Your impressions of MUCS are unsurprising, given that it's the beginning of the university year. When you have a sudden influx of freshers, you get two things: a lot of tedious notebashing, while the conductor tries to get the absolute neophytes up to speed with the concepts of reading and singing choral music, and a collection of lecherous old farts hoping to check out the fresh meat on the off chance that some of the cuter ones might still have very low standards. In SCUNA there used to be a small collection of people who'd keep close tabs on our better-known lechers, to try to reduce the incidents of statutory rape to a socially-acceptable minimum (because, you know, it's far better that a seventeen-year-old girl be plied with port and ravished in a camp dorm than that a forty-something "pillar of the choir" be made to keep his hands and hormones to himself, because you wouldn't want to offend anyone
( ... )
That would make sense had it been fresher rehearsal - but it was BOF rehearsal (the week before). MUCS' old folks aren't like the ones (who were?) in SCUNA; most of them are people who've followed Foetus over from RMPS because he's such a wonderful conductor. They don't socialise, let alone sexually harass the freshers, and they WARBLE. (Well, the ones in the soprano section did anyway.) Between them and the wanking, I can't see myself going back to MUCS for an entire concert rehearsal period. But it means less to me than Olie; although it was my introduction to AICSA, I didn't really feel like I fit until I joined SCUNA. And there even if I was in Canberra I know it wouldn't be like it was, so I totally understand the sadness...
I came to the same conclusion about Madrigals, my first uni choir, and still the one dearest to my heart in many years. It's still a wonderful group, but it is not really my choir anymore. The reasons are entirely different tho - mads is very much an undergraduate choir, full of voices and faces that are young uni students and people I no longer know.
I wouldn't say Scots' is like a workplace, just that it suffers from cliques. I've been singing with Tom D since 2000 and he's a workmate, yeah, cos I've never been in his clique. But Vaughan and Leonie and Allan and Brent and Tommy K and Lizzie - the lunch crowd - they're friends. Of course, it's not like it was. In 2002 we used to party together outside of Sundays, but since the Bs had kids they stopped hosting spa parties and the socialising dropped off massively. (And then there was the post ACC-tour purge which lost some of my favourite people... ugh, politics...) The one thing you can say about the social environment of choirs is that it will change over the years. You never know when someone new will show up and turn out to be awesome :o)
That's true! Lunch got a lot smaller when Kate McB and Jimbo left the choir. :( Maybe we should invite Jimbo to lunch-but-not-choir, now he's back in town ... I'm also hanging out for darthbessie's eventual return (years away though that may be).
Yay for awesome people :) I ran into Mel Robins not that long ago - she's training to be a gym instructor as well - Body Step. She was at the workshops.
But yeah - MonUCS is a very different place than it was a few years ago. Not just because I'm older and have kids - the social dynamics and groupings do change over time.
But people change as well. I find Uni choirs fun but just too slow-paced these days. Its not that they've changed so much, but that I've learned and grown and improved. And everyone else who does music in choirs for a while (well, most of us!) is the same. And as we get better, we naturally want to move to choirs that challenge us more.
MUCS is *supposed* to be a learning ground. It's not meant to be a place that you stay in forever. Not unless you like being a big fish in the paddling pool (well, that's how I see it).
As I've improved, I've wanted to go on to better choirs with a higher standard. That doesn't mean that MUCS is bad, because it isn't - it's great - it's just that everyone reaches a point where there need to learn from new teachers.
I'll be forever thankful to the AICSA choirs I've been a member of, because without them I'd never have learned to sing as a chorister. I owe them so much. But I don't think I belong in them any more. Except maybe the odd IV or two...
I hear you, on all of those points. But honestly for me the AICSA choir experience (with the exception of IVs, and ROCS plus occasional MUCS/MonUCS rehearsals for developing my conducting) stopped being about the musical standard years and years ago. For a (short -- gosh that was a long time ago) while it was my only outlet for choral singing; in fact I'd never sung in a choir before MUCS, so in many ways it remained a process of discovery for the first year or so. After that, though, and especially once I started singing with other groups (especially Gloriana -- I still really miss them!)... well, I'm not saying I didn't enjoy the music and the singing, because obviously I did; but I stopped having any expectations about rehearsal standards and how much I'd get out of rehearsals musically, because if it had been primarily about that, I would have gotten far too frustrated most weeks
( ... )
"the AICSA choir experience ... stopped being about the musical standard years and years ago"
Well, what I was trying to say wasn't that the rehearsing etc.. wasn't up to my preferred standard, what I wanted to say was that the standard was so low that it was almost painfully boring, or at least, it would have been if I had raised my head out of my novel. As it was, it was intermittently boredering on the painful :P
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I went along to see if it'd be worth joining a choir at MY uni, but I found the rehearsal pace stupendously boring.
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The reasons are entirely different tho - mads is very much an undergraduate choir, full of voices and faces that are young uni students and people I no longer know.
*hugs* for Oli.
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Of course, it's not like it was. In 2002 we used to party together outside of Sundays, but since the Bs had kids they stopped hosting spa parties and the socialising dropped off massively. (And then there was the post ACC-tour purge which lost some of my favourite people... ugh, politics...) The one thing you can say about the social environment of choirs is that it will change over the years. You never know when someone new will show up and turn out to be awesome :o)
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But yeah - MonUCS is a very different place than it was a few years ago. Not just because I'm older and have kids - the social dynamics and groupings do change over time.
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MUCS is *supposed* to be a learning ground. It's not meant to be a place that you stay in forever. Not unless you like being a big fish in the paddling pool (well, that's how I see it).
As I've improved, I've wanted to go on to better choirs with a higher standard. That doesn't mean that MUCS is bad, because it isn't - it's great - it's just that everyone reaches a point where there need to learn from new teachers.
I'll be forever thankful to the AICSA choirs I've been a member of, because without them I'd never have learned to sing as a chorister. I owe them so much. But I don't think I belong in them any more. Except maybe the odd IV or two...
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Well, what I was trying to say wasn't that the rehearsing etc.. wasn't up to my preferred standard, what I wanted to say was that the standard was so low that it was almost painfully boring, or at least, it would have been if I had raised my head out of my novel. As it was, it was intermittently boredering on the painful :P
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