The Society for Spontaneous Singing

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Prompt 11: Sing this engraving.

April 9, 2015 Jascha Hoffman Prompts

This week, we’d like to try a new kind of challenge — a visual prompt. Here it is:


(The image is a colorized version of an engraving made by the French artist Camille Flammarion in 1888.)

We hope that this image will provide us with a gentle but precise launching point, a suggestion about where to begin. Who knows where the music will take us from there!

Option A: Grab a friend. This exercise owes more than a little to Rhiannon’s magic bag of postcards, which she uses as prompts for free improv by small groups of varying sizes. So why not find a brave fellow singer, and use the image to launch a short piece. If you can’t get them in the same room, it’s fine to collaborate long distance (and if that sounds technically beyond your means, stay tuned for future prompts that will walk you through the process).

Option B: Sing the sun. The first impulse of many people might be sing from the perspective of the human exploring the cosmos. But for this option, we ask you to sing from the sun’s point of view. How do the moon, stars, land, human, and unseen cosmos look from the sun’s vantage? How does that change your tone?

P.S. Sweet singers, have you heard all the wonderful responses to our five-minute prompt? They are here.

To Contribute

The steps are as follows:

  • Step 0: Sign up for a free SoundCloud account here. Join the SSS group.
  • Step 1: Record yourself singing for two minutes.
  • Step 2: Upload to SoundCloud and post the track to the SSS group.
  • Step 3: Listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow singers. (Play nice!)

Deadline: Your tracks should be uploaded by midnight wherever you are on Monday, April 13, 2015. (Late submissions always welcome!)

Length: The length of your finished work should be about 2-5 minutes.

Image/Description: You are welcome to use the Flammarion image for your track on SoundCloud. Tell us a little about your process if you’d like.

Title/Tag: When uploading to SoundCloud, put “[sss-engraving]” in the title of your track. Also include the term “sss-engraving” as a tag. This will help us find it.

Group: Once the track is uploaded, click on the “Add to group” button below the waveform and make sure to select the Society for Spontaneous Singing group. (This option will only appear if you have already joined the group! So do that now.)

Linking: You are welcome to include this info in your description:

This track is a reply to “SSS Prompt 11: Sing this engraving.” More on the Society for Spontaneous Singing at http://singthis.org .

(The image is a colorized version of an engraving made by the French artist Camille Flammarion in 1888.)

Thank you, sweet singers!

Yours,
Jascha & Amado

  • « Prompt 10: Sing for Five Minutes
  • Prompt 12: Asynchronous Duets, Part 1 »

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