FW: minstrel: RE: pitch (was solfege)

[Terri Spencer]

--- Patricia Yarrow <yarrowp at mscd.edu> wrote:
> On warmups, a familiar song is useful, especially if you're in a
> public
> situation.  I recommend using a late-period catch, as they tend to be
> rangy
> and everyone gets the same workout.

Ah, perhaps we should go back to _Hey Ho to the Greenwood_.  A few
years ago we taught this to the whole Barony and actually got them to
sing it at an A&S competition.  We warmed up with it for a while, but
Chorusters got so tired of it they started singing _Hey Ho to our
Pickups_ and inventing even worse filks, so we got away from it.  Maybe
we can try it on La...
 

> I like to use a warmup based on triads, but I could never get the
> group to
> sing the notes in solfege, only as "ah" or "la."  Rather than going
> up by
> half steps and keeping the triad major throughout, as most modern
> choirs do,
> I prefer staying with basic notes (all white keys on the piano) and
> letting
> them hear and feel the chord qualities.  Starting on C, solfege wise
> this
> works out to
> 
> do mi so mi do - major
> re fa la fa re - minor
> mi sol ti sol mi - minor
> fa la do la fa - major
> sol ti re ti sol - major
> la do me do la - minor
> ti re fa re ti - diminished
> do mi sol mi do - major
>
> It can also be helpful before an individual song to run the "scale"
> of the
> mode up and down, then the primary triad, then the seventh scale
> degree to
> keynote (so they can hear if you have a  leading tone or not), then
> the
> fifth scale degree below to keynote.  This grounds the group in the
> mode of
> the piece.  For example, Dorian:
> 
> re mi fa so la ti do re
> re do ti la so fa mi re
> re fa la fa re
> re do re (this is a subtonic rather than a leading tone)
> re la re
> 
> Again, this is useful whether done with the solfege or not.
> 
> Vivien

Argh! You're making my head hurt.  I'm at work in cubicle-land, so I
can't sing or even hum these out.  I've been trying to mentally
sight-sing these sequences with the solfege as notation and it's too
darn hard.  I've got pretty good relative pitch, but I'm so confused
now I can't even mentally "hear" the re-fa-la minor third.  I'll have
to try this at home with a nice piano to help.

Tara

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