Wednesday, October 9Royal Holloway's offical student publication, est. 1986

In Your Socs – Say a Little Prayer for Gospel

Gospel Choir is a group of roughly forty people who all come together on Monday and Thursday evenings to sing popular, well-known songs with a gospel spin. The first two songs that we learnt this year were “Lean on Me” and “I Say A Little Prayer”.

Rehearsals start with a number of warm-ups including breathing techniques (which turn into competitions) and singing short extracts from songs in three to five part harmonies. After this, Katie and Michelle sing the soprano, alto and tenor parts one by one so that we can all learn our parts; then comes the slightly terrifying part where we put all the parts together. Nine times out of ten this goes to plan and sounds incredible; however, when it goes wrong, we all have a laugh about it, go through our parts separately and then try again.

We are lucky enough to rehearse in Founder’s Chapel which is not just one of the most beautiful rooms at Royal Holloway, but also has amazing acoustics for vocal performances! Not only do we sing and perform, we also have a number of socials throughout the year and will be going on tour to Paris in our lovely new Gospel Choir hoodies.