theyellowhobbit | Entries tagged with techiya

There was a concert. We survived. Actually, it went quite well. Somehow I didn't screw up my part in the first skit, and for the most part I sang correct things, though I made a few mistakes which hopefully no one noticed.

Also, the Honorable Menschen are really good. They opened for us. They probably have a better sound than us, considering their blend is a lot better than ours. But we have crazy difficult arrangements of doom. And usually there are bunch of different rhythms going on at once, so it makes blending a bit harder. We don't have that normal a cappella group sound because the stuff we sing isn't arranged that way. (Exceptions to this might be "Wake me up" "Yonatan Shapira" and "New Soul".)

I think we sounded better this semester than we did last semester, since we had a lot more practice. The skits were better last semester, since this semester we got a late start on that. But this semester I got to sing Carmen Sandiego!

Also, we pretty much had a full house. (The seats we sat in during the Menschen's performance were open once we started performing, but there were people standing in the back.) This did not happen last semester. Part of that might have been all the people coming to see the Menschen, but there were also lots of people there to see us. I contributed 5.5 people to the audience (the .5 would be

youth_thinker, who was there for both me and GT.) Maybe a bit more because I don't know if N would have told his family about the Menschen performing had I not mentioned at D&D that we were both going to be in the concert. So I'll count half of them, bringing the total to 7.5 people. Yay audience!

Last night I dreamed that it was the day of Techiya's spring concert, except for some reason the concert was in April and not in May. When I went over to MIT (by cab, since there were random people who stayed at my house and were also going to MIT, and were traveling by cab)¹ I had no clue what building the concert was in. So I got out at a random building and then somehow found my way to the concert room.

While waiting for the rest of Techiya to arrive, I was hanging out with some people in Honorable Menschen, the a cappella group that was going to cover for us in the concert (this is true IRL, too). The people who I hung out with were real-life people who are actually in the Menschen (including you,

chanaleh). One of them was RS, who I told about how I was excited that the Menschen were covering for us, and that therefore they'd be watching our concert, except it wasn't until I said that that I realized "oh, wait, you are in the Menschen!" Considering he's the one who first told me of the group's existence, that was a silly thing for me to forget, even in a dream. (In the dream I also knew he was the one who had told me of the group's existence.)

Some of Techiya arrived. We were in normal clothes and not concert attire, and we had no skits. Or props. Or song order. Or anything. And we knew just as much of the music as we currently know now, which is not the full repertoire that we will know by the real concert. Also, for some reason instead of rehearsing every night (except Shabbat) of tech week, we had only been rehearsing once a week for the past couple of weeks.

So naturally we started to panic. The audience was sitting in the room already (even though in real life we give ourselves a few hours to do a run-through and stuff) and we were running back and forth across the stage, frantically trying to set things up. Someone said to the audience, "think of this as a dress rehearsal."

Then I woke up. I am very glad our concert is on May 10 and not some time in April. And we'll have time to learn our music. And write a script for the skits. And have our concert attire.

I'm debating whether or not I should tell the rest of Techiya (or the rest of Techiya not on LJ) about my crazy dream. It might amuse them, or they might be weirded out that I had this dream.

¹I live about a 15 minute walk to MIT, so taking a cab there is kind of ridiculous in real life.

Techiya went to New York this weekend, in order to participate in JCFPA, the Jewish Collegiate Festival of Performing Arts. We also had a paid performance at the JCC on Saturday. At the JCC we sang everything in our repertoire, and at JCFPA we sang 3 songs since there were a zillion groups.

The concerts went way over on time, and in between each group there were these really bad skits which should have been cut when they realized how late we were running. There were a lot of good groups, but a lot of people sang the same sorts of songs (though the U Chicago group sang a song from Dr. Horrible, which was made of awesome). We sang Melech Shelach (Israeli pop song), Rumania, Rumania (a famous Yiddish theater song) and the Carmen Sandiego theme (complete with parody lyrics). And the audience went crazy when we did Rumania. I had jokingly made a comment earlier "we should try and get the audience to clap during Rumania!" I said this because Rumania is not a song people clap to. But the audience clapped during Rumania!!! WTF?

And Carmen Sandiego wins all ties.

So we stole the show, which was completely unexpected, at least by me.

On the way to the bus, while waiting for the subway/while on the subway we sang. (We were down a few group members at this point but still had all the parts covered.) I thought we should have held out a hat or something, considering we're trying to pay for our CD...

Actually, our website now has MP3s from our concert:

http://web.mit.edu/techiya/www/music.html

But the CD will actually be mixed and stuff and should be good. I hope.

And now I'm home, about to go to bed, since I have class at 10:00 AM. Luckily all the readings are things we read last year in the Paul class, so I'm not behind.

Current Mood: musical

We're recording our CD right now, and have been for the past 8 hours. It's a lot of work. Hopefully we will sound good.

Now I have a break, because they are recording the soloist. I have no solo on the CD, which originally I was a little disappointed about, but now I'm appreciating the fact that I get more breaks than the people with solos.

Tomorrow is going to be interesting, since there's a class I want to shop that meets from 10-12. I'm hoping that because it's the first class it will get out early. We're recording Melech Shelach from 10-12 tomorrow morning. So the length of the class will determine whether or not I get to be in Melech. (Also how many takes we need to do before we get one that is CD quality.)

I'm considering e-mailing the professor, but I'm not sure how to phrase it without sounding rude. ("Hi, I'm interested in taking your class, but am also recording a CD tomorrow, and was wondering how long your class was going to go tomorrow...") I'm also not sure whether or not I could leave early. Thus I haven't e-mailed her yet, since I'm always bad at this kind of thing.

Current Mood: tired

I survived my concert. It ended up going well. People liked the skits, and according to the audience we sounded good, though there was this point in Melech Shelach where we changed keys and I couldn't find my note (which is hard enough to find as is) since it no longer was the E that I normally would sing. I think we were a half step sharp. So then I sang the tenor note, until eventually I found it and then NB and I sang our "E" or whatever the hell it actually was. But by then the song was almost over.

Our skits were an episode of "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego," except on crack. She stole the MIT dome. There were amusing pictures that were photo shopped to have the dome hiding in them. Here (you have to click on them to see the dome).

My favorite part of our skits was either in round 1, when Rockapella gives the most useless clue ever (and then the choices were Burkina Fasa (sp?), Sierra Leone, and United Arab Emirates) or in Round 2, where one of the two contestants was picking the same location over and over again, and his consolation prize was the Deluxe Edition Carmen Sandiego memory game (there were 3 choices, "the room with the loot" "the room with the warrant" and "the room with the crook" with a sign "try this one first" next to "the room with the loot"). Actually, the entirety of round 2 was made of hilarity. You all missed a great show. We might have a video of it on Youtube eventually, but I'm not sure what the deal is with that.

Here, have a wikipedia article on Carmen Sandiego.

And I actually made it to morning minyan today. This is the first time I was at SCM in over a month. I've been not going to morning minyan, and have been spending most Shabbats at home. So I pretty much just haven't existed. HRSFA hasn't really seen me either, since there was Hell Week, and I haven't been going to gaming on Friday nights.

But I exist now. Though I haven't started my presentation for tomorrow. I'll have to do it all this afternoon...

I ended up getting a small mezzo solo in the middle of "Egypt" this song that they've done in previous semesters, which I now need to learn, and which I only was sight-reading the solo. It's not a whole song or anything that shiny, but it's definitely a solo. And maybe I'll get the counter-melody at the end of Yonatan Shapira.

So again Techiya thinks I'm a mezzo, because I'm singing mezzo for Egypt. Actually, let's do a comparison of songs we sing and parts I have:

Alto:
Eli
Yonatan Shapira
Rumania

Mezzo/lower Soprano:
Miriam's Song, kinda (soprano II, but goes to alto when there are only 2 female parts)
Adon Olam
Egypt
Carmen Sandiego (lower soprano)

Undetermined:
~~Rumania~~
~~Carmen Sandiego~~
Melech Shelach
Rak B'Yisrael
Yesusum (if we get to it)

timmypowg's Hatikvah

(Actually,

timmypowg, did they assign parts for any of these while I was gone?)

~~So as of now I have 2 alto parts and 3 mezzo parts, or 2.5 and 2.5 if you count Miriam's as something in between.~~With the updated information it's 3 alto and 4 mezzo or soprano parts.

I think part of it is a lack of sopranos. If we had more sopranos I'd probably be consistently an alto. Or if we had more women in general maybe they'd let me occasionally sing tenor.

Gah. I have to learn my parts. With no time to do so!!!

*Edit* Yeah. I'm officially a mezzo or something. Does my low D mean nothing?

I just learned my Rosh Hashana Torah reading in the span of about 10 minutes. Mostly it consisted of me going back to the leining I did 2 years ago and rereading that in order to get the high holiday trope, and then putting that on top of this leining. Granted, it's only 6 lines long. And there are no pazers, which is a shame, because I have a really awesome RH pazer. (It's the little symbol that looks like a "4." One of the less common ones, but by no means a rare symbol.) And no tlisha gedolahs, which is also a shame for the same reason. There are a couple of darga-tvirs, which are shiny, so I guess it makes up for it. Also, being able to learn my leining in 10 minutes probably makes it worth it, considering all the other things I still need to do.

Like ma'ariv. I just learned the festival kiddush, so now I can do that if we do it (I guess it's a matter of SCM tradition). Also, it's a good thing to know, because it's useful for things like meals. I guess it's not that obscure. (But it does mean I could make kiddush at our meal tomorrow night if you don't know it and need me to do so,

currentlee.)

I guess the rest of the service isn't so hard, but I haven't had the chance to go through it more than 2 or 3 times, and I really need to polish it.

In other singing news, ( long rant on my loss of vocal ability, or alternatively Techiya Thinks I'm a Mezzo! (They'll learn better) )

Help?

Current Mood: musical
Current Music: Chrono Trigger theme/Still Alive/Katamari theme/everything else in Adon Olam