Our Last Goodbye
CLaS Assessment Level: 2.5
Our Last Goodbye is an easily relatable tune. Everyone will experience some type of loss in his or her life. This piece explores the feelings that accompany the end of a relationship, friendship or a moving-on life change. The message is simple and the melody and harmony are hauntingly beautiful. There is lots of room for expressive creativity and drama in this selection.
Type of ensemble: This piece is written for SA with lots of unison and some question and answer parts in the middle. Harmonies are easy to understand and sing.
Technique teaching points: This is very dark, dramatic and legato. Long phrases and proper breath support can be the key to this selection.
Story line: This is a very introspective piece that can serve as a way to express a loss of a friendship or relationship. You can use as much drama and expressive phrasing as you can with this piece.
Program placement: This is a great selection to place before a big forceful piece in your program. It will slow things down and create a quiet space before a major highlight piece in your concert.
Product Includes: Sheet Music * Lyric Sheet * Soprano MP3 * Alto MP3 * Piano MP3 * FullMix MP3
Experimental Workshop |Our Last Goodbye
Below is a clip from our recording session with Stephanie Anne Johnson and Stephanie Walbon. This was a really fun experiment to do and proved the power of having part predominant recordings to hand. The amount of time saved trying to learn the piece is undeniable.
For the experiment, both girls received ONLY an MP3 version of their individual part predominant recording to memorize the day before coming to the session.. They were asked to listen to it several times on their SmartPhones, when driving or whenever they had a moment. We wanted them to just get familiar with their own part. The next day at the session they then given the sheet music to Our Last Goodbye. Having already listened extensively to the recordings, the girls were already comfortable with their parts.
You will see examples of teaching points and areas for consideration. For example, the intro with its moving parts is potentially the most challenging section. Working with the sections separately before bringing them together will help the altos ground themselves in their part. This is where the recordings will really help as it did with the Stephanies in the clip. The parts are easy to understand and sing if learned on their own.
