In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell refers to the “10,000 hour rule”, claiming that the key to achieving expertise in any skill is to practise for around 10,000 hours.
I reckon I’ve done my 10,000 hours over the last 30 years of teaching songs and leading choirs. Yet I still can’t pull it out of the hat without preparation.
I know you can’t please everyone, but when I plan a singing workshop I try to make sure I won’t be teaching anything that any of the singers already know.
An impossible task, but I have a low boredom threshold and feel I need to keep singers interested.
When teaching new songs, especially those with foreign lyrics, I often end up teaching using only the words of the first verse.
But when it comes to the other verses, things get a bit wobbly! Why is that, and what can we do to stop it?
I’m amazed at the number of singers who miss the starting note of a song, but then carry on regardless.
You have several options if you miss the start note, but one of them definitely isn’t: “sing anyway”!
Twenty years ago, Warwick Folk Festival asked me to create a community choir as part of its education outreach programme.
I was reluctant to use the word “choir” because I thought it might put some people off. So I used a thesaurus and came up with “Singing Safari”. This is the story of that project.
When you’re leading a one-off singing workshop, or have large influx of new members to your choir, there will be lots of people who don’t know each other.
Here are a few simple ways to mix people up so there’s less chance of things becoming cliquey.
I’m seeing lots of great warm-ups and singing advice online these days. But most of it is aimed at choirs which meet regularly.
Many of these ideas won’t work in one-off workshops. Let’s look at the different needs of each.