Sing St. John welcomes you to our senior singalong.

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

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

Today’s song is “Go Tell it On the Mountain.” Go Tell it on the Mountain is an African-American spiritual dating back to at least 1865, and it was compiled by John Lesley Work Jr.

It has been sung and recorded by many gospel & secular performers Go Tell it on the Mountain was first made famous in 1879 by the Fisk University Jubilee Singers, who travelled throughout the U.S. & Europe earning scholarship fund money for Fisk, which was a school founded to educate freed slaves.

In the 1960’s another version of the lyrics was credited to civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer, who combined it with “Go Down Moses.” This version, which refers to the book of Exodus, with the lyrics, “Let my people go,” and it became a successful single in the pop and country charts.

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

Let’s start with our posture.

Stand with our 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.

And so now you can go about your day, when you get up in the morning, before you have your cup of coffee, in the line at the post office, and practice your vocals.

Singing is contagious.

Have fun!

(Laughter) Now, are you ready to learn and sing Go Tell it On the Mountain?

YES!

(Laughter) (piano playing) Verse One.

(piano playing) Unison Chorus!

Verse Two now.

Unison.

(clapping) Yes!

Yay!

Very good!

(laughing) That was awesome!

And now it’s time to learn the harmony.

Lower voices, let’s learn the harmony chorus.

Everyone else can sing, sit, relax, hum along, whatever feels good to you.

I’ll point to myself as I sing a portion of the song, and then I’ll point to you and you’ll repeat.

I sing.

You repeat.

Alright?

Here we go.

Awesome job!

Everybody ready?

(piano) Awesome!

Now that we’ve got the low chorus harmony, let’s learn the low verse harmony.

Remember?

Me.

And then you.

But we’re gonna sing the two verses back to back, okay?

No chorus in between, just verse one, and then verse two.

Are you ready?

Let’s go.

Awesome!

Good job!

Now Gwen and Bodicea will join us and they’ll hum the melody and the middle harmony while we sing the low range harmony together.

Are you ready Yes!

(piano introduction) Verse two!

(laughs) Now let’s learn the middle harmonies.

Here we go.

(piano) Awesome.

Good Job!

Very good!

Whoo!

That takes a lot of work, doesn’t it, just trying to remember your part, yeah I know, it’s awesome!

Now that we’ve learned the harmony for the middle chorus, let’s learn the verses.

We’re going to sing verse one and two immediately after each other.

Are you ready?

Let’s go.

Verse two!

Very good!

Boy, that was hard work!

Now let’s sing the middle harmony through together, Bodicea will be singing the high melody and Gwen and I will be singing the middle harmony.

Are you ready?

Yes!

Straight to verse two!

(claps) Awesome middle voices – woo-hoo!

And now, let’s sing the entire song together.

Bodicea is going to sing the melody with the high voices Gwen is singing the middle harmony, and I am singing the lower harmony.

Remember we’ve got that double chorus in the beginning, and so we’ll sing unison together.

Watch your screen for your reminder, it’s in yellow, & then we’ll break off into the harmony for the second chorus.

(piano introduction) Verse one!

(piano) Unison Chorus!

Verse 2, now (piano) Unison!

(Clapping) Yes!

Yay, very Good!

That was awesome!

Yay!

(clapping) Awesome!

Thank you for joining our senior singalong.

One day, we will perhaps sing together at church, at a function or maybe even a concert.

Until then, keep singing.

Thank you!

Bye!

(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