Rehearsal Aids

Rehearsal plan

Please click here for Simon's rehearsal schedule for the Autumn term.  Note that this schedule is not updated during the term, so keep an eye on the rehearsal diary for any changes.
 

Rehearsal aids - Christmas 2025

For our Christmas concerts, John Fletcher Music is a good option, as it covers most of the pieces. The table below indicates whether they are free or require a paid premium licence (which costs about £1 per month).  See below the table for some more info.

If you prefer, YouTube also has videos of each part, for most of the pieces. Where there are many such videos I've chosen one but feel free to search for others! Cyberbass does not cover these works.

Christmas pieces - All Choir

Piece	Page	John Fletcher	YouTube parts	YouTube performance	Notes
Balulalow (Coleridge)	Sheet	Not available	Not available	Balulalow	Also on Spotify: Balulalow
Adam lay ybounden (Ord)	2	PREMIUM	Soprano Alto Tenor Bass	Adam lay ybounden
Ding dong merrily on high (Wood)	25	FREE	All 4 parts	Ding dong merrily	Same as Carols for Choirs
In dulci jubilo (arr. Bach)	56	FREE	Soprano Alto Tenor Bass	In dulci jubilo
It came upon the midnight clear (arr. Sullivan, descant Hill)	66	PREMIUM Sops please ignore the different descant	Soprano Alto Tenor Bass	It came upon a midnight clear Ignore different descant	Similar to Carols for Choirs (Willcocks) but 5 verses and different descant.  Use the descant from the NOEL book (I could only find a performance on Spotify.)
See amid the winter’s snow (arr. Lloyd)	180	PREMIUM	Not available	See amid the winter's snow
Tomorrow shall be my dancing day (Gardner)	224	PREMIUM	All  4 parts	Tomorrow shall be
While shepherds watched their flocks by night (arr. McWilliam)	263	PREMIUM	(Ignore last verse - see notes) Soprano Alto Tenor Bass	While shepherds washed Ignore different last verse	Same as Carols for Choirs except for different verse 6.  The parts for this last verse are only available on John Fletcher music. I couldn't find any performances of it.

Christmas pieces - semi-chorus only

Piece	Page	John Fletcher	YouTube parts	YouTube performance
Bethlehem Down (Warlock)	12	FREE	All 4 parts	Bethlehem Down
Jingle Bells (arr. Allwood)	75	PREMIUM	All 8 parts	Jingle Bells

 

More about rehearsal aids

A number of websites provide rehearsal aids to help you practise your part.  You can bookmark / favourite / download them to avoid having to come back here each time. 

John Fletcher Music

For copyright works on John Fletcher Music you will need a premium plan (£4.40 for 4 months or £12.70 for a year; pretty good value for over 12,000 works!). Others can be accessed via the free starter plan. Note that, you still need to sign up even if only accessing the free ones.

To play the files, first click on one of the links above, and login if necessary.  (Or you can search for a piece / composer in the search box.)

Some files (including all those marked PREMIUM in the table above) use John Fletcher's new player, which is simple to use - just select your part and press play (you can also download the file, via the 3 vertical dots next to your part).

Most other pieces (including the FREE ones above) still use the old Dropbox player (they will be converted to the new player over the coming months.)  For these, 'Click here for the sound files', and then the mp3 file for your part (ignore any files ending in .sib, .mid or .mxl - you only need the files ending in .mp3) and click the play arrow.  On a computer you can also right click on the mp3 file and download it, so that next time you can just click on the file on your computer.  The files are stored on an unwieldy site called Dropbox; ignore all offers to try/join/signup/copy to Dropbox as you don't need to - just 'continue to download'.  
 

YouTube

Many of the more popular works have rehearsal aids (and performances) on YouTube. In the Youtube search box, enter the following search terms, and choose a video that you like:

name of the piece + composer/arranger + your part name (e.g. alto)

Note that from the ⚙ (Settings) menu you can adjust the playback speed to a preset or custom value, to play your line more slowly.

Spotify

If you already subscribe to Spotify, it is a good place to find performances (and occasionally parts too.)  If you don't subscribe, it's not really worth doing so just for rehearsal aids, as the subscription cost is high and ever-increasing.  There are other similar services like Amazon Music too.

Cyberbass

The Christmas pieces are not on Cyberbass, which generally only covers large works that are out of copyright.