Catching up. Done the choir mail, made an available-singers spreadsheet to see if that's useful. Next, the church bulletin. (Monday usually isn't a working day for me but it's the September church bulletin and I want it up as soon as possible)

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I paperclipped together several sets of pages in the Liturgy book because those are things we only sing in Lent or on specific feast days; I came back from holiday to find ALL paperclips gone (I don't know where they went either; they weren't in the choir when I retrieved the book).

But suddenly it came to me who is likely to have done it (Soprano who is off to Greece with her new husband) and why (to photograph all the pages and have a Liturgy book of her own).

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I paperclipped several pages in the Liturgy book because those are things we usually skip when it's not Lent, or specific feast days; I came back from holiday to find ALL paperclips gone (I don't know where they went either; they weren't in the choir when I retrieved the book).

But suddenly it came to me who is likely to have done it (Soprano who is off to Greece with her new husband) and why (to photograph all the pages and have a Liturgy book of her own).

#ChurchChoir

Please, voice. Two more services. #ChurchChoir

It's that I don't want to make a bride unhappy on her wedding day or I'd tell several people where to stick it. #subtoot #ChurchChoir

Stretching myself is fun :-) #ChurchChoir

This is approximately the fourth funeral with the present choirbook and suddenly we found a slew of errors. Choirmate found a wrong note in a bass part, other choirmate fortunately read the right word instead of the printed wrong word, most ektenias were missing a line (the same line because it's the same page printed 4 times) which we sang from memory after the first time, one ektenia had EXACTLY THAT line too many... Back to the drawing board with it.

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`This is approximately the fourth funeral with the present choirbook and suddenly we found a slew of errors. Choirmate found a wrong note in a bass part, other choirmate fortunately read the right word instead of the written wrong word, most of the prayers were missing a line (the same line because it's the same page printed 4 times) which we could sing from memory after the first time, one prayer had EXACTLY THAT line too many... Back to the drawing board with it.

#ChurchChoir

Thank you, Past Me, for doing all this work last year so I don't have to do it this year! #ChurchChoir

Apparently I read Psalm 103 so often these past few days that I know whole stretches of it by heart and it runs in my head like an earworm. #ChurchChoir

Plan for next year: learn the festive sixth tone with the cute little wiggle at the end and use it for all the stichera at Easter that happen to be in the sixth tone. #ChurchChoir #ChurchMusic

My church choir has two Sundays off during the year: the Sunday after Christmas and the Sunday after Easter. So I get to have a rare lie in tomorrow! #ChoristerLife #LayVicar #LayClerk #ChurchChoir #ChurchMusic

Please help me pray I don't lose my voice in Holy Week. I seem to have picked up a cold on the train or something. (Yes, I did a covid test; it was negative.) #ChurchChoir

Me: Sopranos, any special problems?
Soprano: No, just the usual problems.

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Okay, all set for tonight's (and next week's) choir practice. Pink flags = what I want to rehearse at least cursorily, purple flags: what I need to work on, mostly missing markup or print a new version. #ChurchChoir #ChurchMusic

In Holy Week of 2021, with only one singer per service, the Matins of Holy Saturday singer marked up the kathisma to accommodate the melody jumping between the soprano and alto parts. This distracted us (well, at least the sopranos and altos among us) last year so I erased it all. And added some markup to things that needed it and didn't have it, and replaced the old funeral Trisagion with the new one with Baritone's corrections. Phew.

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#ChurchMusic

Last night in the Vigil the choir consisted of Baritone and me so we could both sing at our natural pitch (in sixths) instead of a fourth or fifth too high (me) or too low (him). #ChurchChoir #ChurchMusic

Last night in choir practice we corrected the written music to what we actually sing (thanks, Baritone, for the proper bass part!) Now making it official in #MuseScore. #ChurchChoir #ChurchMusic

Choirmate: if I ask you to sing soprano in this piece when that leaves me the only alto, don't assume you need to "help" me. That is my call, not yours. (I *will* explain tonight at choir practice about that F sharp in the alto part that's vitally important and impossible to agree on unless we've rehearsed it together, which we hadn't.)

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Meh, if it was only 10 or so of us who know each other very well for the Forgiveness Vespers, like when we were still a tiny parish, I'd have stayed for it, but now I was glad to have a reason to stay on the choir platform until the very end and leave as soon as the singing was done early because of impending meltdown. I *know* the point is that you ask forgiveness of *everyone* but 40 people, 30 of whom I don't know at all, were too many. #ChurchChoir