Over the last couple of days, preparations for the performance of John Balshaw’s Jigge in Brindle in June have really begun to get underway. I’ve printed out a stack of rehearsal scripts, and had a chat with the director. We went down to visit the community hall a few weeks ago and thought about how we might actually stage it.

But this week, we’ve started putting rehearsal tracks together. As the Jigge is sung right through, we thought the simplest solution to learning it was probably to record all the parts, with a simple piano accompaniment, so that the cast can learn the songs by ear. It should also ensure that the words fit properly to the music!

We recorded the piano parts and vocals using Cubase 12, and tried to differentiate between the different parts (as there are only two of us and 6 parts in the Jigge) by adding various accents to the different characters. It was all very silly, and good fun. Now all that’s left to do is mix them down. And find the rest of the cast, of course.