At our annual meeting in August, we held our first live  “promptathon,” where members gathered to write spur-of-the-moment prompts on index cards, which we then used as the basis for a delightful series of small-group improvisations.

There were so many high points from that session, and the cards that we drew led to some lovely new music. But it was only this morning that I discovered, in a pile of cards we didn’t use, a forgotten prompt, an index card with big block letters that simply read: CHOCOLATE.

This week, it’s basically as simple as that, ladies and gentlemen. Chocolate.

Maybe you’ll use the word “cho-co-late” as a verbal launchpad. Maybe you’ll recall a moment when the taste of chocolate was strong. Maybe you’d like to consider the experience of this African cocoa farmer tasting chocolate for the first time. Maybe you’d like to cover a chocolate-themed song (Oompa Loompa, anyone?).

Or perhaps you’ll just put a piece of chocolate in your mouth, taste it, and … sing.

Options

Option A: A taste of chocolate. Put a piece of chocolate in your mouth, and spend a moment tasting it as fully as you can. Feel how it melts, and notice how the texture affects your mouth, throat and vocal cords. Does chocolate make your voice feel smooth, brittle, husky, flexible, perky, or what? Then … just SING. Who knows what might come out, words or melodies, a familiar song or something entirely new. Maybe nothing? Hey, at least you got to eat some chocolate!

Option B: How it comes to us. Watch this video about a farmer in Ivory Coast tasting chocolate for the first time. Spend a moment considering that every bite of chocolate you’ve ever tasted has been processed from beans grown by a real person with a family. How does this make you feel? Does it make you curious to know more? Does it make the experience of tasting chocolate feel more precious, or more complicated, or something else? Sing about it.

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, October 12, 2015.

Length: The length of your finished work should be about teh time it takes to eat a good chocolate bar.

Title/Tag: When uploading to SoundCloud, put “[sss-chocolate]” in the title of your track. Also include the term “sss-chocolate” 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 37: Chocolate!”  More on the Society for Spontaneous Singing at http://singthis.org .