Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day

This is Herndon Middle School Chorale performing Audrey Snyder's arrangement of "Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day." Since we're working with a talented girls choir, I thought it would be nice to find a choir that was not at that level. It also ties into some of the Gackle readings we did last semester. This probably isn't the worst I could find, but it also isn't the best.
The most obvious problem to me was intonation. At times it seemed sharp and at other times it was a bit under pitch. Some individual voices sound almost too pointed and needed more space to mellow out the sound. It also sounded as though they could not get over the top note in the melody. The biggest problem with that I think, is the fact that that note lies right around the second break. Since the rest of the phrase could be reached with a middle voice, they didn't want to/didn't know to flip the sound into their head voice. Later on, as the key changed and they moved into a higher part of their voice they flipped into this head voice and their intonation improved.
Their blend across sections was not all there either. When the lower part had the melody you could barely hear them over the sound of the sopranos on the accompanying part.
They have relatively good tone. In some parts you can hear the breathiness Gackle talks about. However, parts of it sound strained to me, as though the girls are reaching up for the note from below, instead of coming at the note from above.