Chapter Fifty Eight: Pearls Coming Into Our Own

I love my quartet. I love singing with them. I love hanging out with them. I love that we are all truly the part we sing. Steph is a theory nut and music teacher, so hello baritone. Katie is the cute young blond with the high voice, so tenor in the house. Sabrina has this crystal-clear tone and scads of personality, my dear sweet lead. And I have more usable low notes than anyone else, am a harmony and rhythm nut, and think I'm the lead, so whats bass-ier than that.

What's been really great about over journey since our first contest is how well we are starting to gel on multiple levels. We've now been singing with each other long enough to know how everyone learns and what we need to "get" different things. We also found that its way more effective for us to sing for 45 minutes every week than a whole day once a month. We're starting to hit our rehearsal stride - learning what works for us.

After contest we decided to focus primarily on our uptune. We went through it to look for any notes that had migrated over time and to find places that were becoming easier to sing because our vocal production had improved. We found places to add in dynamic contrast and change the interpretation plan to make the song more our own. And we spent a lot of time dueting to really work on understanding how our parts fit with one another as well as to build confidence in singing them without all the other parts. The other great thing about all this duet work was again learning who really listens for what. Steph and Katie are the best at looking at the paper and telling you if you've sung a wrong note or not. Sabrina and I are great at listening for rhythms and interp. And all of us can catch each other when we fall out of producing our best sound or aren't matching up on our vowels.

For me the greatest part about all of the detail work we did on the uptune was that when we finally went to work on the ballad it was automatically singing at a higher level. All of the tuning our ears had been doing and working on better vocal production and breath support - it all transferred over. And yes there were still spots where we had to check for funny notes and we still had to really work out the interp plan, but we didn't have to go back to square one. It was so encouraging for us.

Next up for us is a very exciting spring. We have our first big gig singing at a wedding and contest two weeks later. Between the new a cappella arrangements for the wedding and continued work and coaching on the contest set we're going to be some very polished Pearls.

Fall Fun - Cultured Pearls at Steph's Bachelorette Party :)


Fall Fun - Cultured Pearls on Steph's Wedding Day