When you sign up for a brigade, you make a commitment to learning the songs to a good quartet/competition standard. There is a contest during the brigade weekend, and you have to support your fellow quartetters by turning up fully prepared.

But you are not alone! We offer you a lot of help so that you can make sure you are ready on time.

Structured Learning

We offer a structured learning process, open to any brigaders who would like to use it. This gives you a calendar for learning the songs and constructive and thoughtful checking as you go along. We offer first-time brigaders a range of different options to give you and us the confidence that you will be ready on time – more details about this nearer the time.

Sing-Throughs

Sing-throughs are informal events held in people’s houses or in hired rooms, usually during the weekends in the last 12-16 weeks before the brigade. By this point you should be able to sing through many of the songs although you might still be holding the music. Sing-throughs give you confidence, they help pick up errors and they are tremendously good fun. Please try and attend any that are near you… and if there aren’t any then you may like to organise some.

We might also have some Jamulus sing-throughs to help the more remote participants.

Hints and Tips

We will put links to some hints and tips for learning music here, and people will be swapping tips on the facebook page too. Everyone has their own method of learning, and it certainly gets easier as you do more brigades, but the most important point is: start early. 12 songs spread over 24 weeks is completely do-able and enjoyable, 12 songs crammed into 4 weeks is stressful and very unlikely to be successful.

There will be a private Facebook group for “UKTHB YYYY Participants Only” for each year’s event which will be set up after registrations are under way, to help coordinate sing-throughs and swap tips.