Sing St. John welcomes you to our senior singalong, Episode 4!

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

We’ve been having fun and lifting our spirits by learning harmony to a holiday song each week.

This week, we’ll sing all the songs we’ve learned over the last three episodes.

Those are: We’re going to do a quicker warm up today so that we have time to do it all!

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 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.

Let's start with Go Tell It On the Mountain.

Remember, we did that three weeks ago.

I don't know about you, but I need to refresh my memory So we'll sing the Unison on Harmony choruses and the first verse.

So we're going to begin with the low voices.

You're ready.

(Piano introduction) Harmony chorus (piano) Verse one (piano) (piano) Great!

Now did that come flooding back to you as we did that?

(laughter) Now, let's remember the middle harmony.

Come on up, Gwen.

At home, you can sing along with the middle harmony, or you can just sing the melody whatever's comfortable for you.

Gwen and I will sing the middle harmony together.

(piano) Unison chorus now (piano) Harmony chorus now (piano) (piano) Verse one (piano) (piano) Great!

You know that seems a lot smoother than the first week We're getting there.

Bodecia will now join us on the melody.

Gwen on middle harmony and me Winnie, on low harmony.

and we're going to sing the whole song.

(piano) Unison chorus (piano) Harmony chorus now Verse one (piano) (piano) Unison Verse two (piano) Unison (piano) Harmony now (piano) Very good!

You did it!

All that work paid off.

Awesome job!

Well that felt great, didn't it.

Now let's see what we remember from two weeks ago.

And we'll start with the low harmony for Hark the Herald Angels Sing (Piano introduction) Verse one (piano) That was great!

How do you feel about that?

Well, now Gwen will join me as we remember the middle harmony!

Come on up, Gwen!

(Piano introduction) Wonderful, ooooh!

That was awesome.

Now Bodicea will be joining us on the melody, we’ll sing all three verses, all the way through.

(Piano introduction) Low (Piano introduction) Middle (Piano introduction) Melody (Piano introduction) Verse three Yay!

(Clapping) Ah!

Well!

It certainly is fitting ending with Auld Lang Syne!

Remember that from last week?

Now we’ll remind the low harmony voices of their parts.

We’ll sing the verse and the chorus.

(Piano introduction) Verse 1 (piano) Great job.

Thank you.

And now Gwen will join us as we review the middle harmony.

Thank you Gwen.

(Piano introduction.)

Verse 1 (Piano introduction.)

Chorus Great job, Gwen, thank you, thank you.

Thank you.

All right, Bodicea come on up and join us.

Now all of you singers out there we are going to sing Auld Lang Syne from beginning to end with all the parts, and we'll repeat the last chorus.

I'll remind you.

Low.

(Piano introduction) Low (Piano introduction) Middle (Piano introduction) Melody Verse 1 (Piano introduction) Chorus Verse 2 Chorus Repeat the chorus (clapping) Very good!

Very good!

Ahh!

This is our last episode this season with Julie.

She has played with us a while on a visit to Saint John.

We'd love to keep her.

So let's all please just say thank you for Julie.

Thank you Julie.

(Clapping) Thank you.

(piano) Thank you for joining our Senior Singalong Episode 4.

One day, we'll perhaps sing together at church, or at a meeting, maybe even a concert, or in line at the bank at the post office.

Who knows?

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 (piano) Good night and Merry Christmas!

happy New Year!

Happy Holidays!