HONK! Riiingg! Screeech! Yowl!

February 14, 2010 by Ro.

So much to be happy about: a new decade, Valentine’s Day, Chinese New Year, Mardi Gras, and new songs and new ventures for Moderately Bright Four. We are able to leave our holiday repertoire behind and start work on new things. It is a relief to sing songs without the word “mistletoe.” Steve, our priorities expert, has a fistful of tempting arrangements to suggest for us. We decide to work on “When You Wish Upon a Star” and “Drive My Car.” Both are excellent and have their own features to test the musical mettle of MB4. “Wish” has challenging harmonies with weird intervals, a bizarre key change, and sections that split into 5-part harmony. Steve solves the latter problem by asking Ro to cover both of the alto parts simultaneously. Aside from cloning or enduring some sort of schizoid episode, Ro can’t imagine how she will do this. Steve launches into his role as music theory guy, deconstructs the chords, and yes, succeeds in getting Ro to cover both alto parts and yet remain one person. The entire quartet is in awe.

The main problem with “Drive My Car” is three repeats and a coda, all involving split-second page turns. There are also quite a few nonsense syllables with tricky rhythms. Steve’s entire part consists of “Noo-n-n-noo-n-n-noo-n-n-noo” and Jeff’s bass line is, and I am not making this up: “I’ll love you ba ba b dm dm dm dm beep.” In fact the only part of the song that is catchier than the intro (“beep beep m beep beep yeah”) is the instrumental break. The Beatles used guitars, bass and drums. Since we have none of those things, we have to do the instrumental solos on voices alone. It is a lot of fun and we are starting to get good at it.

We better be! We have some shows coming up! Our first is a Purim celebration later this month at White Meadow Temple. To prepare for this, we are running through our tried and true repertoire. Most of the songs are ready for performance, but others show some memory lapses, in lyrics or harmonies or both. The most hilarious lapse shows up in the barbershop song “Bye Bye Blues.” The song features bell chords in which one by one we sing one note to add to a chord. (Bye bye bye bye blue blue blue blues). It’s a standard barbershop feature and lots of fun to do. For some reason (perhaps because we are standing out of order) Jeff forgets to come in, so it sounds like: Bye bye ___ bye blue ___ blue blues — with resounding silence in the blank spaces. We feel as if we have arrhythmia or sporadic hearing loss problems, like a loose wire. Jeff says we should say, “The tenor part will be sung by a CPAP machine.” Audrey suggests that we each be issued an air horn or similar noisy device to deploy in the event of such a memory lapse. It would be handy if one forgot a lyric: “There were bells on a hill but I never HOOOOONNNK!!” If we each have a different noise, our bell chords would be outstanding in a cacophonous way: HONK! Riingg! Screeech! Yowl! Yowl! Screeech! Riingg! HONK!

It’s worth looking into.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »