Hi there,

For those that occasionally read my blog, I started a new job on Monday, April 10. I think I will like it but it will take a few weeks to work out the kinks. The name of the company is not very different from the name of the compan that I left. I believe there will be more difference than there is in the names.

Here's a new post for those that care. I'm trying to put in a clock. How boring is that?

Hi There Choir Music Singing Fans,

Let's say you're in a choir and you like to sing and you prefer to sing well or at least you prefer to hit the right notes and you don't know music like that smarty pants that always gets the right answer when you don't even understand the question. Well, you can learn music theory and learn to play a piano and punch out your part and try to sing along.

Or you can cheat. For myself, I prefer to cheat.

Thanks to the internet, there are lots of ways to cheat these days. You really don't have to know anything any more. You just type it into Google and there it is, all the answers you ever needed for all of life's questions.

For learning choral music, I found a neat little crutch that's almost as useful as letting Dale Bailey learn it first and just copying what he does. It's called the

"Silvis Woodshed"

It's a site with lots of midi files of lots of the music that we sing from time to time. Midi files are just files of notes and not the sound files like ".mp3's". and the good thing is that they only have the vocal parts so you don't have to listen to a bunch of strings while you try to figure out what part belongs to you. It's got Durufle's Ubi Carritas, Brukner's Christus factus est, even Bernstein's Chichester Psalms and, of course, Handel's Messiah among many others.

If you click on a file, most computers will go ahead and play it for you. If you want to get a little fancier, you can download the file and play it in one of the many players that are available. A few are suggested on the Silvis Woodshed website. You have to download and install them.

I like Melody Assistant. It's written by some French people and has way too many features which confuse me, but it does allow one to read in a midi file and easily adjust the volume of the various parts. The program can do lots of things and if you send them $20.00, they'll send you a secret code that let's you do even more.

Have fun.

As an added note, one of my fellow choir members had asked me just how to adjust the volumes of the various parts in Melody Assistant. I can never remember how but I can usually figure it out. What you do is click and drag on the little volume control icon running down the left side near the bottom. When you click down, the panel shows up. If you then drag across the page, it won't disappear when you release the mouse button. Here's a picture of this in action.

There are a lot of other sites where you can find choral music stiff. You can try

The Classical Music Archives

Or I like:

the Choral Public Domain Library

I found a .pdf file of the score of Bruckner's Christus factus est along with an different midi file.

So enough for now. Hope this helps.