Humming along, singing a song…

Today’s rehearsal was supposed to be brief.

We were going to learn some of the songs that are being incorporated into the show during celebratory moments.  ‘Cause you know Latin people love to sing!

I was looking forward to it when I woke up this morning, but once I got there, I knew this was going to be way, WAY different than what I was so used to, being a musical theatre performer.

When one works with a musical theatre company and the show has music that one must learn, it’s pretty standard that the singers are given copies of sheet music.  This helps to teach the timing, the notes, and the words of the song.  I was given words to the song, but these were ones I’d never heard before.  Luckily one of my cast mates sent me an mp3 of two of the songs.  So as I am listening to these quiet recordings, I begin to realize that the first song doesn’t have the traditional song set up of verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge and chorus.  It made my head spin!  Also, I couldn’t pronounce some of the words.  On top of that, the melody never actually repeats itself so I was feeling a little overwhelmed.

The second song is a little more standard in set up, but getting the timing on some of the held notes without the actual music was difficult.  I was again given the words and an mp3, but not everyone sings the song the same way so there were some kinks that needed to be worked out.

The musician that helped out on this rehearsal, while super nice, wasn’t the greatest teacher.  Some of the chords that he played on his guitar, didn’t sound like anything that I had ever heard before.  I just told myself that it was because of the type of guitar.

I think what I was hoping for was to be told, okay this word right here is held for a count of 8 or each new phrase starts two beats after the last one (that wasn’t ever the case as it was all over the place).  I think this was the first time during this process that I didn’t really have fun.  But that’s okay.  The great thing about this business is that there are a lot of people that are willing to help you if you just ask.

You can surely bet that I will be asking!