'm starting a year 4-5 choir at our kids' school next term.  I'm quite excited about possible repertoire.  There is so much fantastic Australian stuff available.  These guys publish great choral music.  I'm a big fan of Paul Jarman's beautiful work and I also had them send me samples of Ian Munro's settings of Andy Griffiths' verses.  (For the uninitiated, Andy Griffiths penned books like 'The Day My Bum Went Psycho" and "Just Disgusting" and is renown for his ... childish... humour.) To make the choir appeal to 10 year old boys, I thought it would be good to start with some funny and slightly on-the-edge songs.  The Munro/Griffiths samples I looked at were good, but harmonically and rhythmically too ambitious.  So I thought I'd try my own.

Take this delightful little rhyme from Andy Griffiths' Bad Book:

Penny McRose picked her nose
Morning, noon and night.
She picked it until her head caved in
And her family died of fright.

Being such a rhyme, I thought I'd wed it to a classic tune.  Like this one:




Can you see how right it is?