Video transcript
Primary Proms 2021 - 01. Baby Mine - 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 song is from the Disney movie, 'Dumbo.' It's in unison, so the sopranos and the altos always sing the same thing as each other, and it just has 3 verses and a contrasting middle section to learn. The time signature is a C with a line through it.

Now, this means 'cut common time,' which is exactly the same thing as 2-2, and it means we conduct 2 beats in every bar, and each beat represents a minim. So, we go like this - down, up, down, up, 1, 2, 1, 2. (SINGING) Baby mine don't you cry.

In general in this song, we want beautiful, smooth, legato singing, with lovely open vowels, and we want to hold notes to their full value, and then cut them off altogether. So, we'd go (SINGING) Baby mine don't you cry. So, you show the holding of the note with one hand, and then you can show the cut off.

So, the next one is (SINGING) Baby mine dry your eye. Now, there are 5 pure vowel sounds we use when we're singing. They're ah, eh, ih, aw, and oo. And, we should always be thinking about which of these vowel sounds we're using at any time in a particular word. It's not always the same as the vowel in the spelling of the word.

So, in this very first verse, the words 'mine,' 'cry,' and 'eye' all hold on using an 'ah' vowel, and then flip to an 'ih' as we're finishing the word. Let me show you what I mean. (SINGING) Baby mine don't you cry, rather than - (SINGING) Baby mine don't you cry.

And then, our next one with dry your eye, (SINGING) Baby mine dry your eye. Sometimes it can be useful to try singing parts of the song with only the vowel sounds. For example, rest your head - (SINGING) Rest your head would become (SINGING) eh aw eh.

Now, in this song, there are lots of times where the tempo slows down for just one bar, indicated either by the word 'rit' or by 'poco rit.' Now 'rit' stands for 'ritardando' which means to gradually get slower, and 'poco' means a little.

So, we sing the first phrase conducting in 2 - (SINGING) Baby mine don't you cry. And then, just before the second phrase, we've got the term 'poco rit' which means to slow down a little. This happens again after the second phrase, and it happens a lot later in the song as well.

It can be really effective in these 'poco rit' bars to conduct in 4, rather than 2. And, this gives you more control of the slowing down. So, instead of going 1, 2 and slowing down that way, we can go 1, 2, 3, 4. And, we've got more control over the beats.

So, when we change our conducting pattern like this, it's called 'subdividing the beat.' I'll show you how I would conduct verse one, subdividing every time I get to one of those 'poco rit' bars. So, it's - (SINGING) Baby mine don't you cry - 1, 2, 3, 4. (SINGING) Baby mine dry your eye - 1, 2, 3 4. (SINGING) Rest your head close to my heart, never to part, baby of mine.

So, we need to keep the phrase going until we come to a rest, and that's where we can take a breath. So, there is a rest there after the word 'heart' but not after part. So, we need to sing it like this. (SINGING) Rest your head close to my heart, never to part, baby of mine.

Now, if you don't remind them of this, or you don't show it in your conducting, they'll probably break the phrase up and sing it more like this. (SINGING) Rest your head close to my heart, never to part, baby of mine. Which is nowhere near as beautiful, and it's also not what the music is telling us to do.

So, in the next verse, at bar 19, we do all the same things. We're thinking about pure open vowel sounds, our connected phrases, our held notes, and our cutoffs, and those tempo changes with our subdividing.

And then, at bar 33, we've got a contrasting middle section, which is faster. (SINGING) If they knew sweet little you. Now we can show this increased urgency through our conducting and our body language.

So, this middle section slows down quite a lot towards the end. At bar 47, we've got a rit and then at bar 48 it says molto rit, molto meaning a lot. And then, there's a pause on the last note before we take a little breath, where that breath mark is to lead into our final verse.

So, from bar 47, I would start conducting in 4, subdividing the beat to help us with that slowing down. So, we'd go (SINGING) right to hold you. We pause on that note.

Now, the cut off leads into the up beat where we take our breath. (SINGING) From your head - so, the cut off action you do needs to also be going upwards, so they can see when to take a break, and when to be ready to sing again. So, I'll show you that again.

(SINGING) Right to hold you. From your head. So, you might want to practise conducting those few bars just by yourself, just to get the patterns of it and the direction that your hands are going, before you try doing it in front of the choir.

And then, we're into our third and final verse from bar 49. It gets slower and softer towards the end, and our last note is held on 2 bars and a pause. So, let me show you just the ending there. I'm going to go from bar 57. So it would be (SINGING) But you're so precious to me, cute as can be, baby of mine.