Musical Me is our pre-school music class for girls and boys ages 4 and 5 designed to develop and instill a love of music.

We are taking Fall Session registrations now!

• Classes are Tuesdays from 4:30-5:00
• Starting October 2nd through December 4th
• Cost for the 10 week session:  $150

Just fill out this registration form or call the office today!  206.526.1900  

Invite them to join us for our FREE singing workshop, You Can SING, on October 20th at the Garfield Community Center. Free registration through Garfield CC over the phone at (206) 684-4788, or through SPARC registration 

Uniform Fittings!

It is time to start planning for uniform fittings!  Here are the details:

Fittings are held at the SGC Office -1910 E Spruce Street 

15 minute slots are available on Sat. Oct 27, Sun. Oct 28, Sat. Nov 4, Sun. Nov 5.

Simply click on this Scheduling Link  and enter your daughter's name in an available slot/cell, and you will receive a reminder a week before your fitting date.

Items to bring to the fitting:

Returning choristers - if you did not return your uniform in June please bring it washed and hem removed to your appointment.

Dolcine & Vivissimi - black patent shoes (mary janes or similar simple style), white sheer stockings.

Allegra - black patent shoes, nude stockings, black pants, black shoes & socks, red SGC sweatshirt if already been issued one.

Cantamus - black 'character' shoes, nude stockings, black pants, black shoes & socks, red SGC sweatshirt if already issued.  

Prime Voci & Cantamus are selling Chinook Books  and Mobile Apps (iPhone, Android) to support SGC and the Cantamus trip to PICCFEST next summer in Eugene, OR. Both the book and the App have tons of useful and fun coupons ranging from travel (2 for 1 Amtrack) to groceries, and many arts events (Seattle Symphony, ACT, SAM, PNB, Children's Museum and more). Either version will quickly pay for itself. Orders are due by October 17, and books will be delivered shortly thereafter.

Girls will be in the lobby of the church on Tuesdays and Thursdays the week of October 1st and 8th to make ordering easy!

(You can also contact Aimee Mell to place an order) 

Thank you for your support of SGC!  

The editing phase of the new CD from Prime Voci (PV) is almost done, after which it will be sent off for mastering and manufacturing.  What exactly is editing though?

In February, PV held two recording sessions at Holy Rosary Church in West Seattle.  For a single song, they would record two to three complete takes (running the song start to finish).  After that, they would go back and re-do specific parts if necessary.  The end result is that each song (typically about three minutes) has about twenty minutes of recorded material.

This material was then loaded into a computer.  SGC's Artistic Director Jake Winkler listened to each take of each song, identifying the best performances for compositing into the final recording.  Sometimes this meant taking the first half of a note from one take and carefully cross-fading into the second half of the same note from a different take so that the end result is seamless.  Figure 1 shows one song from the CD:  Each of the vertical lines represents a different splicing of different takes.  Figure 2 shows a close up of one of these splices, showing the cross-fading between takes.  The horizontal bands are tracks, and each represents a different microphone in the room:  Three up front for the choir, one close mic on the harp, and two about forty feet out into the room to capture the ambience.

The beautiful acoustics of Holy Rosary mean that no artificial reverbs were needed to sweeten the sound.  Occasionally, though, a few other tricks were called for.  In this example, for example, the fourth verse featured a soloist.  For that verse, the microphone she was closest to was doubled onto another track, very subtly compressed (a process that narrows the contrast between loud and soft), then added back in to make the soloist appear ever so slightly louder in the mix.

Starting this Fall, SGC is taking a big step into the future with the implementation of Moodle into the theory curriculum. Moodle is an open-source e-learning software package that allows teachers to create effective online courses, boasting over 57 million users worldwide. We will start our integration of Moodle at the two senior levels of the choir, Cantamus and Prime Voci.

For the time being, we will be using Moodle to conduct weekly quizzes over the weekend (or, as we see it, "That huge gap in rehearsals between Wednesday and Monday!"). In addition to keeping those theory brain-cells active, the quizzes will provide the girls with a means of practicing ear-training at home, which has traditionally been very challenging to do.

Over time, we will also begin using Moodle to present material online as interactive activities, and implementing some of its other features such as discussion forums and custom Wikis.