Sing St. John welcomes you to our senior singalong.

My name is Winnie, and I’m here today with Gwen, and Bodicea, and Julie on piano.

(Piano playing) We’re going to bring some holiday cheer and fun and lift all our spirits by singing in harmony together.

Today we will learn, the harmony to "Auld Lang Syne" Auld Lang Syne is a song from Scotland.

The original poem was written by Robert Burns in 1788, The year after that, it was set to the traditional tune that we now all know and love.

The pronunciation for Auld Lang Syne is with a soft “S” and not a “Z” So you will say “syne” and not ZYNE.

Okay.

Syne.

Auld lang syne means “old times gone by.” So in the chorus, the words “For Auld Lang Syne” means “for the sake of old times.” It’s often sung for the New Year but also to mark some sort of transition in our lives, such as graduation or a funeral.

We’re singing for the new year.

So!

Let’s get to it!

But before we sing we must always prepare our voices, our hearts and our minds to do so.

Let’s start with our posture.

Stand with your backs tall, and you're ready for action.

If you are sitting, you sit as tall as you can and place both feet flat on the floor.

Make sure your shoulders are relaxed and sitting right on top of your spine.

And to do that, let’s raise our shoulders high as we can - high high high - and then drop them down.

Good.

And let’s have a little nice neck stretch.

If you are sitting hold on to the seat with your left hand – and gently lean your head toward your right shoulder.

You can do that for maybe, counting to five.

Let’s do that: one…two…three…four…five.

And now gently bring your head back to the center.

And then you take a deep breath and relax.

And then let’s work on the opposite side.

So hold on to your seat with your right hand and lean your head to your left shoulder and count to five.

One..two…three…four…five.

And then gently bring your head back to the center.

Okay?

And now you’re gonna turn your head to the right and take a deep breath and exhale.

(exhales) Good job.

Back to center, looking forward.

And now turn your head to the left, as if you’re looking over your shoulder at some sweet person over into the corner (laughing) and then take a deep breath (inhale) and exhale (exhales) And now bring your head back to the front and look forward.

Good job!

And so, now we’re going to massage our throat muscles.

There’s a long name for that, but I’m not going to complicate the issue.

And so you’re gonna take two fingers on your two hands, your index finger and middle finger, and you’re gently going to massage the muscles on your neck – both sides – remember you’ve got your trachea here in the middle and that’s where all your air goes in so you don’t want to push on that.

So just be gentle and massage both sides of your neck with your fingers from your jaw down to your collarbone.

Your collarbone sitting right here… so come from the top right under your jaw all the way down to your collarbone.

Nice and gentle.

Alright?

Now we’re going to focus on breathing.

So when you breathe, you fill your lungs from the bottom to the top.

And so you use your stomach muscles to help distend your belly and pull the air into your lungs, totally filling them to capacity So let’s try that.

Push your stomach muscles out.

(inhales) Take a deep breath in and let it fill from the bottom to the top.

Just imagine filling a water balloon or a water pitcher with water.

The water starts from the bottom and rises to the top, right?

So do that.

Use your stomach muscles, push it out and suck the air into your lungs (inhales) Awesome!

And now you exhale and use your stomach muscles to push the air from the bottom, all the way up and out of our lungs.

So let’s practice.

Inhaling and exhaling.

Inhale stomach muscles out.

(inhales) Exhale.

(exhales) Awesome.

Your shoulders are still there, you’re not clenching, you’re not twisting, you’re not tilting.

Just stand tall and take a deep breath with me.

(inhales) Now exhale (exhales).

Good job.

Now, we’ll take another deep breath but when you exhale you’re going to make a sound: sh sh sh!

Okay?

Inhale!

(inhales) Exhale - SH SH SH Ok?

Join us: Inhale (inhales) Exhale - Another time - Inhale (inhales) Exhale - Awesome.

And now we’re going to do that one last time and just say the sound SH for a long time.

Alright?

Last breath in (inhales) – exhale – I can hear you.

Good job!

(laughs) And now, for those of you who can, raise your arms above your head, try raising your arms above your head and then you lower them down with a sigh like you’re tired and you’re ready to go to bed, except you’re not tired and ready to go to bed today because we’ve got work to do!

(laughs) So raise your arms up over your head and sigh as you bring them down.

Ahhhh!

(laughs) Alright, let’s do it again.

Arms up over your head and sigh as you bring them down.

Ahhhh!

Awesome!

Now we’re gonna work on warming up our voices.

And so..

I love food.

I love the holidays I love my friends and family.

So now you’re gonna think about all of that and we’re going to practice and warm our voices up by using the word “yum” because I’m always thinking about food.

(laughs) So here we go.

So now we’ll begin to warm up the low and middle voices as we get ready to sing.

We’re going to move on to the higher voices in just a moment.

But we’re going to say the word “yum” along with the piano and we will go down the scale together.

Okay?

Let’s go.

(piano) And it’s going to sound like this “yum, yum, yum, yum yum.” Okay!

Are you ready?

Let’s begin.

One more Very good!

And so you can practice that throughout your day, throughout your week, just doing that before you sing, when you get up in the morning, it lifts your spirit and just gets your voice ready for interaction with the world, ok?

So now we’ll warm up our middle to high range voices, and we’ll do that using the word Go!

And so you engage those stomach muscles we just used with our breath, open your eyes, be ready to go and it’s going to sound like this (Singers demonstrate) Go -oh-oh-oh-ohhhhh Are you ready?

Let’s go!

(All singing) Chest proud!

Again!

Smile!

One more!

Awesome job!

See it’s quite a bit of work, but it’s worth it.

Now, are you ready to learn Auld Lang Syne?

Yes!

Let’s sing it together all the way through – you can listen or sing along with the melody with Bodicea!

And we’ll start at verse one.

So let’s get to it.

(PIANO playing) (Singing) Chorus Verse 2 Chorus Repeat the chorus, now Awesome job!

Now we’re going to start by learning the low harmony for verse One.

When we do the sing-through at the end, we’ll sing both verses!

First I’ll sing a phrase, then you will repeat.

I sing.

You repeat.

Are you ready?

(Piano introduction) (singing) Good job – now let’s sing that verse straight through together!

Good job – now let’s learn the harmony for the chorus.

Now at this part, we do not say the word “for” – that’s the melody’s part.

So we come in exactly on the word “auld.” So we say, “auld lang syne my dear” Okay?

Awesome job!

Now let’s put the chorus together.

(Piano playing) Awesome job!

And now, let’s sing the whole low harmony part for first verse and a chorus.

Bodicea and Gwen will join us, and Bodicea will sing the melody and Gwen will sing the middle harmony.

You’ll hear them slightly in the background, but mostly you'll hear me on the low part.

Are you ready?

Let’s go!

(Piano introduction) Verse 1 (Piano introduction) Chorus Very good, that sounded awesome!

Good job!

Now it’s time to learn the the middle harmony of verse one with Gwen.

So Gwen and I will sing a phrase and then you repeat We sing.

And then you repeat.

(Piano playing) Good!

Now let’s sing through the entire of verse one together (piano playing) Awesome!

And now, just like we did with the low part, we’ll learn the chorus!

However the first word, we’ll omit that.

The melody sings that part.

We’ll come in on “auld,” okay?

Great job!

Now let’s put that low harmony chorus together now: (Piano) (singing) Great job!

Thank you, Gwen, great job.

Thank you Julie.

And now we’re going to sing all of the middle harmony together – the first verse and one chorus, we’ll have Bodicea singing the melody with us, and let’s get to it.

Verse 1 (Piano) Chorus Very good!

(cheering) Well!

Now we’re going to sing the entire song together.

We are going to sing both verses and when I tell you to, we are going to repeat the last chorus.

Julie, thank you so much for helping us to learn our parts!

(Piano introduction) Verse 1 Chorus Verse 2 Chorus Repeat the chorus Very good!

(clapping) Thank you for joining our Senior Singalong Episode 3.

One day, we'll perhaps sing together at church at a concert in the line at the post office, but until then, keep singing!

(piano introduction) Good night to you all and sweet be thy sleep May angels around you their silent watch keep Good night, good night, good night, good night Good night to you all and sweet be thy sleep May angels around you their silent watch keep Good night, good night, good night, good night Good night to you all and sweet be thy sleep May angels around you their silent watch keep Good night, good night, good night, good night Good night to you all and sweet be thy sleep May angels around you their silent watch keep Good night, good night, good night, good night Good night to you all and sweet be thy sleep May angels around you their silent watch keep Good night, good night, good night, good night May angels around you their silent watch keep Good night, good night, good night, good night Good night and Merry Christmas!

Happy Holidays!