Video transcript
Festival of Choral Music repertoire 2021 - 09. Some Days - teaching tips

[music playing]

RACHEL KELLY: Hi, I'm Rachel Kelly. This video is part of a series on tips for conducting your choir. This beautiful song is by the Australian composer Ben van Tienen. It's all in unison, so the sopranos and the altos always sing the same thing. This could be a great song to do early in the year with your choir to get them making a beautiful, pure unison sound together and getting into good habits, watching you as the conductor.

The time signature is a C with a line through it, which means cut common time. It's exactly the same as 2/2, which means we conduct two beats in every bar. And each of those beats is a minim. So we go like this, down, up, down, up, 1, 2, 1, 2. (SINGING) Some days, I feel happy. Some days make me sad.

And the reason we don't conduct the four crotchets in each bar is because it would just give us the wrong feel for the song, as well as being too fast with our arm movements. So we'd be going like this. (SINGING) Some days, I feel happy. Some days make me sad.

You'll notice those first couple of phrases cut off on the fourth beat of the bar, where that crotchet rest is. This can be difficult to show when you're conducting in two, because that cutoff comes in between your conducting beats, one, two, off. So it only needs a tiny gesture. You could go, (SINGING) some days I feel happy. Some days may sad, like that.

Or you could just stop the two conducting for that moment. So you could go, (SINGING) some days make me happy. Some days make me sad.

The cut off on the word magic in bar 16 is a lot easier to show, because it comes right with your second conducting beat. So you go, (SINGING) some days, I see magic. And make sure that ck does come all together. It's so satisfying when everyone in the choir does it at exactly the right time, so really insist on that.

At bar 21, we have a long crescendo sign over this phrase. This means we gradually get louder. And we can show this with our conducting by starting off small and then getting bigger. So we could go, (SINGING) Every day a train comes down the line.

This song has a real pop feel and uses a lot of syncopation in the rhythm. Syncopation is when the notes are accented off the beats instead of on the beat. So, for example, at bar 25 in this phrase, (SINGING) and I catch the train the same time every day, the words train and same and time are all syncopated, because they're coming in between the beats. (SINGING) And I catch the train the same time every day.

Be very careful with these syncopated rhythms, because your singers can easily sing the wrong thing. And you may not even notice. So it could help to write the four crotchet beats above the notes in the bars to see where everything slots in. But really, it's about the feel of it and being in the right groove of the song.

And then, you have to be really careful of the notes that aren't syncopated, like everyday in that phrase. So (SINGING) every day all comes with beats. And then, in the next phrase, (SINGING) and I know that it will send me on my way, cutting off there on the next bar, so that on my way was all on the beat. It could be really tempting to a syncopate that as well and to go, (SINGING) and I know that it will send me on my way, or something like that. So just look for when it's on the beat and when it's off the beat.

And then, we've got this long phrase, which is quite fun to sing, because it's got lots of syncopation in it. And it starts off soft and gets louder. And we have to keep going until we see that quaver rest, where we snatch a deep breath, because then, we've got to get through the next phrase as well. So from bar 32, it would go like this, (SINGING) and no matter how the day has been, the things they've done, the things I've seen, the train can take the bad times far away.

And then, at bar 47, we have a new verse. Look out for the change of dynamics at bar 51, where it's marked p, which means piano, which means soft. So we do small hands here. (SINGING) Some days, I hear sadness. And we want a nice soft s, but all together there, so it doesn't sound messy.

And then, when we get to the end of this verse, for the last phrase, from bar 59, we sing a slightly different melody to what we did earlier in the song. So it goes higher this time. We sing (SINGING) every day begins a brand new start, ending that all together on that beat. And to sing this high note really beautifully, it will really help if we do a lovely, pure oo vowel on the word new, (SINGING) brand new start, ah, rather than ew, which they might be tempted to do, (SINGING) brand new start-- very hard to get a nice sound up there like that.

So the final chorus is the same as before, except for the ending. So earlier at bar 36, we sang it like this. (SINGING) The train can take the bad times far away. But in this last chorus, the final phrase goes up high instead of going down, and it also holds for a little bit longer. So from bar 74, we sing, (SINGING) the train can take the bad times far away.

Then, we add on two extra far aways, first at bar 80, which is softer, far away. Then, at bar 83, we slow down, indicated by the word rit. Then, meno mosso means we're in a new, slower speed for this last phrase. So we go, (SINGING) far away.

Now, that last note has a pause on it. There's no need to conduct the beats through that bar. You can just hold it. Then, we cut everything off together. And we can hold our hands in the air just for that magic moment before we lower them, and the audience bursts into rapturous applause.