No, not a typo! I’ve swapped the swimming lessons for singing lessons for July. As usual I left it to the last minute to check the location and time of the course: 7pm in South Great George’s Street. I wanted to be early and left the office with plenty of time to spare.
I arrived in town over an hour early and took the opportunity to shop for a couple of life jackets for this weekend’s trip the Achill. Having found, bought and deposited the perfect jackets into the car I made my way to the music school with 10 minutes to spare. I made my way to the reception area and introduced myself only to be informed that the class had begun 20 minutes earlier! I pulled the printout from my pocket to double check… the web site was wrong, I though I was early and the class was way past warming up.
Oh well… I found the room and slowly opened the door just enough to pop my head around. A very jolly, friendly voice welcomed me and quickly summarised what the class had covered; what a relief!
I found a seat at the back and once I had settled in I quickly surveyed the class. There were 8 in the class; 7 women and me. I’m not sure if my arrival changed things for our teacher but it certainly lowered the tone.
Having missed the group warm up exercises I started the class straight into singing. It turns out that my voice slots into the Baritone category; the type of male voice that lies between Bass and Tenor. I guess that’s a good thing; perhaps not the best but at least a bit of both worlds.
One of the reasons I wanted to do this course was to answer the question can I sing?
Apparently I can, just not very well but with practise I could be up there with the average of them!
Tonight’s new tunes:
- Fly me to the moon.
- Edelweiss.
Tonight’s takeaways:
- Articulate when singing.
- Performance directions; legato, mezzo, adagio and the like… I’ll never remember all that, I can barely remember my name in the morning…
- Pick a song to sing A Capella for next week’s class.