This week’s vocalize is fairly straightforward. The purpose of it is to get your choir used to singing non major scales and arpeggios during the warm-up session, and, again, to work on resonance.
Here we go:
Raising the penultimate note (in this case the 4th) is a fairly common occurrence, so it’s good for the choir to get used to it. Also hearing the lowered third going down can be a bit tricky, so again it’s good practice. I’ve used Mi and Ma for the syllables, and the entire exercise is phrased. You could change the syllables to Zi and Za or any combination of the four. In addition you could sing a syllable for each note. (Example: Zi Zi Zi Zi Za Za Za Za Za)
As with the rest of the exercises it can be used for going up or going down. Since it goes up first it’s easier to go up with each successive exercise, but it doesn’t really matter. Lowering the starting pitch at each repetition isn’t really all that much harder given that you start and end on the same note.
Enjoy!