Helen and Geoff's Amazing Adventures

Have fun and do neat stuff

Sydney Male Choir Centenary Concert

Singing in a choir

by | Nov 21, 2012 | choir, chorister, Sydney Male Choir

I am one of 13 Basses with the Sydney Male Choir. The choir has about 65 members. About equal numbers of Tenor 1, Tenor 2 and Basses and a few more of Baritones (which is of course the normal male voice range). In most pieces of music, each of the four parts has its own little tune to sing. Tenor 1 or Baritone usually get the melody that everyone will know. If the arranger has done a good job, the Basses and Tenor 2s will also have a memorable tune. We sing from memory – that is, without holding music. Although that does make leaning our part a little more difficult, we sing and sound much better without our heads stuck in the music; watching, listening and blending.

Below is a Youtube of Sydney Male Choir

I’ve been singing in choirs for about 11 years. Why? would be a good question. I actually find this an extremely rewarding leisure activity. It certainly used to be a lot more common for people to sing in choirs before TV took over their lives and persuaded them that you have to be an expert before you can sing. Almost everyone can sing. If you can whistle, you can sing. But why is singing with a choir so interesting. These reasons for me:

  • A building process. Beginning with a piece of music that we don’t know and cannot sing and work individually and together to learn it and produce it in front of a paying audience. It usually takes about 6 weeks but can be much faster. That process is very satisfying.
  • Learn to solo level. Each one and every one of the choir has had to learn the piece almost to the level of a soloist. However, having achieved that as a basic level, each and every person has to then work with everyone else to produce it.
  • Listen and blend. Knowing our part very well, we each have to listen to what the other people in our part are doing, what the other parts are doing (for our entries), what the piano is doing (for the tempo and to keep in tune). Don’t stand out but provide the volume level needed for each phrase. Keep in tune and help everyone else stay in tune.
  • Watch the conductor. Absolutely critical. Each time we sing a piece it is a unique performance. If does not matter how well you might know it, expect the conductor to vary the tempo, hold notes for different lengths. The conductor makes each performance of each piece what it is. The conductor has to take what is essentially a group of soloists (who are trying to work together) into a blended whole. Choirs that try to work without a conductor have a very poor chance of success.
  • Work with others. None of us can do it by ourselves. Almost no part will have the melody for very long. All the other parts are usually singing in harmony with each other. We seldom sing the same words with the same tempo for all or even most of a piece.
  • Memory. Having to learn each piece by heart is great for my memory and aged brain. I find that something begins to happen after a few sings through and after something like 15-20 times through the song gets into my head. After 50 times through, it becomes easy. The secret appears to be “don’t try too hard for accuracy on any one sing – it is the number of times through that counts”.
  • Community. All of this gives a huge feeling of community. Of belonging and pulling one’s weight.
  • Effort. All of the above indicates that there is a large effort by everyone in the choir. Hard yet enjoyable work.

Shield Shrimp

When it rains across Australia’s vast inland region, temporary pools crop up all over the arid ground, giving life to a strange desert crustacean known as the shield shrimp (Triops australiensis).

Named after the formidable carapace that shields its head and upper body, T. australiensis can grow up to 7.6 cm long, and it uses its long, segmented tail and mass of 60 or so legs to propel itself through shallow water.

It also breathes through these legs – its sub-class Branchiopoda means ‘gill-legged’ – and in the females these legs bear ovisacs for carrying their tiny eggs.

Several pix in the Photo Gallery and a movie.

Acacia peuce

A rare and endangered plant. The tree grows up to 15 to 18 metres (49 to 59 ft) high, with short horizontal branches and pendulous branchlets covered in needle-like phyllodes adapted for the arid dry climate. It has a distinctive habit more similar to a sheoak or a conifer.

Although speculated to have been widespread across central Australia during wetter climates 400,000 years ago, the population is now mostly restricted to three sites, separated by the encroaching Simpson Desert. In the Northern Territory, the species is restricted to the Mac Clark (Acacia peuce) Conservation Reserve which is surrounded by a pastoral lease, Andado Station. The other two sites are near Boulia and Birdsville in Queensland. The tree is found in open arid plains that usually receive less than 150 millimetres (5.9 in) of rain per annum. They grow on shallow sand aprons overlaying gibber or clay slopes and plains and between longitudinal dunes or on alluvial flats between ephemeral watercourses.

 

Owen Springs Reserve on Hugh River

Owen Springs was a station on the Hugh River. The Hugh River flows into the Finke (when it actually flows). Both cut through the Western MacDonnell Ranges. The image above shows Owen Springs Reserve as a dot at lower right. The river it is next to is the Hugh. Hermannsburg, our next town, is near middle left edge. Hermannsburg is almost on the Finke River. You can see both Hugh and Finke Rivers cutting through sections of MacDonnell Ranges.

Palm Valley

Palm Valley is within the Finke Gorge National Park southwest of Alice Springs. Palm Valley has a smallish population of Red Cabbage Palms (Livistona mariae). The nearest related species is 850 kilometres away in Katherine NT. The average rainfall for Palm Valley is just 200 mm per year. Small pockets of semi-permanent spring-fed pools allow the unique flora and fauna (desert fish, shield shrimps tadpoles and frogs) to survive.

It had been assumed that the cabbage palms were remnants of a prehistoric time when the climate supported tropical rainforest in what is now the arid inland of Australia. Genetic analysis published in 2012 determined that Livistona mariae at Palm Valley is actually the same species as Livistona rigida from samples collected near Katherine and Mount Isa, both around 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) away. It is now thought that aboriginal people brought the palms to here from Mataranka.

Mound Springs

Mound Springs occur around the Western edge of the Great Artesian Basin and represent a natural discharge of Artesian water that was captured many hundreds of kilometers away from rain falling along the Great Dividing Range and New Guinea. This article provides details. Dalhousie is an excellent example of a mound spring.

Great Artesian Basin map Great Artesian Basin diagram