Where my day go? I missed it.

[mdlbear]

It hasn't been a terribly productive day. Decided to stay home sick mainly so that I could take a nap if I started to fall over in mid-afternoon. And did lie down for about an hour, though I didn't actually sleep.

Watered my nose three times so far, plus once in the middle of the night last night. Will do it again before bed. It's roughly as effective as a dose of sudafed, but doesn't dry out my throat.

Had a great phone call this morning from cflute, who'd seen my morning post and offered to sing lead on a couple of songs in our concert Friday night. Quickly rejiggered the setlist, adding crypto, alphabet, rrprayer, and lcm; and removing heaven and demon, which is too much of a vocal stretch for me right now. Many of the remaining songs have Joyce on unison, so I can lean on her for support and sit close to the mic. Yay for cflute getting her brain back! Glad somebody has a brain right now -- I don't. More on that sort of thing later.

The setlist is still running a little light; about 50 minutes. That's what it's supposed to be, of course, but as it's the last concert we can run over a little. I'll plan to make it up on patter.

Joyce and I had a short practice session - basically ensuring that we had a good grasp of the additions, and going over the few remaining rough spots, mainly "The Toolmakers" and "I Have a Song to Sing, O", which we're still pretty shaky on. The melody line is tricky. I copied the sheet music at work on Monday, which helped a lot.

Skipped my walk today in favor of the aforementioned lie-down, and had hot buttered rum with honey instead of my usual gin.

Basically a wasted day otherwise. A little reading (re-reading Mount Analogue, which I haven't read for a while), LJ, and ripping CDs. Including tracking down many of the CDs that had been ripped before but not marked. I'm putting little sticky dots on the spines now so I can keep track. I'm up around 200 disks now. Useful, in other words, but totally mindless. Of all the things I've lost...

Comments

[tibicina.livejournal.com]

I used to have a theory that Sullivan really hated sopranos, given the stuff he made them sing. I suspect it's actually more likely that he just had really good ones and used them, not really worrying about whether anyone else would be able to sing it later. (Besides, I have moved on in my 'you really hate sopranos, don't you?' estimation to Mozart and Bach.)

Honestly, G&S is frequently very hard to sing, even when they're being lyrical, and "I Have a Song to Sing, O' is a cross between a patter song, a traditional counting song, and them being lyrical. It's certainly not their hardest on the lyrical end, nor their hardest on the patter song end, but the hybridization has its own challenges. (I have the benefit of having listened to it over and over again because one of my favorite records was a G&S compilation. I also have the benefit of having been director's assistant for a production of Yeomen of the Guard, which meant I got to list to it. A lot. Okay, I also played The Headsman.) Point is a really difficult part. I, honestly, think he's one of the toughest of the comic male characters; there's just so much emotional and musical ground that one has to be able to cover (though, obviously, there's less within that one song, but the song is, in some ways, the part in miniature.)

And I shall now stop babbling about G&S... lalala.

[mdlbear]

Oh, please don't stop! :-)

I must confess that, as a baritone, one of the things I like about Yeomen is that one of the tenors, at least, doesn't get the girl. Point is probably my second-favorite male G&S character, after King Gama in Princess Ida.

I also sing "I Have..." in a range that's comfortable for me and Joyce.