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Our current session starts on December 6.
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We are singing Winter Song by Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson:
Bidding is NOW OPEN in the Rock Voices Virtual Silent Auction!
COVID-19 caused our membership to dwindle by nearly 75%, forcing us to find creative solutions for our shrinking enrollment. We’ve pivoted to virtual sessions, and preparing a CD of all the songs we’ve worked on during the pandemic. To get through the winter, we need your donations of items, services, or experiences to auction off as prizes for this amazing community.
Please consider bidding on a service, product, or unique experience offered by one of our members to help Rock Voices continue to provide a sense of community, and bring the joy of singing to as many people as possible during this crisis. Your bids will help us raise money desperately needed for administrative costs including salaries, insurance, video editing, printing, web & database hosting/maintenance, renting of storage space and outdoor rehearsal venues, and production of our karaoke tracks and part recordings, from which members learn their parts without having to read music. Your contribution will make a difference; we thank you for your support.
Here’s our latest virtual choir video – Blackbird by The Beatles
Rock Voices is an adult no-audition community choir that only sings rock music! Our mission statement is “healing ourselves and others through song”.
We’re currently taking a break from singing together in an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and we have “gone virtual” so we can create music together and stay connected. We have weekly online rehearsals for a three or four week mini-session, and finish each session with a recording of us all singing the same song in harmony. Some mini-sessions we’ve done a video recording, some are audio. Members send us their recordings and we professionally mix them into either a video or an audio track.
Recently we decided to make a CD. This will be a year-long project. Every month will be a new mini-session focusing on a different song, taught by a professional Rock Voices director. You don’t have to sing every month to be on the CD. Each song will consist of a unique group of people who happen to be singing in that session.
HOW IT WORKS
In pre-COVID times, we met in person at various locations around the country. Now, we meet virtually – but most of our choirs are offering at least one in-person rehearsal this session. Just use our online enrollment system to choose a group to sing with, and process your payment for the session. (It does take two steps to be fully signed up – enrollment and payment.)
Once you’ve enrolled, request access to join the Facebook Group for that choir, answer a couple of easy questions, we’ll approve your membership, and you’re ready to go!
Rehearsals take place once a week for each session, with a two-week break in between sessions. The default group for you to join is Executive Director Tony Lechner’s group, which meets on Tuesday nights from 7:00-8:30pm, but that doesn’t mean you have to watch that night. After the rehearsal is over, we post it to our Facebook Group where members can watch later, as many times as they like. This kind of flexibility can accommodate anyone’s schedule and makes it easy to participate.
Just before the first rehearsal we offer options for members to pick up sheet music, or if you are not near one of our established rehearsal locations we can mail it to you. Whether you sing with Tony or another director, you learn with a Rock Voices’ professional director. You observe your director accompanying and directing the song, and you sing your part at the same time that everyone else is singing their part – in your respective homes, so you won’t be able to hear or see each other at rehearsals.
During the first week, we post Rock Voices part recordings for the song, in a secure location on our website. Part recordings for soprano, alto, tenor and bass help you learn your voice part by hearing it sung in your left ear, while the other parts of the song can be heard in your right ear. So you really don’t have to read music to be a part of this! As the weeks go by, we post a conducting video, which cues you how you sing your part, with all the right entrances and cutoffs, for the recording you’ll make. Then, after a couple of clicks on an upload link, you send off your recording to us!
WHAT IT COSTS
We want to make sure this amazing, fun, and rewarding experience is available to everyone, so we’re offering this on a sliding scale from $40-$70 for each session (that’s one month). It can be paid all at once or in weekly installments. If you would have a hardship paying even at the lower end of the sliding scale, financial aid is available, because we don’t want money to stand in the way of anyone enjoying Rock Voices.
All incoming tuition is used to pay the directors, print sheet music, and cover the costs of professional audio/video editing, as well as Rock Voices’ operating costs. Of course, if you’re able and would like to pay more, we’ll gratefully accept donations above what we’re asking!
HOW TO GET STARTED
It’s easy to get started! Just go to rockvoices.pike13.com. This enables you to enroll, make your payment and be sure that you receive a weekly email about that week’s rehearsal. If you’re already a member of Rock Voices, this site is familiar to you; it’s the one we’ve been using since Fall 2019. If you’re new to this experience, you’ll need to sign up first, by creating a new login and password. Then, choose a choir to “join”. Typically you’d pick a choir near you, but for this virtual arrangement, you can sing with Tony Lechner’s Hadley/Northampton group. Choose a payment plan, and then ask to join the Facebook Group after you’ve received your confirmation and your payment receipt. You’ll be singing with us in no time and having a great time doing it – and you’ll be able to get your voice on the next Rock Voices CD!
Want to know more about how you can enjoy singing with us? Here’s a handy Q&A document for you to read.
We’re Making a CD!
(and you can be on it!)
It’s becoming clear that, due to the pandemic, we won’t be returning to business-as-usual anytime soon. In light of this, Rock Voices is reinventing itself as an online-only phenomenon for the foreseeable future. But to give ourselves that end-of-season reward that is usually a final concert, we are going to create a CD.
We Need Your Help
Rock Voices is a community choir that only sings rock music! And better still — there are no auditions! We have sixteen choirs around New England and in Portland, OR, and our mission statement is “healing ourselves and others through song”.
We’re currently taking a break from singing together in an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and are using this time to rebuild our website. Even though we are continuing with virtual sessions, Rock Voices is weathering difficult financial times. Please consider making a donation to help the organization stay afloat throughout this crisis. You don’t need to sing with us to show your support. Thanks!
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