Last night was our first rehearsal for Scrooge, The Musical.  The first half was right up my alley we read through the script and I got to try out my Mr. Fezziwig voice.  I have always loved reading and doing voices for different characters so I had a blast with my two paragraphs worth of lines (plus, maybe, some little unsolicited sound effects as per the script while others read their parts).

I'm really looking forward to that part of the play.  I really wish I had gotten around to finding a play sooner in my life.

The second half of the rehearsal was singing.  We just worked on the opening number which, I think, is called "The Opening Number."  It's pretty complicated to me.  At first there are three or four different groups singing different bits of christmas carols at the same time.  Then we separate into our vocal range groups and sing this really awkward non-flowing part where we aren't all singing the same words; they are close to the same but they are different and each vocal group has slightly different timing to what they are singing.

I was totally lost.

I think I'll get better with a lot more practice - I just hope I get enough practice.  Otherwise I'll just lip sync through that part.

I don't really know what vocal range I'm supposed to be in so I just joined the two other men who were singing as bass so they would have some help. I can sing deeply I'm just not sure it's my natural range.  Lisa insists it isn't.  Anyway, it really wouldn't matter which group I had joined last night because I kept switching groups as we sung.  Whichever group happened to be singing the loudest or most clearly in my ear won.  I just jumped onto their lyrics.  It wasn't even intentional - it just happened subconsciously.

For instance there is this one part where the lyrics kind of go like this (we'll see how well this formatting works:

yadda yadda yadda see__________________ blah blah blah blah blah

 foo doo doo doodly bop wop doo see____ foo na na la de foo blah

The top line is the sopranos and the altos.  The bottom is the tenors and bass.  So I'm in the bottom group but I can hear the top group reach see__________ before I reach my see_______ so I'd rush through my lyric to reach see___ with the sopranos and altos.  Then I'd be all messed up with the timing of the rest of my lyrics.

This is not easy.

Oh, and I can't read music either.  It turns out that would be helpful. I always figured you didn't really need to know how you could just sing the words and kind of get a feeling of the timing based on the space between them or those long underscores.  You can't.  You actually have to change notes while singing a single word sometimes.  Who knew?  Not this guy.  So yeah, I ended up off key quite a few times.

I think it will be an interesting experience (and experiment) to see if I can figure all of this out by the end of November.  I certainly hope I do.   I think the acting and dancing will be easy enough for me - but the singing will be an enjoyable challenge that will push me the entire time.

If you want to see if I succeed you'll have to come and watch the show.  I think we ar performing at City Hall the last weekend of November and the first weekend of December.  I'll post the official dates and times when I'm sure of them.

 

#acting #dancing #singing #performing