17 years ago I led one of my first residential singing weekends. The theme was the Beach Boys.
The other weekend, I was in Derbyshire leading another of my (rare) Beach Boys weekends. It got me thinking about all the things that have happened since 2009.
Most of the singers who attend my workshops are in their 60s and 70s. Many of them having been coming to my singing events for years.
The other day, somebody asked if I’d noticed whether they struggled more with learning songs as they got older.
I’m leading a singing workshop tomorrow. I know I will have 35 singers, seven of whom are men. Five of those are tenors.
That means that I can choose song arrangements accordingly. But what happens when you’ve no idea in advance which voice parts you’ll have?
I went to a theatre performance the other day. It was basically one actor on stage for over two hours.
It was coming to the end of its seven-week run, but it still felt as fresh as the first time it was performed. How do you manage to keep a performance alive after so many repetitions?
You’ve tried Slimming World, Weight Watchers, weight-loss jabs, Aunty Jean’s herbal concoction, but nothing works.
It’s time to sing!
People are arriving and greeting each other; chairs are being set out; there is excitement in the air and the hubbub of conversation.
How do you get everyone to quieten down and focus in order to start your singing session?
Singers often say how tired they feel after a rehearsal or workshop.
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Paradoxically, singers who arrive tired at the start often leave feeling energised. What’s going on?
Someone wrote to me recently asking if I thought my workshops would be suitable for them.
They had struggled at a recent community workshop because the teaching wasn’t based on reading music or understanding music theory.
I always chose the repertoire for my community choirs. Most people knew what my taste was, which is why they’d joined the choir in the first place.
But every now and then I would introduce a new song and it just wouldn’t take.
At the end of a recent residential singing weekend I was acutely aware of absence when everyone had left. The silence was almost painful.
It got me thinking about the different kinds of silence in singing.
I’m officially on my summer break. My last singing workshop was just over two weeks ago.
But that doesn’t mean I’m taking it easy or lazing by the pool. Here’s what I’ve been up to.
Often, when leading a singing workshop, singers will start putting chairs out or standing in a circle.
It’s maybe not the way I’d planned, but I’ll usually go with it. It turns out my singers are often more capable than they realise.
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.
As Blanche DuBois says in A streetcar named desire: “I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers.”
Although I don’t actually depend on it, I’m always surprised and humbled when singers step up to help at a workshop.
I wrote last week about how No choir can be all things to all singers. Some singers prefer sheet music, others learn best by ear. Some love movement and performance, others just want to stand still and sing.
Here are some of the most common tensions that arise — and a few ways to navigate them.
You can’t please all your singers all the time (see Keeping a choir happy – you can’t please everyone).
There will inevitably be times when some singers want one thing while others want something very different. How do you keep everybody happy?
In my experience, when it comes to moving and singing at the same time, men seem to find it hardest.
Why is this, and are there ways to help?
It’s important for singers to feel wanted and to know that they play an important part in their choir.
But if nobody notices you, how will you ever shine?
When I ran community choirs, I used to insist that singers stood during rehearsals. But some complained that their legs ached by the end of the evening.
Now I usually get people to sit for singing sessions. But recently some singers have complained because they prefer to stand! Is there a middle way to keep everybody happy.
If you’re a choir member, or thinking of starting a choir, you might imagine that all choir and workshop leaders have extremely ordered lives.
In my case, that’s absolutely not true!
I’ve seen several online videos recently of choirs using simple, fun songs as warm-ups.
It looks harmless enough. But some of these songs have dubious content, which I’m sure the choirs weren’t aware of. Even so, it’s our responsibility to check sources thoroughly.
At a choral concert there is usually someone standing in front of the singers waving their arms about.
But what are they actually doing, and is there really any need for them to be there?
When I started my first community choir way back in 1997, most of the singers were in their 40s and 50s.
Some of them are still in the same choir today, now in their 70s and 80s. But where are all the new, younger singers?
A couple of things recently reminded me just how important mistakes are when learning something new.
One was performer, song leader and composer Brendan Taaffe’s substack The most important thing you can do is fail, and the other was a voice, body and rhythm workshop I attended.
When someone doesn’t like what you do, it can make you wobble and start to doubt whether you’re any good.
But not everyone is going to like what you have to offer. Once you accept that, it’s easier to move on.
Recently, there’s been a spate of ‘tricky’ choir warm-up videos on Instagram.
They’re clever and challenging, but I can’t help wondering: do they actually lead to better choir performances?
Here in the northern hemisphere it’s cold, wet, dark and miserable. it’s the ‘slump’ end of the year before spring truly arrives.
Going to choir each week can help. But what happens if you lose the joy of singing?
In Part 1, I looked at some of the more obvious reasons why choirs begin to falter: the impact of Covid, ageing membership, toxic behaviour, over-ambitious projects, and too many concerts.
In this second part, I want to explore some of the longer-term and less visible causes — the ones that creep in gradually or hide behind apparent success.
If you’re lucky, your choir goes from strength to strength: numbers grow, standards improve, and the sense of community deepens.
But sometimes things start to slip. Numbers fall, confidence drains away, rehearsals lose their energy, and going to choir begins to feel like a chore rather than a pleasure. When that happens, what can you do?
Whenever I ran a one-off singing day, I would always encourage people to bring lunch to share.
The idea was to create a sense of community and get people to socialise with each other. But I no longer do that. Here’s why.
Most singers know they should warm up before singing — but what exactly should a warm up contain?
I’ve written before about why warm ups matter— see The singers who didn’t like warm ups (and what became of them) — but it’s worth looking more closely at what actually makes a warm up effective.
When singers join a non-auditioned choir, they are usually expected to choose the voice part that suits them — without any help.
Over time, singers in community choirs can begin to wonder if they’ve chosen the right part. Here’s a simple way of carrying out a vocal range test with the whole choir.
The second Friday in January is known as “Quitters Day” — the point at which most people abandon the goals they set in their New Year’s resolutions.
Apparently, only 9% of people successfully keep their resolutions and 23% quit in the first week. So how can you real, lasting progress as a singer or choir leader?
A new year and a new choir season don’t just bring change — they also bring choice.
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This is often a moment to pause and reflect: what’s working, what’s not, and what might benefit from being done differently. For choir leaders in particular, it’s a chance to plan rather than simply react.
It’s the start of a new year, a time when people make new plans and take on new challenges.
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For singers and choir leaders, that often means dealing with change: new people, new spaces, new songs, and unfamiliar ways of doing things. Change can be exciting, but it can also feel unsettling.
