Saturday, May 12, 2007

"Where are we breathing?" "You know what? I was actually hoping 'never'."

Today's choir rehearsal was almost six hours long (note to self: TAKE MORE THAN ONE BOTTLE OF WATER NEXT TIME IT'S THAT LONG) and I went to bed far too late last night due to World of Warcraft, so I'm now so tired I'm about to go to sleep. But I thought I'd do a quick post first, mainly because I did a quick search to try to find more info on the Eddie Izzard sketch Jamie acted out, and was delighted to find a video of the very thing. It's from this DVD and describes Eddie's experience of learning the clarinet, amongst other things. (This came up because Jamie noticed that the 2nd alto part in several bits of The Kingdom is rather like 'musical polyfilla', much like Eddie Izzard's 3rd clarinet parts...)

Other Jamieisms (plus the one in the title):

"Have you thought about that part of your body today? Why not? ... Because it's WEIRD."

"Ladies, what lovely chests you have!" (to protect Jamie, I should clarify that this referred to our chest register voices...)

"Altos, this is where your chests come into their own." (ditto!)

"Sing the end of the phrase loud, but piano."

"Surprise your voice!" (This was to the sops on page 129... it was a bit visual, you had to be there!)

"1st altos and 2nd sops, try singing that phrase as if you have a mini Hulme Bridge inside your mouth and you're singing over the top of it." (this was on page 153 and referred to this bridge)

"When you've got two notes together which are the same pitch, the first of which is correct and the second of which is not... I'm not sure what I can do to help you."

Sleep now. Need to be up tomorrow to get a few more job applications sorted out before I go to see United collect the Premiership trophy :-)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would love to use your link to the Eddie Izzard sketch (I was crying with laughter when Jamie did some of it!) but my *** computer has no sound for some reason so I will just have to imagine. I am practicing not breathing but I seem to have to once in a while!!

Jocelyn Lavin said...

"Have you tried turning it off and on again?" (The IT Crowd) :p

As for the breathing, I think we should ask Jamie where he got his robot lungs from!