Choir School

Poetry and Music

Presented by Ian Campbell

Music Director, St. Mary's Cathedral

October 21, 2017 at 2 PM

Fee $20 payable at the beginning of class
(credit, debit, cash)

A two-hour session focused on expressing the words that we sing. We will discuss four tools to help us express the poetry of our hymns and psalms.

Those tools are:

poetic meter and it’s use in singing;
phrase direction and choosing important words;
signing diction (pronunciation) vowels, consonants, diphthongs, tips, and tricks;
and finding the character and telling the story.

This session will include briefly introduce each of the four tools described above. We will then choose several songs, familiar and unfamiliar, and use these four tools to make the poetry that we are singing clear, understandable, and meaningful. We will have a short coffee and fellowship break.

Handouts will be provided, please bring a pencil (not pens).

Navigating Reading Music
Presented by Ian Campbell

Music Director, St. Mary’s Cathedral

November 18, 2017 at 1 PM

Fee $30 payable at the beginning of class
(credit, debit, cash)

This three-hour session will focus on aspects of written music that we encounter in our hymn books.

Subjects that will be covered are:

Meter and Rhythm
Bass & Treble Clef and Note Reading
Solfege, Intervals, the Scale, Keys and Chromatics

We will spend about half of the session working toward a theoretical understanding of these topics and then the second half applying this to music we sing in church. Materials and suggestions will be given to continue learning after this session. We will have a short coffee and fellowship break.

Handouts will be provided, please bring a pencil (not pens).