St.Margaret's News September 2020 September 2020 | Page 8

COVID Choir
Have you wondered what our joint Holy Cross/St Margaret’s “Good
Faith” choir might have been up to during the pandemic? Well, it has
continued to have weekly rehearsals for an hour starting at 6.30 PM on
Thursday evenings.
How does that work? Well, not surprisingly, members join the rehearsal
from their own homes via Zoom. Musical director Susan Reid emails
the Zoom link to all members together with PDF copies of sheet music
and information regarding which pieces she plans to practice on each
particular evening.
Each rehearsal begins with a warm-up led by Susan. The choir members
are all muted (on Zoom) so they cannot hear each other and neither
can Susan. After the warm-up other pieces are practised, using
much the same approach.
Susan plays her piano whilst various sections of the choir sing their
parts. Then she turns to face the choir members and applauds them,
saying words like “that was great” or “we need to go over that again”.
This is, of course, rather amusing since neither she nor the choir members
have heard any of the singing except for their own voices (unless
two people who live together are sharing the same computer or tablet to
participate).
Susan asks if anyone has a problem and wants to ask a question or go
over any parts again. Some regularly ask for help, whilst others pretend
they’ve got their parts down pat.
In due course, music recordings of parts are sent to choir members and
those who are sufficiently confident record themselves singing their
parts. That is done by listening to the recorded music through headphones
plugged into one device whilst recording themselves singing on
another device.
The recorded voices are emailed to Susan and to Tim Watson. Tim uses
software to merge all the recordings, including the played music, into
one track.
Those recorded choir pieces have been played during Holy Cross worship
services and it is planned to use one at the joint Creation worship
service on 20 September. Links to where some of them may be heard
have also been put on the St Margaret’s website.
St Margaret’s News 8 September 2020