Beggining Life as a Choirholic

Oooooooo...Aaaaaa....Eeeeee... LaLaLaLaLa...What on earth are we doing?? Why does it sound so weired?? Its going higher! NO! I cant reach it! Those were the thoughts streaming through my mind for the first time listening and singing to the vocal warm-ups. For the first time I had done vocal warm-ups. Music was an alien language to me and Soprano? Alto? Tenor? Bass? what!? I had never taken music lessons before prior to this, other than the drums and guitar. Even that, its all somewhat play by ear. It was the first day of choir on a warm Friday afternoon. We had all gathered at the prefects room/choir room. Probably 100 people in that small,tiny cramp, stuffy place. Pn.Loh, Choir club teacher advisor had a small speech talking about the past achievements of the choir. I had no idea what was going on. After warm-ups, we were split into groups of 5 to get our range sorted out. First we went by fives, then twos and threes. It was a nerve-wrecking moment. Seriously. My heart was pounding against my chest and I felt dizzy when it came to my turn. I don't exactly remember my range but what I remember is that my lower range went further than my higher range. I was then placed with the altos. I was disappointed. Being a naive freshie, I taught that the sopranos were the supreme bunch of the choir and I felt that I wasn't good enough.

Alot of other things were going on during the meeting. I remember talking to both teacher advisors, Pn.Loh and Pn.Khasniati and at the time, Miss Ngoo about how much I like to sing and stuff. They also were looking for musicians of any instrument to list down their names and things. Obviously, piano dominated the number 1 most popular instrument, followed by guitar and I guess drums was the minority. Being a person who was a total tomboy in elementary school, I had a thing against piano. I've always taught that the piano was an instrument for girly-girls or for people who wants to appear fancy with all their music talk and blah blah. Man I was sooooo darn wrong about that.

I met Mabel. She was my first choir buddy and she happened to be the most friendly and helpful alto at the time. We chatted a little bit and she told me how a choir functions and what is SATB and things like that. Honestly, I was a delinquent member who was absent from choir for the first 3 weeks of training. That means, I had missed the first 6 important rehearsals cause I was too lazy. Until the 6th rehearsal. Mabel had persuaded me to join the interschool team. I agreed but I had no idea how the song was and auditions were the next day. I had no idea what had happened but I learnt the alto parts and I merely made it through for the auditions the next day. I was stuck to Mabel and she would help me a lot in helping me hold my part.

Susanna Saw, vocal coach for Seafield Choir was the one who had the auditions. She took all the altos who wanted to participate to sing only the alto part for the 'West Side Story Medley'. Another nerve wrecking moment. She scaled it down from 10, to 5,3,2. She stopped at 2. Thank goodness or else I would have fainted on the spot. With Mabel's help, I had gained a spot in the interschool team. The songs for the competition was half of 'West Side Story Medley' and 'Perwira' arranged by Ng Shyh Poh.

Trainings kept going on as usual and I took ever opportunity to learn my parts as well as I could and pay as much attention as I could when the coach was teaching. It was only 2 weeks before the competition when rehearsals started to get hectic. Afternoon sessions were to skip first 2 lessons of the day and Morning session students stayed back.

What happen to those who didn't make the team? They became reserves just in case of emergencies if someone could not make it, who is sick, undisciplined and those who didn't keep up to standards. Those who chose not to go for the interschool team would be in team B a.k.a Bronze team ( find out why later ).