Come Sing or Just Check it Out!
We hope you’ll come join us for some great fun and music making on a Thursday evening. Guests are always welcome. A VoCal rehearsal is an event all unto itself. It’s quite an experience to see dozens of men all so focused and working towards the same goal - having a blast crafting an amazing experience for our audience. We have fun, but we also are pretty darn into learning and getting better.
What to Expect
Get to the rehearsal site a bit in advance of our 7pm start time. You'll walk into an environment with lots of guys hanging around chatting and a few moving around getting the rehearsal site ready. The guys come in all shapes, sizes, ages and amount of vo
cal experience. But they all have in common that they love to sing. Very quickly guys will notice that you're a new fellow we haven't seen before, and they'll come over to introduce themselves. You'll be introduced to our VP of Membership, who's job it it to make sure all guests have a GREAT time. We'll figure out what voice part you most likely sing (you can try a few and see what fits) and hook you up with a buddy for the evening who can answer any questions you may have. You'll also get a Guest Book that has all the songs in our current repertoire. If you don't read music, don't let that be daunting (you're totally not alone there). You can use it for the lyrics!
We go through a group warm up and then we'll get into the core of the evening. You'll find we spend a significant amount of time working on the individual voice mechanics of the singers. We find that the better we can teach guys to sing, the more fun they have singing together - and it also makes the ensemble sound better!
We spend the night in a number of configurations. On any given evening we might be working in a big circle with our director in the middle, we may be on the risers, perhaps broken down into smaller groups or in sectionals by voice part. We try to provide enough variety so no one's standing in any given place too terribly long.
If you happen to arrive on an evening immediately in front of one of our contests, we don't get through a whole lot of songs (usually 2 or 3), but most nights of the year, we work on quite a few songs. We usually also spend some time working on choreography and the visual part of our presentation. Just relax and enjoy yourself.
As a guest you're welcome to participate actively in every minute of our rehearsal. Or, if you'd rather, perhaps you'd like to have a seat and watch what's going on. Any way you want it! Our goal is to make you feel as comfortable as possible, give you a good understanding of what we do, and if you are interested in doing some singing, to help you share your voice with other guys to make some music.
When rehearsal's done, there'll be guys stand around and sing informally. Some will be busy cleaning up the rehearsal venue. Guys will likely want to teach you a "tag", which is a few measures of a song that can be taught without music and that really makes some ringing chords. The atmosphere is always very positive and supportive. Relax and lean into the experience and we guarantee you'll have a memorable night and go home with songs ringing in your head!
We hope we'll see you again because you had such a great time and can't wait to be a part of it, but, if not, we're thrilled you took the time to come and check it out and we hope you had a great time singing with VoCal!
