I joined the Choral Society!

It's a community choir for all ages, and my gray hair fit right in.

Matt's former colleague is the director, and at a department party he convinced me to check them out. Last night was the first rehearsal for our Christmas concert. I sat between the spouse of another one of Matt's colleagues and another woman who looked soooo familiar, I just couldn't put my finger on it. We chatted about this and that, all the while I was searching my memory to place her: the library? the gym? the grocery store? When she finally mentioned that she was a doctor - boom! Got it. She was Kent's doctor at urgent care. Then we remembered each other.

It was a good thing I sat with these two ladies because I HAD NO IDEA WHAT I WAS DOING. Not only has it been 17 years since I was a part of a choir (and high school, mind you), I completely forgot several things:
1) How to read music. Turns out, in real choirs, there are many many lines of music and you have to keep up with your section, ignoring all others (including the solo line which is above the soprano line). It's like learning to read and accidentally skipping a line when you read to the end of your line. Lines, lines, lines!!! A handful of times, my kind neighbors generously pointed to where we were because I had so obviously lost my place.

2) How to sing. My voice is actually weak today from that 2 hour practice. I seriously re-thought being a soprano and maybe sitting in the alto section when I remembered that hearing the harmony has always been challenging for me.

3) How to count beats. I vaguely remember the rests and what equals what, but I was MOST DEFINITELY copying my neighbors. Also, we were singing crazy time signatures that switched from 5/8 and 3/4. WHAT?!?!? Check it out:

4) What those words mean. I can't list all of the words that our director used that were Chinese to me. The director IS Chinese, but he was definitely speaking in English. I think. He was actually speaking Music and that was confusing. I did what my Dad always taught us to do: fake it til you make it. So after rehearsing different parts of the music, I quietly figured out what "time signature" and "measure" and "adagio" meant. At one point, he said something like "sing this time doo ada gio" and I thought he meant to say those sounds instead of the Latin words (yes, I have to figure out Latin now!), but when we started singing our parts, everyone sang "doo doo doo doo doo" to their respective melodies. Um, it's a good thing I hesitated and sang quietly because I would have been singing "doo ada gio doo ada gio" to my soprano line. He meant "doo" but "adagio" which is a TEMPO. Sheesh Rebekah!!!

5) How to go to bed late. When rehearsal was over at 9:30 pm, my doctor neighbor tuned to me and said, "Usually we all go out for a beer afterwards. You should join us!" Very sweet of her to include me, but oh my goodness, I'm dealing with toddler sleep issues and that is no longer her stage of life, so I passed on that, went home and passed out (sober).

I know it's just the first day. My voice and breathing will come back to me. I know I'll pick it up, but with so many songs to learn, I kind of wish we met more than once a week! December might seem far away, but there are only so many Mondays left...