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 you some holiday fun and lift all our spirits by singing together in harmony.

Today our harmonies we'll learn, "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" Hark the Herald Angels Sing is an English Christmas carol that first appeared in 1739 in the collection, “Hymns and Sacred Poems.” The lyrics we know today were written by Charles Wesley and George Whitefield, the two founding fathers of the church we now know as the Methodist church.

The tune is taken from the second chorus of Felix Mendelssohn’s “Festgesang, which was a cantata written for male voices and brass.

The Psalter Hymnal Handbook describes the hymn as “…a curious mixture of exclamation, exhortation, and theological reflection, as the focus shifts rapidly from angels, to us humans, to us as nations.” 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 our backs tall, and 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 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 to sing Hark the Herald Angels Sing?

Yes!

So we’re going to sing it all the way through together.

You can go ahead and sing along on your end, and we'll follow the melody with Bodicea.

(Piano Introduction) (All Singing) Very Good!

Now we’re going to start learning the harmony in low voice range.

I sing the low harmony part in the group, and so now we’re gonna learn the low harmony part for verse one.

Then we’ll do a sing-through at the end, but we’re gonna learn it in phases because of the complexity of the verse, ok?

First I will sing a phrase, and then you repeat.

I sing.

You repeat.

Are you ready?

Ok, here we go.

(Piano) Good.

Now let’s sing that part together first.

Ok?

(Singing) Okay And now let’s learn the rest of the verse.

This part of the verse sounds like trumpets proclaiming the word and the news, ok?

So you want to stand tall, posture erect and you’re gonna engage the stomach muscles to help support the breath that comes out of your mouth.

Are you ready?

Let’s go.

(Singing) Awesome work!

Great!

Now let’s put it together.

(laughing) It’s time to learn the middle harmony of the verse with Gwen.

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

Now let’s sing that whole section together!

(piano introduction) (Winnie and Gwen Singing) And now, just like we did with the low part, we’ll learn the rest of the verse.

Remember: proud trumpets.

Posture straight, chest high and let’s go.

(piano introduction) Great job!

Now let’s put that last part together now, ok?

(piano introduction) Great job!

Great job, Gwen, thank you.

And now we’re going to sing all of the middle harmony for the first verse and we’ll have Bodicea joining us to sing the melody in the background.

(singing) Wooo-hoo!

That took a lot of work – you did an awesome job, thank you, NOW we are ready to sing the entire song together, all three verses, all three parts.

Boy this is going to be fun!

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

But before we do the entire song together, can you please remind me of the first phrase of the low part?

(Julie plays first line of the low part ) And now could you please remind us of the first phrase of the middle part, please?

Julie plays first line of the middle part) Thank you Julie (piano introduction) Woo!

We got it!

Great job!

Thank you thank you, boy that was fun.

Thank you Julie for all your hard work.

(Cheering/clapping) Thank you for joining our Senior Singalong, Episode 2!

One day, we’ll perhaps be singing together at church, or at a function, maybe even concert.

Or in the line at the post office.

You never know Until then, please 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