One of our Assistant Directors, Glen Windle, was awarded a Region 34 education grant in 2023 to travel to Sydney for the LoveNotes Quartet workshop. Here is an article Glen wrote which was published in our regional newsletter OzChords.

A fabulous weekend with LoveNotes who were so generous with their time, talent, and themselves. As with any workshop, it is difficult to select just a few moments or ideas that had a big impact. I found that although (like all of us) I have heard a lot of this information many times over the years, it was presented in such a way that I had many “AHA!” moments. It is easy to think that we are doing everything correctly with our singing, but we can always add another “onion skin” layer to our sound and skills. When LoveNotes introduced the concept of a 3D breath and we tried it, the difference in my sound was remarkable. I had believed I was using my full resonant singing space whilst singing ,but realised that I had become a bit complacent. I was aware of it ,but had not really been doing it!

To elaborate for those of you who missed out, when inhaling be aware of the air hitting the vertical space (the roof of the mouth and the top of the tongue), the horizontal space (the inside of the cheeks), and the lateral space (the back of the throat). This sets up the space in the mouth for singing and enabled me to produce a lovely rich and full sound. This concept really resonated with me and was presented in such a simple way that it has also been very easy to share with others and duplicate the result. Just this takeaway alone was well worth the effort of attending the workshop as it has had such an impact and made a difference in the sound of my choruses and quartets also. Another idea that really impacted was the “working stance” and “performance stance”. When the group are in performance stance (ie. quartet position), they are in full performance mode 100% of the time. If for some reason they need to stop and work on something they will go into working stance (face one another in a circle) and work through the issue while not having to perform so they can focus on the issue. As soon as they go back to performance stance, it is 100% performance mode again. This can make such a big difference as it is so easy to switch off performance while we are thinking about what we are doing. Having to concentrate on performance whilst in performance stance means that we get used to singing that way all the time! I loved this idea.

Thank you so much to Sweet Adelines Australia and LoveNotes for this amazing workshop.