Off the hook

Concert tomorrow.

We sing some spring and summer songs, some other things. The children's choirs will be there too, and nothing draws people like the children's choir. We may get an audience!

Tomorrow is Spring Worship Day, and I'm going to Worship Spring in Church. Or at least, sing spring songs at the service with Kammarkören. I hope it doesn't snow. Or hail. That's a reasonable request, isn't it?
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I tried Lilypond today. It turned out to be a nice music score setter. Most things worked at once (not the headers, for some reason).

I did a little quick-and-dirty thing on Almqvist's "Varför kom du på ängen?" for two sopranos, and it looks a little "traditional". That makes sense, since they have tried to make it look like manually engraved music. I'll try it out some more.

Choir started on Wednesday. We got three new songs. Very differnt from each other too: Wilhelm Peterson-Berger, Benny Andersson and Allan Edwall! I'm looking forward to this spring.

T had something to say about the classical piece -- Juninatt by Peterson-Berger. He pointed out how Swedish it is. Not just the song itself(which is indeed classical Swedish choir music): the title "June Night" is really only comprehensible to Scandinavians. We are very romantic about our summer nights.

We started practice at twelve. The children's choir arrived at a quarter to three, so we could rest and have some layered sandwich. And change.

It was a nice concert, and people seemed to like it. I think my placement went back and forth during the course of it.

Trying something new, I wrote the name of the next song on the back of every sheet, which worked so-so. Next time I'll try writing on the front instead.

This means Christmas is officially over :)

My choir leader suggested that we, for Sunday's rather formal church service, ought to sing a song where parts of the choir sings "Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump"

Clarification: The song in question is Fritiof Anderssons paradmarsch, a very upbeat and, I suppose, cocky song about coming home after travelling the whole world. It's a nice song, and funny, although not quite what you usually sing in church. And yes, the "Trump" is there, or rather "tram". It's not a word, just sounds to accompany the main tune.

Spring concert with Ljungandalens kammarkör (Valley of Ljungan Chamber Choir) today. It went reasonably well. T has been throwing stuff at us, and I think we did what we could with it. Everything wasn't new though, I thought it was a pleasant mix.

Åhlen's Summer Hymn was a little weird. We may have practised it too little, I'm not sure, but I think it was better last time we sang it. It's one of the songs you're just supposed to know. As for me, I found yesterday that I sound terrible singing it. Possibly because I learnt it many many years ago, and it could be that the voice I learned to sing it with doesn't work any more. I'll have to relearn it. No big deal, really, but it's a pity I didn't notice it earlier.

My hair fell apart. I had pinned it and sprayed it until I smelled of hairspray all over, and it didn't help. Now I can't get the pins out.

It's Christmas Music Time, and I'm trying to fix up a sheet for Silent Night for one of my choirs. I find (again) that every time I use MusixTex I have to relearn it. How do you make it put a few words above the line again? And where did those double flags come from?

It seems we'll have Christmas this year too -- the choirs are at it already. So far it's all leftovers, though.

For All Saint's we have one or two new ones. And yesterday we tried a merry spring song -- we need those too. T also discussed the possibilities of singing Christmas songs at any time of the year -- it's just a matter of packaging.

I so support the idea of including Christmas songs in the spring concert.

Informal update:

I have written a total of twelve words (in English) of Blood Magic.

Considering how quickly my attempts to write regularly have failed in the past two years, I'm going to set a very modest goal: I will look at the story every day. If I feel like it, I will also write. If I don't like what I wrote yesterday, I will remove it (or rewrite it).

In other news I have also typeset some music: a couple of bars of a song we sing in the choir, and which I have attempted to make a choir arrangement of.