Just slogged through the most exhausting choral rehearsal I've experienced in a long time!

[woodsprite]

I've been in the group for over 40 years. Tonight was the battle of the sopranos - or rather 2 sopranos. We have 8 - 5 firsts, and 3 seconds. We were struggling with intonation, not being helped by the piano needing to be tuned, and with blending. Thankfully one of the singers had an old fashioned pitch pipe and when we sang without the piano the intonation was better - not as good as we can be, but better. Still had problems with blending because the a couple of singers were not listening to each other or for the other singers. I just totally backed off, so did the director's wife, and my friend. I asked a few questions that pointed out "I think the sopranos are having a problem agreeing on that note. Can we hear it?" or "I think we're trying to sing an F instead of the E that's written".

But I'm exhausted and needed to vent. I knew you all would understand. I'm going to take my frustration out on my needlefelting (stabbing wool into play food for Christmas presents) and spend some time looking up some choral exercises to get us listening to see if it helps with our blend. We started out in a mixed arrangement. The director could hear issues so a few weeks ago he moved us into sections thinking it would help blending. Our first concert is Dec 14th, so we'll see how it goes.

Oh well, thanks for reading my vent.