Thursday, April 19, 2007

what were you thinking, Mr. Handel?

Today I finally knuckled down and started practicing the Handel solo I'm supposed to sing at church Sunday morning, and, holy cow. It's really hard. There's this one run that goes from a high B flat to a middle D. (For those of you who don't do music, that's a really long way, and that range would be a lot to ask of a girl in any song.)

I went to practice early tonight, in hopes that Homey, the music director, could tell me how to say "Musick's charms" really fast on a freaking high A. And I get there, and he's like, so, kinda hard, isn't it? And I'm like, um, yes, it is. And Homey says, well, that's because it's written for a castrato. Ah.

I gave it a shot, and it was squeaky as hell, so Homey just rewrote the run. It covers a much more reasonable interview [edit: or, if you prefer, interVAL], and the whole piece only spans an octave and a half. Much easier. I did make an exciting internet discovery in the course of doing this: the Online Pitchpipe.

8 comments:

MonkeyMom said...

I feel like a musical dweeb. I've never heard it called an interview before. That's so cool...

Good luck, Sunday!!

towwas said...

Omg. As you probably guessed, that was supposed to be "interval." My fingers have had a mind of their own lately.

erin*carly said...

do they really do that "castrato" thing anymore?!? because really, i'd rather hear a woman sing that part and not a 30-something man who sounds like a child.

hm. i wonder if that's how michael jackson got his voice so high.

ps. i think google did something to my blogger account. before they joined forces, it was the same username, different passwords. now the blogger password doesn't work. damn you, conglomeration!

Racine said...

That online pitchpipe is pretty cool, and could come in handy some day.

But I still like my C nailclipper!

erin*carly said...

hm. looks like i fixed it. weird.

BASSO said...

...yes, Mr. H does love the melisma, and the sopranos usually get the longest and largest interVALs of the lot .. .though I do seem to remember an alto run of incredible length if not breadth. And thanks for the pitch pipe link, how cool is that?

MonkeyMom said...

Actually, I assumed that "interview" was the new "interval" and I was just hopelessly behind the times on the musical streetspeak. You are, after all, in 546541 music groups, so I default to you on all things. :)

And also, EC, remind me to poke you on the arm later for invoking that image of Michael Jackson. *shudder*

towwas said...

Ha! No, I'm just going through a phase of really bad typing. I think, basically, my brain sends my fingers the message about what to type, then moves onto something else, and the fingers get started on "interv" and keep going on their own. Recently I've been google-mapping a lot of addresses on Connecticut Ave and I keep typing Connection instead and Google keeps not being able to find the address. Cmon, Google! You're supposed to be so smart - figure out what I *meant*!