It has been a while since I posted anything about the lead up to Singsational Nottingham! – it has been a busy week at work in the lead up to the Easter holiday. So now I am publishing something before it is too late!
Firstly, a week or so ago I asked where people like singing most. Here are the results, in descending order of popularity:
1st place: In a choir
2nd place: In the car
3rd place: In the kitchen (whilst cooking)
4th place: Anywhere (followed by “it annoys my Dad” in one case)
No one voted for “Singing in the Shower” 😦
Looks like someone has beaten us to it with this idea!
Sing in the car – where no-one can hear you (unless the window is open)!
So, the readers of this blog and the facebook page must be quite “choral”. I hope to get a few a larger proportion of “car” and “shower” singers to the event on April 20th.
Here is this times question. See what you make of this:
Finally, there are some more words and music on the http://www.singsation.org, so that you can remind yourself of how “My Bonnie lies over the ocean” and “I’m forever blowing bubbles” go.
Despite the weather, I’ve been working on Singsational Nottingham!
I’ve been busy inviting local choirs along to Singsational Nottingham!, so that they can advertise themselves during the interval and attract new members and so that their members can spread themselves around the audience so that less confident singers can get a bit of extra support.
So far, five groups have said that some of their members are going to join the event, which is brilliant! It will be great for members of local choirs to meet each other – I bet there will loads of “I never knew you were a singer too!” as people recognise each other through the evening.
The other things that I have been up to are sending out a press release to local papers to try and drum up some publicity via the local papers (they should be interested in a community event like Singsational Nottingham!) and creating a QR code for http://www.singsation.org. This was so much easier than I ever imagined. There is no shortage of free QR code creator programs available via a google search and all you do is put in any “string” and a QR code is created. Here is http://www.singsation.org:
Who’d have thought this could represent a great night out?
I’ve added the QR code to the black and white poster / A5 handouts that I am putting out around the area. I wonder if anyone will point their iphone at one of them to find out more?
I’ve just spent some time putting in some more words and You Tube links for the music that we’ll be using at Singsational Nottingham! By clicking on the Get Singing! – Words and Music (2) tab on the http://www.singsation.org website you can now sing along to
Climb every mountain
Mud, mud. glorious mud
How much fun is that!
Or, if you can’t wait any longer, just scroll down a little more on this post!!
Climb every mountain,
Search high and low,
Follow every highway,
Every path you know.
Climb every mountain,
Ford every stream,
Follow every rainbow,
‘Till you find your dream.
A dream that will need
All the love you can give,
Every day of your life
For as long as you live.
Climb every mountain,
Ford every stream,
Follow every rainbow,
Till you find your dream
A dream that will need
All the love you can give,
Every day of your life,
For as long as you live.
Climb every mountain,
Ford every stream,
Follow every rainbow,
Till you find your dream.
A bold hippopotamus was standing one day
On the banks of the cool Shalimar
He gazed at the bottom as he peacefully lay
By the light of the evening star
Away on the hilltop sat combing her hair
His fair hippopotami maid
The hippopotamus was no ignoramus
And sang her this sweet serenade
Chorus:
Mud, mud, glorious mud
Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood
So follow me follow, down to the hollow
And there let me wallow in glorious mud
The fair hippopotama he aimed to entice
From her seat on that hilltop above
As she hadn’t got a ma to give her advice
Came tiptoeing down to her love
Like thunder the forest re-echoed the sound
Of the song that they sang when they met
His inamorata adjusted her garter
And lifted her voice in duet
Now more hippopotami began to convene
On the banks of that river so wide
I wonder now what am I to say of the scene
That ensued by the Shalimar side
They dived all at once with an ear-splitting sposh
Then rose to the surface again
A regular army of hippopotami
All singing this haunting refrain
Chorus
(Extra verse:)
The amorous hippopotamus whose love song we know
Is now married and father of ten,
He murmurs, “God rot ’em!” as he watches them grow,
And he longs to be single again!
He’ll gambol no more on the banks of the Nile,
Which Naser is flooding next spring,
With hippopotamas in silken pyjamas
No more will he teach them to sing…
Chorus
Imagine singing these great songs at Singsational Nottingham! on April 20th with everyone else. Make sure you send this post on to anyone you think might be interested, or tell them to look at http://www.facebook.com/SingLikeYourInTheShower
As we move towards Singsational Nottingham! in 6 weeks time, I have decided to do a “poll” a week to find out a bit about why people like singing and what they like to sing.
Here is the first one, designed to find out a bit more about the kind of singing that people like to do:
When I’ve got some responses I’ll summarize them in a future post. For future Singsational! events we’ll be able to build the programme for the evening based on the preferences of the people who come along.
Over the past few weeks of putting together my ideas for Singsational Nottingham! and floating the idea with people, I have been amazed at the level of enthusiasm that there is for the concept. It made me think about what inspires other people to sing and a quick trawl on the net very quickly came up with this quote from (probably) the best song writer ever.
“I love to hear a choir. I love humanity to see the faces of real people devoting themselves to a piece of music. I like the teamwork. It makes me feel optimistic about the human race when I see them cooperating like that.”
If Paul McCartney thinks that about singing in a choir, who are we to argue with his wisdom?
Singsational Nottingham! is going to deliver that feeling of optimism to everyone who attends. It will be a great “feel good” experience (even though at the moment there are no Paul McCartney or Beatles tracks in the program). 😦
We love Paul McCartney – even if his best known piece of choir music is for a frog chorus!
One of the things that I have learned over the past few weeks is that a lot of the people I know who would be interested in Singsational Nottingham! have never been on Facebook, have never considered following a blog and don’t really visit websites unless they have to! But many of them do get emails.
So when someone mentioned Mail Chimp (www.mailchimp.com) to me I had to give it a go. It is a service that allows you to design and manage email campaigns. A bit like WordPress (www.wordpress.com), which I have used to create the http://www.singsation.org website and this blog), it is a free service up to a certain limit. And I don’t think that I am going to need to send more than 12,000 emails before the event on April 20th….
Even a Mail Chimp enjoys a good sing!
So, yesterday evening I sent out my first Mail Chimp email campaign to all the people in my address book about Singsational Nottingham! and why they have to come along. I have had a spike in the views on the website today, so something must be working! I’ve decided to send the mailing list a weekly digest of any blog posts that I put onto this site; that way they won’t miss out on anything. I’ve created a QR code to put onto the Singsational Nottingham! posters too, but I’ll not tell the email gang about that – they will think it is way too technical!
And as for the rest of the potential audience, I’ll carry on putting up posters in the town and leaving A5 fliers in the library. That method of building an audience has worked for years. 🙂
Having “liked” various musical celebrities on facebook the other day, I thought why “not tell them about Singsational Nottingham!” So I went on their facebook pages and sent them each a post, with a few words about April 20th!
I also asked them a couple of questions / favours.
“What is your favourite warm up?” – I’d like to use them at the start of the evening if the celebs suggest anything.
“Could you write a round for us to use as the climax to the warm up part of Singsational Nottingham!”
I’ve just discovered how to feature “Likes” on the Singsation! facebook page.
So far I have added:
Gareth Malone – because it is his programmes on the telly that have been part of the inspiration behind my setting up Singsation!
John Rutter – because he writes such excellent tunes that I think it would be hard for anyone to say that singing them, or hearing them, does not make them feel good.
Howard Goodall – because he has just had an excellent series on music on the TV; plus he wrote the theme tune to “The Vicar of Dibley”, which is probably the only exposure to choral music that many people have had.
Music for Everyone – because this Nottingham-based charity runs brilliant participatory music events and groups for people of all standards and they are worth telling the rest of the world about.
The Really Big Chorus – Advertise themselves as the biggest choir in the UK, getting together a mix of choirs and singers who don’t sing in a group from across the country to perform choral works. Sounds fun!
Is there anything / anyone else that Singsation! should be “liking”?
I’ve just spent some time putting in some more words and You Tube links for the music that we’ll be using at Singsational Nottingham! By clicking on the Get Singing! – Words and Music tab on the http://www.singsation.org website you can now sing along to
Row, row, row your boat
Oh I do like to be beside the seaside
Guide me O thou great Jehovah
There’s a hole in my bucket
How much fun is that!
And it will be even better on April 20th with everyone else.
I’m working on putting together a poll at the moment, so that we can all vote on why we love singing. Then we can compare the results of the on-line survey with a show of hands from the audience. Keep your eyes peeled for the next blog post.
Singsation! 