Wrablers Rehearsal Notes 04.08.26
Chair: JB
Attendees: JB, SC, RM, CS, MR, PV
Apols: RS, WT, LS, PS, MX
So, we were 6.
Robin warmed us up with one of his inimitable creations.
Warm up song – Route 66 – Sang through a couple of times. Delicious harmonies getting tighter. Altos found it easier to hear where we were going wrong without the Sopranos there to distract us! Useful session.
White Winter Hymnal – Sounding good. Timings and repeats all sorted now. Colin representing the basses was resolute about staying in the lower register, [sounding like wolves in the distance in the snow. JB], and others agreed, whatever Rob says when he gets back. Ha ha.
Dance! – Special thanks to Marcus for his help with this. Extra tuition for JB on the Sop ch-ka, ch-ka section (almost there!), and with all of us in the Group 2 moves – again almost there! It really helped doing this in a line as opposed to the mirror effect watching the YouTube videos.
Break – Robin’s birthday was duly celebrated with a fab and gluten-free cake, actual bubbly as opposed to the Fairy liquid ‘bubbly’ depicted on the fine choice of card. Robin asking ‘shall I wait in here’ at the start of the break indicates the surprise element may have gone out of these ceremonies to be replaced by expectation even? But we will carry on anyway.
Tourdion – Coming along nicely. Seems structurally sound ie we all finish when we’re supposed to. One thing is we tend to slip in pitch probably from Denk-a-denk (Intro) onwards. Something for the basses to sort out. Marcus and Phil sorted a timing problem in their Do-doo section. JB and Sandy held up the women’s section valiantly darting from one part to another. Well done us!
Havana – Sounding good despite no Alto part. Remember although we sang this endlessly in the Bernie Spain era, it’s new to Sandy and Phil. And Marcus on trumpet, sounding promising in the early stages.
AOB
1.Discuss pattern of weekly/fortnightly rehearsals in the light of proposed May/November gig dates. Including a request from Louli about when to start fortnightly rehearsals in Jan, if we do fortnightly rehearsals then.
For the Water gig and the upcoming Rhythm gig we have 16 or 17 Tuesday rehearsals distributed over fortnightly and weekly sections, as well as the 2 Sunday rehearsals.
Imagining the earliest gig date to be Sat 8 May (as we wouldn’t have it on Bank Holiday), in order to fit in 16 or 17 rehearsals we could start on 12 Jan and go weekly from there. This would give Louli one first Tuesday as per her request. Bear in mind we have the AGM on one of the Tuesdays early in the year so that takes out one rehearsal.
JB proposed that after the 28 Nov 2026 gig we schedule one post gig easy learning rehearsal on 8 Dec, have our Xmas meal on Tuesday 15 Dec – scheduled now so folk can plan ahead – and start weekly rehearsals from 12 January 2027.
Robin is to produce a Doodle for May gig dates and 2 All Day rehearsals for it.
2.Thoughts on format for taster evenings and preparations needed once agree how they’re going to run.
Our posters are in pride of place at Golden Lane, in their newsletter, and Phil has put them in various Choir Facebook groups and other places. Well done for getting us out there!
So, bracing ourselves for a small crowd, we discussed how to make these evenings welcoming and accessible to all, whilst giving a true picture of what a Wrablers rehearsal is really like, warts and all – because, if they don’t like warts, they’re not going to last long are they.
Ideas included tweaking the repertoire a bit so that there’s a song that we’re all new at (there is one already – Take Five), and maybe using some of our easy rounds in the warmup to break the recruits in gently. Also, should we wear name tags to make us more easily approachable?Phil has previous experience of these kinds of events so could assist Louli who is chair for the first one on 1 Sept? More discussions to be had before then.
JB 05-08-26