12 false beliefs about singing that can prevent you from even trying – don’t let them stop you!

Many of us had bad singing experiences at school. You might have been kicked out of the choir or told to stand at the back and mime.

photo by Northern Ireland Executive

Experiences like that can put you off singing for years, and even if you really want to give it a go in later life there are many ridiculous myths which may prevent you from even trying. Time to explode them!

Singers with hearing loss: how choir leaders can help

More and more older singers are in choirs these days. Many of those singers will have some kind of hearing loss.

Joshua Reynolds "Self-Portrait as a Deaf Man"

How can you, as a choir leader, help them? Here is a guest post by Bettina Gellinek Turner^*.

Can you be the wrong age to sing?

Here in the UK the arts seem to cater for just three age groups.

Photo by vintagedept

If you don’t fit into one of these, then woe betide you!

How to recruit singers to truly reflect your local community

For the first time in over 13 years I will soon be starting a choir from scratch. And I’m asking for your help!

The Illuminated Crowd by Raymond Mason (photo by albany_tim)

I’ve written a whole series in the past about how to start your own community choir, and I will be taking a lot of my own advice on board (time to put my money where my mouth is!).

But the nut I’ve been unable to crack is to recruit a truly representative set of people from my local community: in age, gender, race, culture, background, education, disability, etc. In short, a real community choir.

The sad fact is that most choirs in the UK don’t reflect a true cross section of society.

They majority are made up of white women in their 50s and older and often don’t represent the racial, cultural or gender mix of the community they’re based in. How can we change this?

I’ve written on the subject of choir membership and recruitment before.

Why people don’t join choirs:

• I love to sing, but I’m not leaving the house!
• Avoiding the ‘C’ word: choir

The difficulties of an ageing choir:

• Singing across the age divide
• Choirs: is old age an issue?
• Why do kids stop singing when they grow up?

How to recruit new choir members:

• How to start your own community choir – getting the word out

The lack of men in choirs:

• The problem with men: getting them, handling them, keeping them
• Men and singing 1: 15 myths debunked
• Men and singing 2: your collective wisdom
• Men and singing 3: seven ideas to get more men involved

The experience of joining a choir for the first time:

• Everybody has a place in the choir

I’ve realised that there is no easy answer to recruiting a representative set of people from your local community! So I’m asking for your help.

Do you have any ideas or experience of recruiting successfully from right across your local community? Would you like to share your solutions with us? Please drop by and leave a comment.

It seems to me that we can break down the problem as follows.

describing what your community choir is about

First you need to be clear what your aims are and then find the right words to explain that clearly to prospective choir members. It may be that you have to use different language for the different groups that you’re trying to attract. Each group will use different language and have different shared points of reference.

getting the word out to the right people

Then you have to get this information in front of the relevant people. It’s probably no good putting an advert in the local press to attract 16-year-olds, and it’s no good handing leaflets out after a live pop concert if you’re looking for older singers. You’ll need to take the word to the people you want to attract. That may mean identifying places where groups gather. For example, colleges, adult education classes, churches, cultural clubs.

making the group look right

I’ve pointed out before that when a prospective new choir member walks into their first choir session, they want to see a lot of people like themselves. Otherwise they will feel that they don’t belong and wont’ come back.

If you have a single man or just one 21-year-old, that’s just not going to work. You’ll need to make sure there are large enough sub-groupings within your choir to attract more similar people.

divide and conquer?

It may not be possible to start from scratch with a truly representative group of singers. It may be that your description, publicity sources, venue, etc. may have to be tailored for each particular group. You can then combine them at a later stage.

For instance, you could start a regular choir (which will probably be older women), a men’s choir, a choir at the local Afro-Caribbean centre and a youth choir. Once these are up and running, you could have a joint concert (involving  a couple of joint songs where everyone needs to rehearse together), then gradually amalgamate all the different groups into one choir.

over to you

On the face of it, that seems like a lot of work! It may be that you simply don’t have the time or resources to go the whole hog (I know I don’t!), so please, please write in with your own solutions and let’s see if we can all crack this particular nut together.

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

 

Choirs: is old age an issue?

This post is part of a series of occasional Questions and Answers. Just use the contact form if you want to submit a question.

After reading my post Over-rehearsed or under-prepared: which is better? Dawn contacted me about a problem she has with her choir.

Dawn writes:

“Enjoyed reading your article. As usual.

My problem is slightly different as we only meet once a month, and all the members are over 60. Often they tend to forget the points we worked on the previous month, or they are anxious to move on to other songs (or both, to be honest).

Where do I go from there? Any ideas would be gratefully received.”

choristers are getting older

The fact is that singers in choirs these days are getting older. For some reason singing in a choir seems to attract 50-somethings and people who have retired. In all the community choirs and singing workshops I have run, the majority of people are at least in their mid-forties and older. We are all finding it hard to recruit younger members.

Does this matter? Does it affect the way that a choir is run or its repertoire? Personally, I don’t think it makes a difference.

forgetting things from session to session

Dawn says that her singers tend to forget points that they worked on the previous month. Well, some of my singers forget what they were doing the previous week or at yesterday’s rehearsal!

The longer the gap between sessions, the more likely that people will forget what they did. If you do have to have long gaps between sessions then there are two obvious solutions:

1. make each session self-contained and don’t depend on anything needing to be remembered from one session to the next
2. give aids to people to help them remember, e.g. recording of parts or written outline of what happened in the session

wanting to move onto new material

This taps into my recent post on specialist versus generalists. Some people feel that they’ve done enough of one song thank you very much and want to move onto new songs. Whereas some of the group might want to keep on working on the same song until it’s perfected.

In this case you need to steer a course between the two extremes. Maybe leave a song for one session, and bring it back in the next one so it feels fresh.

Some people just come for fun and don’t really want to work on a song too much, they just want an opportunity to sing. Maybe they’re in the wrong group and need to go to a ‘songs from the shows’ kind of choir where lots and lots of songs are sung each session to a piano accompaniment. Learning a song properly is a different kettle of fish.

If you are clear about the kind of choir you want to establish, then you need to stick to your guns. People sign up to your choir because they like what you do. You need to decide exactly what kind of choir it is that you want to create.

If you don’t want to keep moving onto other songs, then don’t. People will respect your authority and you will eventually end up with a choir of singers who agree with the way you run things. Don’t stand for any nonsense!

songs for a particular era?

Many people seem to remain stuck in the music of their youth. I can’t relate to that myself as I’m always on the lookout for new stuff. But the fact is I know people in their 50s who still only listen to early 70s bands and people in their 60s who only like rock and roll.

But this is to stereotype people. Just because somebody is old, does it mean they only want to sing ‘White cliffs of Dover’ or ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary’?

In fact, unless it’s a simple sing-along session, trying to learn an arrangement of a well-known song can be very hard (see my post: It’s hard to teach songs that people already know). Why not find material that is fresh and new for everyone in the group?

we’re not that old!

There are so many offers and schemes out there for the “over 50s”. I don’t know about you, but that makes me feel like I’m OLD and on the scrap heap at 57 (I know, I know, I don’t look that old ...)!

Age is in the mind. I know 16-year-olds who behave like 80-year-olds, and we have an 84-year-old woman in my choir who acts like a spring chicken. It’s all about attitude. The fact that your singers are over 60, Dawn, is irrelevant I believe.

do you work with older singers?

Of course, working with singers who might have health issues (limited mobility, dementia, breathing problems, etc.) can be problematic, but generally I don’t think that age is an issue.

What do you think? Do you work with older singers in your choir? Do you find that they are more forgetful or want to keep moving onto new songs? Do leave a comment and share your experience.

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com