Sunday, August 10, 2003

Fa So La, Round II

Shape note singing was fun today. That's my second time now. I don't really know that I'm any better yet, but at least I'm feeling a little more comfortable with it. Something that amuses me about the shape note songs is the way they're named. Some of them have normal titles that relate somehow to the actual lyrics, but a great many don't. A lot have names of places, and some just have completely random names. Seriously -- I saw one called Lloyd. Very silly. Another interesting thing is how compact the notation is, which makes it tricky sometimes to figure out which bit of the music to sing next. On the songs with fugues in them, the different parts may have repeats marked in different places, to save the need to write it all out the long way. That was strange the first time I saw it, but I think it's sort of cool, too. My throat's a little tired again. Hopefully it will start getting better at this singing stuff that it's not used to. But there's probaby also a lot I ought to learn about warm ups and taking care of one's voice.

The rest of my busy-ness plans for today (the dancing part of them anyway) have gone kaput, so it will probably be a laid back afternoon for me. Just as well, I suppose, since I was feeling less and less like doing the required driving.

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