While the rest of City geared up for the Edinburgh 10K fun run we had our own singing marathon to worry about as we prepared for the arrival of choirs from all over Scotland and a few from England.

The staff at Queen's Hall didn't know what was about to hit them as 800 singers and their supporters descended on the hall throughout the day - there wasn't a quiet spot in the house as people warmed up and rehearsed all over the place! The two choirs from Inverclyde and their fans took over the whole of the Gallery - and loudly supported all the other choirs as well as themselves!

As soon as we had everyone in their seats song, writer Lin Marsh had them all up again for them for the warm up. She soon made them forget their nerves and the slightly scary task ahead.

The morning session started with the Children's choirs and a performance from last year's runners up Inverclyde Schools' Junior Choir, was followed by singing from, Dunfermline Junior Chorus, Adwick Community Children's Choir and The Boys Choir of Westminster Under School (who had travelled up from London specially). A quick break before the Youth Choirs came on with Inverclyde Schools' Senior Choir, followed by Douglas Academy Senior Choir, Ambile Girls' Choir and Tees Valley Chorus.

It was a fantastic singing session. All the Children's choirs were so incredibly well behaved - it was quite a long time for them to stay still but they did and supported each other all day.

While Lin looked after the audience with a massed singing workshop the judges Susan Digby and Tim Sutton were led away to make their decisions. 30 minutes later and Kate Jones from Radio 3 brought the judges back to announce the morning's results.

The Gallery nearly came down as Inverclyde School's Junior Choir and The Boys Choir of Westminster Under School were named choirs of the day in the Children's Category.

The new judging system was created to ensure that all choirs have an equal chance of reaching the finals and are judged on their own performance rather than in comparison to each other so in theory a whole section could go through - although this has never happened. However the audience were stunned when, in an unprecedented move, the judges put all the Youth Choirs through to the next round!

How do you follow that?? We had to get everyone out and prepare for the next session with the Adult and Open choirs. This was a smaller session with quite a few of the choirs making the most of the new rule allowing as few as eight singers in a group.

Aria, The Sczcpeck Ensemble and Haddo Combined Treble Voice Choir competed in the Open Category followed by Northern Spirit Singers and Relative Harmony in the Adult.

The judges took ages to decide. Luckily Lin Marsh led another excellent workshop and at one point everyone was singing the alphabet with pop style fades?! Northern Spirit Singers were named Adult Choir of the Day. Then Tim Sutton took the lectern to announce the winners of the Open Category. Once again the audience were gobsmacked as all three choirs went through.

Both Susan and Tim raved about the quality of the choirs they had heard and the exceptionally high standard of singing, which led to four Youth and three Open choirs making it through to the next round. Visit our results page to see the groups they'll be up against.

To see the programme of the day click here.

We've still got three audition days and over 60 choirs to hear. We'll be in Cardiff this weekend - contact us if you'd like to come and see the show.

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