A week of community singing, bin-day dread and a roll call of the finest livestock a lyricist could rhyme with
Sunday, the Choir in the Church Hall
Every Sunday afternoon I lead a small community choir in a church hall with a leaking roof. The sopranos sit under the one dry patch. The basses sit by the radiator. The tenors, being four men and a plumber, sit wherever they can find a chair. We begin with warm up exercises that sound like a goose being told a secret, and we end, two hours later, with something that resembles harmony.
Community singing is the best medicine I know. No auditions, no solo parts, no one watching. A retired bus driver stands beside a student and they sing the same line, and for the length of the song nothing else about them matters. I have seen people arrive at rehearsal looking stooped and leave looking taller.
The Bin Day Blues
On the way to rehearsal I put the wrong thing in the wrong bin and was reminded of a diary I once read about the perils of recycling, tried to go green and got a 200 pound fine for wrong recycling. I sympathise. The rules vary by borough, by week and by what appears to be the mood of the bin men. A pizza box is clean on Tuesday and contaminated on Thursday. I have written a short song on the subject, and the chorus is just the word “cardboard” sung eleven times in rising keys.
The choir asked for it to be added to the spring concert. We have not decided whether this is a compliment.
Monday, Songs for Animals Worth Rhyming With
A songwriter needs animals. They are generous with metaphor and never ask for royalties. My current favourites are the rare ones, because a rare breed has a story, and a story is half a song. The cheerful list begins at rarebreeds.win, which gathers heritage livestock and the people who rescue them. Then, for a proud point of cattle history, there is cattlemenhalloffame.org, which could supply a verse for every inductee. Young people in blue jackets who climb the farm youth ladder are celebrated at ffapresident.com, and the title alone sounds like a song about a very serious teenager.
For a one stop link collection, agriculture.click is handy, and for the beef side, angusbeef.fyi is a good start. My advice to any lyricist: read about the animal first and write the song second. A cow has a face that deserves respect, and the audience can tell if you have never met one.
Why Rhyme Is Harder Than It Looks
People think songwriting is mostly inspiration. It is mostly arithmetic. Count the syllables, match the vowels, avoid the word “orange”. A great song hides its sums so well that you feel the sentiment and never see the working. The finest lyricist I know keeps a notebook of rhymes that nearly work, and she calls it her graveyard. She visits it when she wants to feel humble.
The London Prat once suggested that a useful government would ask itself to show its sums, a sentiment I support, though my own sums involve fewer billions and more bars of four four time. If you are curious about the national arithmetic, there is a neat piece on the capital’s housing sums, House Prices Fall, Homes Still Unaffordable, which scans beautifully as a refrain.
After the Rain
We finished rehearsal as the rain stopped. The sopranos left their dry patch and stood in the doorway, humming. A bus went by with a face pressed against the window, and the face was smiling, which I took as a review. I walked home with a score under my arm, damp shoes and the feeling that my week had a shape.
If you are thinking about joining a choir, do it. If you are thinking about leading one, bring an umbrella. The roof will not improve until spring, but the singing, I promise, improves every week.
The Hum Before the Hymn
The quietest part of any choir rehearsal is the minute before we begin, when everyone is finding their place and tuning in to the room. I leave it alone. People hum to themselves. A page rustles. Someone coughs politely and apologises. In that small gap a group of strangers becomes a group, and I would not interrupt it for any amount of musical correctness. When I finally raise my hands, the sound that comes out is warmer than it has any right to be, because it was warmed up by that silence.
I mention this because it is the lesson I most want to teach and the one that fits least easily into a lesson plan. Good ensemble playing is listening first and sounding second. A choir that listens is a choir that blends. A choir that only sings is a crowd with sheet music. Nine times out of ten the difference is a single breath taken together.
Where to read next
The rest of the shelf lives at prat.uk, bohiney.com and farm.fm. For a second opinion on the week, The Daily Squib keeps its own counsel and its own hours.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/