Not Hymns Ancient and Modern

S(w)ing In - Three Country Dances - Siyahamba - Pokarekare Ana - Eriskay Love Lilt - Viva la Vida

And a surprise warmer-upper: thank you Rachel! A very welcome addition. 

We've nudged the format a bit, to ensure we have some new stuff to learn and plenty more singing of old stuff, and also to ensure our precious MDs don't get worn to a frazzle, cos they have been. This talking and teaching into a quasi-vacuum is quite a strain and not an easy trick to bring off either, so we'll have less of each and more of both - MDs that is - they'll take turns running each section.

We've also started flagging up in advance what's on the menu for the next session and noted it and all the materials needed in a file dated for the next rehearsal in our dropbox storage. And we'll email and whatsapp that a few days before.

Behind the scenes there has been a lot of time and trouble spent planning, recording, editing and hair-pulling. I've been witness to some of it and must say "Thank you both A and E". The hair-pulling in my case was unnecessary.

Tonight: Elinor improved our S(w)ing In and the Three Country Dances round now feels much more knowable and classy, especially against E's recorded tracks. Then an airing for Siyahamba, totally easy once you ignore the funny words.

Anne updated us on the Sylvie video progress - all should be revealed next week - and invited us to look at Bandlab (the pic above), where we might venture to offer our own recorded voice tracks for songs old and new to our repertoire. We'll return to this.

The second half was filled with revising and singing through some recent arrivals and a Chorovino fave:  Pokarekare Ana, Eriskay Love Lilt and Viva la Vida. We sung Vida to a bandlab four voice track recorded by four of us, still a bit rough round the edges, but a useful addition.

We hope you enjoyed the new format. Anything we can do to improve our sessions, please do tell us.