I’ve now submitted all my carol tracks for our competition. I’d got practised at co-ordinating with the clicks and was able to ‘go with the pro’ singing my line, but one thing I couldn’t do was look at the waveform on iPad’s ‘Voice memo’ as I sang. (It reminded me too much of a machine I was wired up to when in labour.) The aspect I was most likely to get wrong was actually dynamics, since I had no body language from a conductor and the voices on the guide track were not all at the same volume as one another. But my recordings are all ‘in the can’ now and the only thing that remains for me is the relatively simple task of getting a photo of myself in choir gear above the waist and holding a folder as if about to sing.
We now have two weeks till the day of the final. I feel I’ve got to know the pieces more intimately by recording my line independently, than if I’d turned up to a choral concert and sung it along with everyone else. No possibility of mugging along with one’s neighbour!
I have formed my opinions about the finalists but of course there is an embargo on sharing them at the moment. What I will do is write about which ones I liked most and why, then post my thoughts – unedited – after the final, and we can see how well they corresponded to the views of the judges.