Playing catch up PART TWO

Following on from last week’s post, Playing catch up PART ONE, here are some more random ramblings looking back at my earlier posts from February and March.

Choirs are still cool!
First off, I read an interesting article in the Guardian last week that chimed in with my very first post way back in December 2006: Choirs are becoming cool. The article is called Choral satisfaction and begins with the sentence: “First it was knitting and embroidery, now choir practice is cool.” The article covers several choirs and makes interesting reading.

Trust in your listening skills
The post Papa’s got a brand new song threw up a couple of comments. Fiona made the very valid point that “a player or singer who plays/ sings by ear is no less a musician than the one who reads the quavers and stave”. Yet we are still a mainly visual culture so people feel much more comfortable with something to look at. The majority of people find it very hard to just listen and take time to let something sink in. We want a quick fix and often don’t have the patience to listen again and again to a song, but expect to pick it up in a couple of goes (and then think we can’t ‘sing’ because we can’t learnt it fast enough!). The thing to remember is that in learning by ear, we’re trying to short-circuit a process that takes many years in most aural cultures. As Paul points out in his comment, a modern correlate to this is to use MP3s or a parts CD in the car, and simply listen to your part again and again. Although this is very effective, the main drawback, as Paul points out, is that it takes away the social and communal aspect of learning in a group.

Men’s songs
Where did you get that song? is uppermost in my mind at the moment as I’m trying to find suitable songs for my forthcoming men’s harmony singing workshop. This is a very specific area, so is a little harder to research. I’m trying to identify cultures where men sing together traditionally, i.e. there are special ‘men songs’ in the culture, rather than just a male voice version of a song. The obvious ones spring to mind: Republic of Georgia, chain gangs in the US, South African mbube tradition (e.g. Ladysmith Black Mambazo), Russian church music, sea shanties, etc. I’m sure there are more, and all suggestions will be gratefully received!

Harmony singing traditions across the globe
On a similar note, it would be really useful to identify those cultures in the world which have a harmony singing tradition. I’m often asked by choir members why we don’t sing songs from India or the Middle East for example. Sure, there may be Western choral arrangements of songs from those parts of the world, but there is not an indigenous unaccompanied harmony singing tradition. I’m very tempted to go back to college to study ethnomusicology just to find out! I remember a Georgian ethnomusicologist once telling me about a European country which is bisected by the Danube, and regions south of the river don’t have a harmony singing tradition, whereas those regions north of the river do. Go figure!

How the brain remembers songs
I’m still absolutely fascinated by the Singing memory. Again recently I have been in a position where I’m about to sing a song I’ve not sung for ages and have no idea how it goes, or what the words are, then I open my mouth and it all comes tumbling out! Does anybody else have the same experience? Also, I need to know the first word of a song sometimes to just remember how the tune goes, which proves to me at least that the words and melody are stored together in the brain. And the thing that never, ever ceases to amaze me is how the choir might leave a song alone for maybe a year or so which has not been going particularly well, then a year later, with no practice in between, they sing it perfectly! The secret is to leave the brain alone and it somehow manages to sort everything out without our conscious intervention.

Singing the oldies
Thinking of the new singers in our choir, I’ve recently made another parts CD for WorldSong as we have a big anniversary concert coming up in the summer. This means that we now have seven parts CDs available, covering around 90 songs. As time goes by therefore, it becomes more and more daunting for new members as they realise that they have such a lot of past repertoire to catch up with (WorldSong now have about 190 songs in our repertoire, including rounds and warm-up songs). I try to make it very clear that there is absolutely no necessity to learn any of the oldies. I always make sure that there are at least half a dozen songs that new members can join in with in their first concert. I suggest that people make a note of any old songs they hear that they really like, and then take plenty of time to learn them from a parts CD one at a time. Nevertheless, there are still people who feel that they need to catch up and buy all the parts CDs and try to learn everything!

Men singing (or not!)
I’m still wondering where all the male singers are and trying to get more men to sing by running an annual men-only harmony singing workshop. Knowing how quickly people get booked up, and also how often work intervenes in men’s leisure activities, I sent out a round robin email earlier in the year to let people know the date and place of my men’s workshop. I’ve recently sent out the final details and have had quite a few replies letting me know that they’re still interested, but unfortunately are busy on the day! I do find that women in general tend to prioritise their leisure and social activities more. I just hope I get enough blokes to make it worthwhile this year! It’s always fun and we end up making a great sound, so please spread the word to any guys who you think might be interested: Men's harmony singing workshop on June 23rd in Leicester .

Trust in me!
Been having some interesting conversations in Minor Chords recently about where we might go next, and how we might up our game a little. This has brought up the issue of trust again. A consensus seems to be that people want me to be stricter and not let them get away with so much! Well, that’s just not my style. I figure that we’re all adults now and it’s up to choir members to find their own motivation, self-discipline, professional attitude, etc. Part of me trusting choir members is that I believe it brings out the best in people, but the other side of it is that I don’t see it as my job to discipline people or to keep on their case. We’re not at school any more, so singers have to take their own responsibility. My job is as an enabler and facilitator. However, as Tony points out in his comment, being patient 99% of the time means that when I do let rip, people know that I really mean it!!

Standing up for yourself
Got quite a few comments about my Get in line post. Seems that lots of people enjoyed it and could really relate to it! This Saturday (9th June) I’ll be taking three choirs to the Royal Festival Hall’s ‘Overture’ weekend to make one big choir of 100 singers. We'll be doing a half hour set on the stage outside the Hayward Gallery at 3pm. Although I will have rehearsed two choirs personally, and the third knows the same songs, we will not have had a chance to rehearse together. Since I trust that everyone knows what they’re doing (see above), the singing should be fine. I’m most worried about how to get 100 people on stage into the correct places and not look like a right mess! It turns out though that we won’t have a chance to actually try out on the stage, but will just have to busk it. Wish us luck!

I had a great time actually
So maybe I didn’t have a great time at our Woven Chords concert in March. But I had an even worse time at our Minor Chords concert in April as part of Stamford’s Festival of Performing Arts. Our rehearsal was fantastic, but the actual performance was not a patch on it. Mind you, as always, I doubt if the audience noticed anything awry (except when we had to start a song again because it was so badly out of tune!). Apart from the fact that it wasn’t really our usual sort of audience, there wasn’t really any excuse. For once, I don’t think any of us really enjoyed it! Yet a few weeks later in a small village hall on a tiny stage, we performed a whole evening’s worth of songs and all enjoyed every minute of it. It’s such a subtle and uncontrollable thing that you just have to go into it with wide-eyed enthusiasm each time, and hope for the best. Let’s hope Saturday at the Royal Festival Hall is a good one!!

I’m going to stop there and cover my April and May posts in the final look back next week.

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Playing catch up PART ONE

I thought I would take this opportunity (it being our half term break and all) to look back over my posts to this blog and discuss any developments or comments that have arisen. In this post I’ll cover December and January, then continue in the next post rather than make it too long!

We have a big and exciting gig coming up on Saturday 9^th June at 3pm. We (that is Woven Chords, WorldSong and Global Harmony) have been invited to perform at the Royal Festival Hall’s re-opening Overture weekend. We will be doing a half hour set of songs that all three choirs know, but have not performed together before. We won’t get a chance to rehearse together, and maybe very little time to even work out how to stand on stage as a 100-piece choir! We will be performing outdoors on a stage outside the Hayward Gallery.

Singing outdoors
Looking back at my post How audiences affect us, reminds me that I really really don’t like performing outdoors. Not only are the acoustics often lousy so the singers can’t hear each other properly (hence we go out of tune and out of time easily), and maybe it might rain, but the audience are free to stay and listen or wander off as they please. Unlike the audience who have come especially to hear the choir, have paid for a ticket and will be seated throughout the performance. Maybe it’s just me, but my heart does sink when I see even one audience member look bored and walk away! It is, of course, the acid test to see if you can keep an audience interested, but we are not primarily performing choirs so haven’t really spent enough time on developing our performance skills, since that is not our main focus.

Then, of course, there will be the problem of getting 100 people to stand in the right places and not fall off the stage (Get in line!)!

Standing to sing
This is the third term now since I’ve dispensed with chairs during our weekly sessions (Fighting habit and complacency). The vast majority of people have now got used to this and are actually enjoying it! They have discovered the benefits to their voices and overall energy levels, and also the flexibility of being able to move around the space and sing their parts to other people. Any change takes a while to bed in, but I think this has generally been a change for the good.

Minor Chords
Minor Chords recently had their annual “at home” concert in Stamford. We had been noticing that often the our rehearsals went really well, but the standard dropped in performance (the opposite of Bad rehearsal=good concert?). We discussed the various reasons why this might be, and the result was a greatly improved performance and a well-received concert which we all enjoyed. We are going to take stock at our next session and decide where we go next. We have been together for six years now, so maybe it’s time to shake things up a little and approach things in a different way!

Performance skills
One of the difficulties in improving the performance standards of any of the groups that I lead is that we are not primarily performing groups. When you join any of these open access singing groups, you basically sign up for regular sessions to learn harmony songs and to have fun. The performance opportunities are purely voluntary (although in practice, pretty much everyone wants to perform when the opportunity arises!). This means that we always seem to be performing by the seat of our pants. We do rehearse a fair amount, but I try not to disrupt our weekly sessions too much, and try very hard to keep the emphasis on fun. This may result in people feeling under-rehearsed.

The only solution to this that I can think of is that our weekly sessions effectively become rehearsals for our end of term concerts. We would not learn any new material, but go over and over the songs we will be performing. We would focus on performance skills, how to stand and present ourselves, staying on pitch, etc. etc. But to my mind, this would radically change the nature of the group and we would lose a lot of the fun element. There are many groups who function like this, who maybe perform a dozen or more times each year with pretty much the same repertoire. However, I feel that our groups have a somewhat different flavour. The challenge then is how to develop performance skills and stretch ourselves as a group whilst keeping the basic nature of our weekly sessions, and only performing a few times a year?

Learning words
For the last two terms I have continued to experiment with putting words on large sheets of paper rather than handing out lyrics (The writing’s on the wall). This has worked fantastically well with relatively simple songs, but the jury’s still out on the slightly more complex or very foreign-seeming lyrics. Also, I’m not sure yet how long and complex lyrics can be and still be learnt by this method. I’ve bottled out on a few songs (those with more than two verses, and songs like the Welsh national anthem – in Welsh, of course!). When I first introduced this method, people did pay attention and focused on the words on the wall, but increasingly people are beginning to write the words down as soon as they go up, which kind of defeats the object!

Not using words in concerts
I still haven’t figured out a method of getting people to learn their words and not have pieces of paper in concerts (Words are flowing out like endless rain … ). WorldSong have a big concert in July to celebrate their 10^th anniversary. It will be in a 650-seat theatre and we’re going to try and make it something really special. So I have given plenty of notice that I really, really don’t want people to use words. They now have loads of time to put the work in and learn them. But some people are already coming up to me and saying they are finding some songs just impossible. So what do you do? I don’t want to put the fear of God into people (as some choir leaders do), but I can’t think of any sanctions to use either (“if you don’t learn the words you can’t sing in the concert”). I really can’t think of any other approaches, but would gratefully hear of any suggestions!

Beyond verse one
I have tried with several new songs to teach a musical phrase, then to practice it with words from all the verses of the song and not just the first. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the other verses get remembered equally well, but it does mean that people get familiar with the other words, and tend not to stumble over the foreign ones quite as much.

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How many conductors does it take to lead a choir?

It dawned on me recently that my job as musical director of the women’s ensemble Minor Chords is to make myself redundant! I research, arrange and teach a variety of songs to the group, but there are only 11 singers, so when it comes to performance, in theory, they shouldn’t need a conductor. My reasoning is that with a group of this size it would encourage the singers to really pay attention to each other and work as a team rather than focusing on me. Also, on a very practical level, since the group is so small, I feel very conspicuous standing in front of them and believe that I often block them from the audience’s view.

However, the group as a whole seem reluctant to let me go! I wonder if this is just because they are used to me conducting and haven’t yet developed the necessary skills to “lead” themselves, or does size matter? Is there a minimum size of singing group below which a conductor is simply not needed (at least not one who stands out the front and waves their arms)? Or to ask a slightly different question: how big can a group get without having someone lead them out front?

I have seen several examples recently which have made me think. Although I didn’t see them personally, the Russian Ensemble Hermitage have recently toured. The ensemble consists of six men, all very accomplished with years of opera and conservatory training behind them, and yet one of them acts as conductor. On the other hand, I recently saw Northern Harmony on tour with 14 singers and they had no conductor out front. One individual is usually responsible for giving a starting note, but different individuals “lead” from where they happen to be standing. It might simply be to count in, or they may subtly move their hand to keep the song in time.

Another group I saw last year, The Shout, had about a dozen singers on stage. Their musical director Orlando Gough often sings with them, but when he’s not, he simply sits in the auditorium watching rather than conducting. The trio that I used to sing with had no conductor. I used to give the starting notes, but we used to watch and listen to each other very closely to keep time and tune.

At the other extreme, I know of two large community choirs (the Manchester Community Choir and the Gasworks Choir) who have had two conductors/ leaders. The two leaders also run the rehearsals jointly.

So maybe with a group of just 11 it is possible to go either way: with or without a conductor. But is one way better? Does a conductor mean a better, tighter performance? Or does not having a conductor lead to a more accomplished, together group who are really listening to and paying attention to each other?

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Complex songs and learning by ear: musical maps

The choirs and workshops that I lead are run on the principle that music should be accessible to all. One of the outcomes of this is that I don’t use written music to teach since I can’t assume that everyone can read music. This also chimes in with the kind of material that I use which often comes from cultures and traditions where songs are passed down from generation to generation through the oral/ aural tradition. Many such songs are quite short and fairly repetitive without many words, so lend themselves to being taught by ear. This kind of material is particularly suitable for short workshops as the songs are quite easy to learn and I can offer a range of different styles in a relatively short period of time.

However, in a choir which meets regularly, singing such “easy” short songs soon becomes unsatisfying and we like to add something more challenging to our singing diet. One obvious development is to use songs which have several verses which we can then build up in performance by adding harmonies as the song progresses, thus adding interest for an audience. We can also tackle longer pieces that are basically several shorter songs tacked together, different “movements” if you like. Many South African songs fit into this category (e.g. Nkosi sikelel'i Afrika, Ladysmith Black Mambazo's version of Amazing Grace, Akanamandla). We can learn a new part each term and gradually extend the song as time goes by. We’ve also tackled longer church songs from Eastern Europe. In these, the melody lines go through a few subtle changes as the song progresses, but the individual units of melody are quite easy to learn and the overall effect is to add interest and texture to a song.

But then we come to more complex (usually modern) arrangements of songs, or songs which are fairly intricate and yet each part is frustratingly similar so very hard to learn. Recently I tried to teach Samuel Barber’s vocal version of his famous Adagio for Strings (Agnus Dei), but had to give up because there were so many long sustained notes and no easy way of knowing how long they should each be held. Then with a big choir I wanted to teach Ysaye Barnwell’s Lawd it’s midnight. I had originally been taught this using the written score, but the timing is complicated and I am convinced it will be much easier to teach the timing by ear and by allowing the rhythm into the body. The trouble is, the melody and parts are too complex to do this way!

Currently I am teaching a four-part arrangement of the Mexican song La Bamba. It is a fairly straightforward arrangement in that it follows the well-known tune and there are no weird chords, but there are lots of backing parts with short riffs that are repeated, then a short filler phrase, then the riff repeated again but with minor variations. It is very easy to lose track of how many times you’ve sung a particular riff, and exactly when you have to put the little filler parts in. We are progressing, but very slowly. The question in my mind now, is do I persist teaching it by ear or is there another (better?) way? Can I find a more effective way of teaching it by ear, or do I need something visual to help the singers know where they are?

One way to tackle complex songs would be to record all the parts on a CD and give it out to the singers to learn at home. But this removes the fun and community spirit of learning together in our weekly sessions. Also, some complex songs would still be hard to learn like this by just listening, even if singers can hear the other parts at the same time. I don’t want to end up in concert with singers counting on their fingers to know how many times to sing a particular riff!

In many cases it seems it would help to have some kind of map to help the singers learn the overall structure of the song. “Why not simply give them the music?”, you ask. Well, I suppose I could. Even if people can’t read music very well, they could at least use the scores to see where their part changed and how many times bits repeated. I’m reluctant to do this for several reasons. One is that it’s a slippery slope and there may be a demand to have the music for all the songs we sing (I know some individuals would be much more comfortable if this were the case!). This somehow goes against the spirit of the choir and the fun learning experience we have each session. But perhaps more worryingly, having given out the music which represents a complex song, how can I persuade people to put it down when it comes to performance? It’s hard enough getting people to learn the words to songs!

The other weekend I did a workshop with Northern Harmony. For some of the Georgian and Corsican songs in their repertoire, rather than produce a complete written score, they used a schematic technique to show a map of the melody lines of each part:

This was fairly easy to follow once a line had been sung to us a few times. (Strangely enough this is exactly the kind of notation that many bass partsin my choirs invent independently. It's usually the bass part because they don't often have an easily recognisable tune. When I point out that this is a music notation, they usually deny it, somehow believing that written music must be something far more difficult and clever!) This method is very effective for mapping out melody lines, especially when they vary just slightly throughout a piece, but not very useful when we're dealing with the overall structure of a complex song.

At the moment I am experimenting with a variety of visual maps that might help the singers navigate their way through a complex structure and help them to learn their part. I'm not quite sure what their final form will be, but at the moment I'm thinking of different shapes (boxes, ovals, etc.) and colours. My first experiment with this method will be to put them up on the wall in rehearsal rather than hand them out to individuals. I hope this will mean they won’t need pieces of paper in the concert! I’ll keep you posted on my progress. In the meantime, if anyone else has any ideas …!

My question to you is: what is the limit in complexity that can be taught by ear? Can we teach anything by ear given enough time? If we need to resort to some kind of map or written score, how do we then get it out of people’s hands for performances?

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Children and special interest groups first?

Following last week’s post, somebody reminded me that the name of the BBC Radio programme which taught traditional songs from different cultures was Singing Together. It dates back to the 1950s at least, and was still on the radio until recently (2004).

There still is an abundance of music activities available to children, and in particular there is a big movement on at the moment to revive singing in schools. In January the Dept. for Education and Skills announced a £10 million package to boost music and singing for young people and appointed composer Howard Goodall as the new singing ambassador. The initiative is part of the government’s response to Music Manifesto’s report: Making Every Child’s Music Matter.

I am, however, very sceptical. It seems to me that this is another case of pendulum swinging: there was once vibrant music provision in schools which has since been cut back, and now the government want to re-instate it. But how will this affect the place of music in people’s lives as they get older? It’s all very well pumping money and effort into kids’ 12 or so years at school, but what then? Why do people not keep up singing through their 20s and 30s in general?

There are so many initiatives these days for particular, well-defined groups like the young, the disadvantaged and the old. But what about the people in the middle? All that money and effort goes into introducing young people to music, then they’re left to their own devices when they leave school. Choirs are often seen as a little fuddy duddy and formal, and evening classes are for grown ups (besides, who wants to go back to studying so soon?!). There are youth orchestras, youth bands, youth choirs, young people’s workshops, song writing initiatives for young people, studios for kids, etc. etc. But then what?

Apparently the dark ages of music and singing in schools is over. No more: “stand at the back and mime”, or “you’re not good enough to be in the choir”. But us Natural Voice Practitioners still get people coming to us who were thoroughly put off by their experience of music teaching in schools.

It could be argued that singing in a group is just not cool enough for young people once they’ve left school. But what about all the role models in pop music of boy and girl bands singing in close harmony? And how come that when people do eventually come back to singing, they say how much they’ve missed it?

Answers please, on a postcard to …

As always I value your comments, but I know that some people don’t really know how to post a comment here, so I’ll outline the process here.

Depending on how you’ve landed at my blog, at the end of each weekly post you may see a line that looks something like:

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When and why do we stop singing?

The average age of people who attend the choirs and workshops that I run must be in the mid-40s. I would say that about a third of any group is of retirement age, and the majority of the rest are in their late 30s/ early 40s. Most of these people sang at school.

There were always plenty of opportunities (certainly in my early school days in the 1950s): morning assembly, “music & movement” on the radio, the school choir (especially at Christmas), cubs and scouts, local church choir. I sang in all of these regularly. I even persuaded my Mum to go to my primary school and complain when I didn’t get into the school choir! They relented (my Mum is a force to reckon with) and I joined.

When I was about 15 or 16 I started a band with my mates and we sang lots of Beatles songs. I distinctly remember sitting in the garden on the swing singing along with “I wanna hold your hand” on the radio when it first came out. I loved singing and used to harmonise automatically with all the pop songs on TV (“Juke Box Jury”, “6-5 Special”) and radio. So it’s not as if there weren’t any role models for adolescents.

Then it all stopped and I didn’t really come back to singing until I was working in theatre in the early 1990s. They say it’s often because boys’ voices break and during that embarrassing transition they find something else to do. But I have heard similar stories from many women who join choirs or come to my singing workshops. Only this weekend at an open workshop a woman came up to thank me and said it’s the first time she’d sung for 50 years!

These people obviously love singing, but have let it lie dormant for such a long period. There is clearly a strong desire to re-connect with their singing voice as it’s quite a brave thing to walk into an open workshop when you’ve not sung for such a long time. I often wonder what has compelled that person to come back to singing at that specific moment. After 50 years, why now? Why this particular weekend?

Many people who come back to singing were put off in some way when they were kids: “stand at the back and mime”, “will you stop that awful racket!”, “you can’t be in the choir, you’re not good enough”. We have such a personal relationship with our voices that this can cause a huge set-back and put people off singing for a long time. But the desire must still be there to express ourselves through our voices otherwise people wouldn’t come back to singing in their later life.

One approach is to “catch ‘em young”. The theory being that if we turn kids onto singing and music, then it’s a lifelong bug that will stay with them. But clearly it’s not as simple as that. Next week I’ll talk a bit about the government’s new school singing initiative and why I feel that it’s misguided (Children and special interest groups first).

In the meantime, if you came back to singing later in life, perhaps you’d like to let us know your story. Why did you stop singing from when you were a kid?

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Vive la différence!

I currently run three singing groups: Minor Chords (12 women); WorldSong (around 60 singers, of whom about a dozen are men); and Woven Chords (over 80 singers with only around nine basses!). I therefore have to think quite carefully when choosing which songs to do with which group. It’s great to be able to do big, lush arrangements with the 80-piece choir, but it’s just as wonderful to be able to do more subtle, quieter material with just 12 voices or less.

This is made very difficult however when I run a one-day singing workshop as I usually have no idea how many people will turn up, nor what the male/ female mix will be. I usually assume that we won’t have many blokes, so always adapt the “tenor” line so women can sing it. However, at one workshop a couple of years ago about half the group (20 or so) turned out to be men! I had some quick re-arranging to do.

What I have found really surprising though is the difference in “flavour” of the community choirs I have run. When I used to lead Global Harmony in Melton Mowbray, I then had three mixed community choirs of roughly the same size and composition. They were all founded on the same principles (i.e. that anyone can join regardless of experience), covered the same sort of repertoire, and met for the same amount of time each week. And yet each choir had its own distinct “personality” and dynamics. Some songs would work really well with one choir, but not with another. One choir might be able to cope with a tricky rhythm or harmony, yet another choir (which perhaps had been going for longer) would find it just too difficult. Over time I started to realise which songs would appeal to which choir. So when I am sourcing material, it is usually quite obvious which choir I will teach a particular song to – regardless of mix of voices or size, just because that choir will appreciate it and enjoy it more. Some songs which have just not worked with one choir, will come alive with another.

Why is this? How come two groups of adults formed in exactly the same way can end up having such a different group personality? The only difference being the geographical location! The gender and age mix of each choir is very similar; the tastes of the singers is similar (i.e. they’re all attracted to the kind of repertoire that I offer); everyone enjoys the way that I teach and is now very much used to it; there is the same mix of members who have been with the choir for some time together with people who have joined this term. So why the difference?

Can the demographic of a town account for such a different group dynamic? Or is it that a very small group of individuals can have a big effect on a large group?

I remember once doing a theatre show which was very funny (all audiences so far had laughed a lot each time we’d performed the show), yet one night we got hardly a titter. There must have been about 40 people in the (capacity) audience (it was a very small venue!), yet hardly any audible laughs. When we talked to some friends about it afterwards, they said that although they had found it very funny, they had felt that the atmosphere in the room somehow meant that they couldn’t laugh out loud. Similarly, when we played to around 120 people at our Stamford Christmas concert last year, we walked on stage to complete silence! Not a single person clapped. It was as if they had all discussed it beforehand and come to an agreement.

I find group dynamics endlessly fascinating. It may be that when I tried to blame it on the weather in last week’s post, it was simply the group dynamic having a strong effect on one particular evening. I wonder how many individuals it takes to affect a large group? Can one person influence a whole choir or does it need a small group?

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Blame it on the weather

Sometimes we’re just out of tune. All of us. Whether it’s six, or sixteen or sixty singers, sometimes everyone is out of tune. They’re out of tune with each other, the harmonies just aren’t working, the pitch is dropping dreadfully – it just isn’t working.

Now if this were just one or two people then OK, perhaps they’re having an off day or are tired or had a difficult day at work. But the whole group??!! What’s going on here? A few out of tune voices might have a slight knock-on effect to those around them, but how come the whole team is off key? This doesn’t happen often, but it’s happened enough times for me to realise that it’s a recognisable phenomenon. There is nothing one can do about it (I’ve tried!). So I just blame it on the weather. It’s not the singers’ fault, it’s something outside them that’s affecting the whole room. Maybe it’s the full moon, or we’re in a high pressure area, or the humidity’s low – whatever it is, it’s nothing to do with us.

This is very different from those rehearsals where things seem to be going wrong, but it’s just a case of a bit of a pep talk, a heightening of focus and attention, or simply running the song again and everything's back on track. This we can fix. In those cases we get back in tune OK. But not on bad weather days.

It’s happened enough times now for me to just point it out and try to get everyone to accept the situation. “It’s just one of those nights! Next week will be fine” At first it really spooked me. We had such a good session the previous week and now it’s all going pear-shaped. It must be my fault, I’m not teaching very well or maybe I should be doing something different. Then I remembered my days as a runner.

I used to be a long-distance runner, culminating in a half-marathon before I had to give it all up (don’t ask!). Most nights I would go out jogging for a good few miles come rain or shine. Many times I’d get back home on a real runner’s high. No matter how wretched or tired I felt when I set off, I’d come back glowing and full of energy. The next night I’d set off perhaps feeling a bit low but knowing that at the end of it I’d feel great. Only sometimes I didn’t! I began to realise that how I felt at the end of my run was kind of random. Many times I’d feel good, but sometimes I’d feel lousy. If I tried to hang onto the memories and feelings of the last good run and expect to come back feeling wonderful, I’d only get doubly disappointed. So I learnt to have no expectations. What happened would happen, despite me.

I think this is what Zen calls beginner’s mind. The idea that each time you do something, no matter how many times you’ve done it before, you approach it as if it were the first time. This also connects with my time as an actor. I used to do a lot of improvisation and at first would try to repeat the things that went well the last time. But of course it’s never as good or as spontaneous the second time round. So I learnt to approach each improvisation as if it were the first time (which of course it was!).

This can be applied not only to “bad weather” sessions, but also to warm-ups and performances. I try to vary the warm-ups and vocal training each week, but inevitably (and usefully) we often repeat the same exercises. There are two ways of dealing with this: either you can just go through the motions because you’ve done it loads of times before and you just want to get through it to get onto the singing (the fun part!), or you can have a beginner’s mind and approach the exercise as if you have never done it before. You may then discover new things about how your body and voice work, you will stay engaged and fascinated, and you will benefit from the warm-up much more.

Similarly, when a concert comes along, you can try to re-create the wonderful performance that you had the last time, or you can behave as if you have never done this before, be totally in the moment, and move into the unknown, learning, wondering and developing as you go.

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Singing from the same hymn sheet

I’m not a religious man myself, but I happened to spend Passover with a Jewish family last week. I also ran a workshop entitled Sacred Songs to Soothe the Soul (and they say the devil has all the best tunes!). And this weekend it’s Easter, a time (along with Christmas) when many non-churchgoers go to church. What unites these seemingly disparate events is song. An important part of the Passover Seder (the ritual feast which takes place on the eve of Passover) are the traditional songs. Every Jewish family will have learnt these as part of growing up. Similarly, most people brought up as Christians, even though they don’t attend church regularly, will know many of the familiar hymns. So, as well as being religious events, Easter and Passover are two examples of several cultural occasions where people come together to sing songs that they have in common.

What was interesting at my first Passover Seder was that when the rituals had ended there was a desire to continue singing. However, once the few Hebrew and Yiddish songs that everyone knew had been exhausted, it became increasingly difficult to find songs that everybody knew. Gradually the songs moved back into childhood: simple rounds, clapping games, playground songs, and finally theme tunes from children’s TV programmes, until eventually the whole enterprise fizzled out.

I’m sure it would have been the same after church on Easter Sunday. Even if people wanted to continue to sing, they would find it difficult (after they’d all sung Robbie Williams’ Angels and then perhaps Roll out the barrel) to find songs in common. The desire is there, the willingness to join in and let the voice loose. The feeling of community and shared endeavour carries over from the hymn singing, but doesn’t last because we simply have so few songs in common other than those in a religious context. I suppose the nearest equivalent in our increasingly secular society are the sing-alongs during rock and pop concerts and festivals where everyone there knows the lyrics and tune.

Many people look back to the good old days when we all used to gather round a piano and just sing for hours, or all join in a good sing-song down the local pub. I do think this might be a bit of romantic wishful thinking though. I have a book called “Daily Express” community song book which came out of the Daily Express’s Community Singing Movement launched at the Royal Albert Hall in November 1926. This movement seems to have been an attempt to get people singing together again. The News Chronicle Song Book was a similar venture published around the same time. At the very least it shows that even then there was a desire for people to learn the same songs in order to sing them together in community settings. The implication being that the singing of songs together had started to die out.

It was this joy of singing together that prompted me to start my first choir back in 1997. I would often try to start a sing-along whenever a group of like-minded people gathered, but inevitably we would have no songs in common or would only know the words for the first few lines. So I thought I would start a group and teach some songs so at least we’d have a bunch to call on whenever we were down the pub or fancied a good sing. It did take some while however before the first time we just burst into song in a pub without the need for lyric sheets or starting notes! Things are getting a lot better now, and there is even a short list of songs known by an increasing number of community choirs across the country. So wherever we go in the UK and come across another choir, there’s a very good chance we’ll have at least one song in common that doesn’t need an associated religious ceremony!

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Quiet at the back please!

I find it hard to believe, but I started my choir WorldSong way back in October 1997, so this is our tenth year of operation! We are planning several events this year to celebrate our 10^th anniversary.

photo by Foxtongue

One of these involves a song commissioned especially for the choir.

We thought it would be great to try something really different, so we have commissioned Klaus Santas, a well-known choral composer based in London, to write us an extended choral piece that is possible to learn without written music. Santas studied with John Cage in Frankfurt in the 1980s, and has composed several operas which are regularly performed in his native Paraguay.

We are very excited by this new piece written in German and Spanish which we have recently started working on. The main difference for us is that we will be singing mainly without using our voices. This presents particular challenges to a community choir who usually express themselves vocally. Another added difficulty is maintaining a strict tempo whilst remaining completely silent. I have spent quite a lot of time developing particular warm-up exercises to help people keep time with each other by counting in their heads. At first it was almost impossible, but I’ve found that by engaging the body the choir are becoming tighter and more accurate by the week.

The new piece, entitled RUHE, is in three “movements”, each in a different key and each at a very different tempo. All three sections are in four part harmony, so there is quite a lot of new material to learn! Given that there is no actual noise coming out of the singers mouths, it is proving to be very difficult to pitch the harmonies accurately, even though they are fairly traditional major keys.

One final challenge for us is the length of the piece: 4 hours and 33 minutes. We are hoping to premiere it at our grand summer concert in Coventry, but are slightly worried that we won’t be able to fit enough other songs in to make for a varied evening of entertainment.

If you are interested in receiving a score of this piece so you can sing it with your own community choir, one will be available after our concert in July. In the meantime, listen out for sound clips on our website.

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

How was it for you?

Our annual “at home” spring concert was a week ago at Stamford Arts Centre in a beautiful Georgian (that’s King George to you, not Republic of .. or the southern states!) ballroom which has featured in many a filmed costume drama. Beautiful surroundings complete with chandeliers and a wonderful acoustic. However, we have become victims of our own success and our almost 80-voice choir (of whom at least 60 turn up for any given concert) doesn’t fit on the stage any more! So we decided to do the concert sideways on along the long side of the very long and thin ballroom. This meant that we could stand in three rows, but the audience were only about four deep and very wide. The other unfortunate side effect was that there were no stage lights so we had to have the house lights on which meant that the choir could see the whites of the audience’s eyes! A scary prospect indeed. But we pulled it off and everyone had a great time.

Except me.

Well, that’s not strictly true, I did have a really good time, but not a great time. Of course, in the end, it doesn’t matter whether I have a good time or not. As long as the choir enjoy themselves and the audience has a good evening out and our standards remain high, it is of no consequence what I am feeling. It is strange though how unpredictable my experience is. I have had absolutely amazing, fantastic gigs where we’ve all been firing on all cylinders, the audience have been fantastic and everyone has had a great time. It is unpredictable though.

Which reminds me of my days as a performer on the stranger fringes of the theatre world. I could be totally prepared and really looking forward to a show, only to have a really bad time and end up feeling that the show had been rubbish that night. Yet afterwards in the bar audience members would tell me how fantastic it was, other cast members would say they thought it was one of our best shows. Then the other way round: I could feel that I was really flying, had never performed better, the connection between the performers would be electric, we’d never done the show so well, it was a triumph!! Only to come off stage to find a relatively empty bar, a lukewarm audience reception and fellow cast members drowning their sorrows in their beer and vowing to give up acting immediately.

It’s not so simple then. Even performers in exactly the same show can have completely different experiences. So I came to the conclusion that it is actually irrelevant how you feel about a performance. All you can do is be prepared and do your best, then it is simply up to the audience to take it or leave it.

As far as singing concerts go, there are several other factors involved. We always rehearse on the afternoon of the concert, so maybe I’m just too tired to enjoy the evening as fully as I might. Sometimes we have a cracking rehearsal, everyone’s relaxed, we have a bit of a laugh and the singing is wonderful. But come the evening and the nerves kick in (and they can see the audience in all their glory!) and perhaps the songs are not quite as good as they had been that afternoon. That just goes to show that we shouldn’t have expectations: be in the moment, the show will be what the show will be.

Then there’s the audience. As a performer (and now a conductor) I am badly affected by an audience’s response. We all want to be loved by the audience, we want to please them, we want them to think we’re the best thing they’ve ever heard, we want to see happy smiling faces lapping up every moment. And oftentimes that is what happens, but there will always be the few audience members who are looking a bit tired or bored or both (even though they may be having the time of their life) and they are the only audience members I see and I start to think “They’re not enjoying it. They don’t like me. I’m not doing very well. I should give up and buy a shop”. Then I start to doubt myself and perhaps the next song is a bit wobbly because I’ve taken my eye off the ball, which then spooks me a bit, which then means I might make a bigger mistake in the next song and so on. And all because perhaps a single audience member is not smiling enough! How shallow can you get??!!

After the concert last week lots of the choir mentioned how smiley the audience had been. I was beginning to wonder whether we had been playing to the same audience when I realised that the choir see a different audience to the one that I do. Why hadn’t I realised this before! When we are singing and the audience is smiling and enjoying themselves, I have my back to them and simply don’t see. Then when I turn round to announce the next song (or engage them with some so-called witty banter) they become serious because they’re concentrating and listening intently to what I’m telling them about some obscure Eastern European song about a red fez or handkerchief in a puddle. So I’ve decided to commission a pair of wing mirrors like the ones the moods used to have on their scooters. I’ll put one on each shoulder, then whilst I’m conducting I can glance in the mirror to see the rapturous, smiling faces of the audience have the best time of their life!

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Get in line!

NB this is a fictional account based on truth and many, many rehearsals. Names have been changed to protect the innocent. Any similarity to any choir or individual living or dead is entirely coincidental. No animals were harmed in the making of this blog.

Ours are not primarily performing choirs. The main emphasis is to sing with others and to have fun! However, we now sing to a very high standard (even though we don’t audition) and inevitably choir members look forward to sharing their songs with an audience. Rather than letting rehearsals take over our weekly fun sessions completely, we try to limit ourselves to three performances each year.

Unlike more traditional choirs, we don’t have fixed sections of soprano, alto, tenor and bass. Of course, some people might prefer to sing higher or lower, but I always encourage people to move around, try different parts and explore different areas of their vocal range. Also we often have songs with more than four parts or some songs with only two or three parts, so it’s not possible to stick with the traditional divisions.

This is all very well in our weekly sessions where we are free to move about as we like, but when it comes to a public performance, then things get a little more complicated! Somebody might sing in one part for one song, then have to move right down to the other end of the choir for a different part in the next song (if they remember!). Sometimes this might involve most of the choir so the results can be pretty chaotic!

We pride ourselves on being a little different as choirs go: more relaxed, informal and fun, with a greater variety of song styles. Audiences like us for this and our obvious enjoyment and relaxed attitude carries over so that everyone ends up having a good time. We let our individual humanity shine through, whilst working as a team to produce a rich overall sound which is competent but not too polished. However, there is a fine line between being informal and being messy and undisciplined.

At the very least I reckon it’s always good to enter slickly at the beginning of a concert (and to take a neat bow at the end!). To this end, having decided to perform in a horseshoe shape (is this the best shape I wonder?), I always mark out where the front row will be standing by putting tape on the floor. However, getting the choir to stand in roughly the right shape to start with is an entirely different matter! It’s as if everybody leaves their individual sense of space at home, along with their ability to understand the difference between left and right. They also forget how to count, they go deaf and their legs stop working properly. Grown adults who can cope with tricky tunes, strange harmonies and foreign beats suddenly become four years old all over again.

“OK, let’s just get into two rows in a semi-circle”. They all look at me. Some of them go and stand somewhere they think is a good place to stand. They’ve stood there before, so why not try it again? It was a nice place. Another person sees this initiative and goes to stand next to them, even if they don’t sing the same part. Maybe they are friends. People begin to stand in rows of three or even four. Sometimes five. One person is vaguely wandering around because they’ve forgotten which part they sing in this song. “Which part do you sing in this song?” Middle. “But it’s a four part song” I always sing middle. "Yes, but it has four parts, there is no middle". I always sing middle.

One half of the choir is in a dead straight line, whilst the other is in a weird spiral shape. I point out where the front of the stage will be. They look at where I’m pointing, look back at me, then just carry on doing whatever they were doing before. “Two rows please, not three”. Those in three rows nod wisely because they know they’re doing the right thing. “Somebody’s going to have to move, we only want two rows”. Yes, they nod, and stay where they are. “This is the centre of the stage so you’ll have to move to your left. No, left. Not that left, the other left. Yes, you. And you. Not that way. A bit more please. No, not you, you’re fine where you are. Where are you going? You were in the right place!”

“Why is there a big gap between the tops and the altos? Do you not like each other?” Gap? They don’t see a gap. “Just move to your left a little. No, not that left …” “And why is there a big gap here?” That’s where Jane stands. “But Jane’s not doing the concert”. I know, but that’s where she always stands. "And this gap?" What gap? "This one". They look at each other and don't move. "Can we just fill this gap up please?" That's not our gap, we're in the right place. It's them. They point at the tenors. That's where Jane stands.

Finally – somehow – we end up in some semblance of a choir formation. I put tape down at the feet of those in the front row. “OK, now just remember who you’re standing next to, then when we line up to come in, you’ll all be in the right positions”. What song? they ask. “The first one, of course, the one we start the concert with”. Then I’m not in the right place (Neither am I!). So we start over.

These are intelligent, confident, experienced adults who have done this many times before. But something about standing in rows as a choir suddenly becomes very difficult. It’s what takes up most of our final rehearsal: finding our starting positions and moving around between songs. It’s always been like that. It’s maybe similar to the reasons behind bad rehearsal = good concert? At least it gives some of us a good laugh!

Does anybody else have the same experiences? And more importantly: does anybody have any good solutions??!!

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In you I trust

This week I had one of those “difficult” rehearsals when nothing seemed to go right! We have a concert coming up this weekend so we were running through the first half of the proposed set. However, I wasn’t feeling very well and certainly wasn’t at my best. The brain just wasn’t working properly! It’s at times like this that it feels like one of those horrible paranoid dreams: you find yourself in a situation where a huge crowd of people are looking at you wanting to know what to do next and you have absolutely no idea!! Fortunately most choir members have been here before and realise that it’s just a blip in our normal routine.

This is where trust comes in. All we can do is trust that we have done our preparation, both collectively (I have taught the songs well and we have rehearsed them sufficiently) and individually (choir members have done their homework, learnt their words and know their part). That is all we can do: prepare well. We then need to trust in the process and try to relax and enjoy the performance.

This same notion of trust comes in when people don’t think they can “sing”. If I behave as if everyone can sing and the song we are learning is not difficult, then it’s as if am giving permission for people to be their best. It is handing over responsibility to the individual, giving them space fully to be themselves, trusting that they can do it. And the results are usually marvellous!

Often people tell me that they can’t understand how I can be so patient. Patient when a song is just not working, patient when a group just can’t seem to get their part right, patient when a rehearsal is going pear-shaped. My response to that is: “what is the alternative?” I know some musical directors who shout or get cross, but from my experience that makes people tense and less likely to get things right! If you believe in the process, believe that people are capable and competent, believe that you are teaching reasonably well, then you just have to wait and it will all come good in the end. That’s my philosophy any way!

Trusting people doesn’t mean becoming complacent and not trying. You do have to do the work and make sure you prepare well. It doesn’t matter how many times we have performed well, I still need to make sure that we work hard to make the concert the best it can be (maybe even better than last time!). Otherwise we will just rest on our laurels and the whole thing may be a disaster.

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Where are all the male singers?

I ran a gospel workshop yesterday and unexpectedly there was a good show of men. Must have been around 15 men in a group of nearly 50. We did a song which I got from the Soweto Gospel Choir and it made such a wonderful difference to the sound having those strong bass voices on the bottom!

Most of the time in my one-day workshops, men are in the minority (I’ve had just the one before now!) so I always make sure that the “tenor” part is in the women’s range. But every now and then I get caught out. I did a Beatles workshop in Coventry a while back and ended up with 20 men in a group of 40 – I had to very quickly adapt the tenor part!

Why is it that more men don’t come to singing workshops? Even in the regular mixed-voice choirs that I run the blokes are in a small minority. It has taken many years to build the bass sections up to a reasonable size so that the male and female voices balance. And even when we do manage to recruit some keen blokes, they often don’t stay for very long!

Three years ago I decided to run an annual men-only harmony singing workshop. I figured that maybe some blokes might find it intimidating to come into a mixed group where they would be in the minority, but might feel more comfortable with just other men. I hoped that I could get more men interested in singing in general, partly so that I could recruit for my own choirs, but also just to get more men singing. One year I publicised the workshop on two local BBC radio stations, sent a mail shot to all the local choirs in the East Midlands region, sent press releases to the local press in five separate towns, used word of mouth through relevant choir members, but still didn’t get a single ‘outsider’ – all the men who came were already in choirs or singing groups. So although the workshop itself gets more popular each year and I’m getting at least 25 men each time, I’ve given up trying to recruit men who might not have sung before in a group.

Why is it so hard to get men interested in singing? I thought it might be that men didn’t like being vulnerable in front of women (hence the men-only workshop), but lots of male voice choirs are having recruitment problems too, and many of them have an average age of 70+. I thought maybe that some of the stuff I do was a bit too esoteric (Georgian and Balkan singing), but I still got hardly any ‘regular’ blokes coming to the Beatles or ABBA workshops that I run. I thought maybe singing wasn’t cool and there weren’t any role models for young men, but we have bands like G4, Westlife, Take That and others, all featuring close harmony singing. There are plenty of men-only groups in other cultures with a healthy mix of ages, so is it just a British thing?

As we all know, there are so many fantastic benefits to singing, not least the stress­ busting and health side-effects. You’d think this would apply to many men in high pressure jobs. I also know that if a man can actually be persuaded to come along to a workshop, he usually ends up enjoying it. One man joined Global Harmony who hadn’t sung before in his life, and had been dragged along by a mate. He now finds himself singing glorious tenor parts in Balkan songs and having the time of his life.

This lack of men is not restricted to punters, it also applies to choir leaders. Of 220+ members of the Natural Voice Practitioners Network, only around 30 are men. I imagine it would be more comfortable for some men if the workshop leader was also a man, so perhaps there are simply not enough opportunities or role models.

In 2003, Community Music Victoria in Australia hosted a gathering to examine why singing isn't an everyday part of the male experience. 20 men and Fay White sang and talked the day away. The results of some of their discussion can be found on the CMV website.

How can we get more men involved in singing? All ideas welcome!!

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New singers, old songs

When a choir first starts up, everyone learns the same songs and the choir slowly builds up a small repertoire. But as time goes on, choir members leave, new singers join, the choir (hopefully!) increases in size, and the repertoire grows. Then one day a concert comes up and you want to sing some of your best-loved, older songs only to find that most of the choir don’t know them! What do you do?

Some choirs simply learn a new bunch of songs each term, then consign them to the dustbin of history, starting with a clean slate the next term. This can be very frustrating for singers who’ve put the time into learning a new song, only to have it removed from the repertoire.

Other choirs have a small, core repertoire that they stick to and constantly re-teach to new members. These choirs usually perform a lot, don’t have much time to learn new repertoire, and have concerts in different venues so they can get away with singing the same songs each time. Our choirs don’t perform that much though, and members always look forward to learning new songs (as well as singing the “oldies”).

Some choirs use written scores and expect their members to be able to sight read. When a new singer joins the choir, they are simply handed the sheet music and expected (with a little rehearsal) to join in with the regular members. We don’t use written scores though, and rely on learning by ear.

Other choirs (most often barbershop choirs) don’t actually teach songs in their weekly meetings, but provide parts CDs for their singers to take home and learn their part in their own time. New members of the choir are just given a parts CD and are expected to get up to speed in their own time. Weekly sessions are then spent rehearsing and honing the songs. Our choirs enjoy the learning of songs in the weekly sessions. It is less mechanical than learning a part at home on your own, it gives people a chance to experience the harmonies as they are evolving, and most importantly, it’s a social activity.

So what is our solution? WorldSong and Woven Chords have both been going for around 10 years and now have repertoires in excess of 150 songs each, which is a rather daunting back catalogue for any new choir member! When someone joins the choir (which is always at the start of a term), I emphasise that there is no compulsion to learn any of our old repertoire. It is possible to be a full member of the choir without knowing any of the old songs. I always make sure that every new song that term will be in our next concert, plus a few easy songs which I revive or re-teach to new members so they will be able to participate in at least half a dozen songs in the concert if they choose to.

I also make available to all new members a full set of lyrics of all the songs that the choir has in its repertoire. Each week for the last 20 minutes or so, we sing some “oldies” just to keep the repertoire alive. At the very least, new members can follow the lyrics as we sing, and sometimes, if a song is relatively easy, they can pick up a part on the fly.

The main solution to the past repertoire problem is that I make available a series of parts CDs to choir members. I make roughly one per year with around a dozen of the more complex songs we’ve learnt over the past three terms. Each part is on a separate track with all the starting notes given on each track as I encourage people to sing against the other parts as they are learning. These parts CDs can be useful for revision when people have learnt a song in our weekly sessions, but we haven’t sung it for a while, or there’s a tricky bit that they’ve had problems with. It’s also valuable for new members to be able to learn songs in their own time for when a concert is coming up, or to get to grips with an old song they might have heard the rest of the choir sing at the end of a session one week. I try to make it very clear that new members don’t have to learn any of the back catalogue if they don’t want to, but if they do want to try, just pick a couple of songs each time and then it’s up to them to learn their part in their own time.

Another way of keeping our back catalogue alive and to introduce old songs to new singers is to find new ways of doing a song – a slightly different arrangement, adding a new part, extending a song with a new section, etc. This also has the advantage of keeping an old song fresh and alive for long-serving choir members.

I would be very interested to hear what solutions other choirs have found for keeping their old repertoire alive for new members.

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The singing memory

We’ve just had our half term break for a week, and then on Saturday it was back to rehearse for our forthcoming concert. Always after a short break from our regular weekly sessions, it’s as if people forget much of what they’ve learnt – even the songs they’ve known for years! Unlike, say, riding a bicycle, just a short break from regular singing and it’s as if that part of the brain ‘forgets’ everything that it’s known. Even if we’ve been going over a song every week for the last few weeks, just a week off and the singing mind goes blank.

It seems though that this mainly affects short-term memory for tunes. Sometimes we’ve really struggled with a song and never quite got it right. Then perhaps a year later, without re-visiting it at all in the meantime, we decide to sing it again and it comes out perfectly! There has been no extra practice or rehearsal or repetition, it’s just lain dormant in the brain, and yet the subconscious seems to have been at work in the interim.

These phenomena point to something about how the brain remembers melodies and lyrics, but I’m not sure what! A short break of just a week may have devastating effects, but a whole summer off and the choir often comes back sharp as nails. Understanding this better might help us find more effective ways of teaching and learning songs. After learning a new song for a few weeks, we then just sing it through for a few more weeks, then I allow a few weeks to pass before we try it again in the belief that the subconscious has been squirreling it away more effectively in the memory. But maybe I’m kidding myself??!!

There is definitely a different part of the brain involved in learning songs than that used to learn melodies for instruments and learning ‘lines’ (e.g. poetry, plays, etc.) off by heart (see The writing's on the wall!). Many times I can be asked what the lyrics to a song are and can only recall them by singing them. I can’t speak them or I’ll forget what’s coming next. The brain has stored the sounds and the words together, inextricably linked. Similarly, when someone is struggling with a tune, sometimes just reminding them of the first few words is enough for the whole thing to kick in. Many times, when singing a song we’ve not done for a while, I’m convinced I don’t know the words (or the harmony). But I trust the process and just open my mouth and – as if by magic – the whole thing comes out almost despite me. There is even a conscious part of my brain that can observe this process taking place and marvels at where the words and tune are actually coming from.

At our rehearsal on Saturday somebody asked for clarification of their harmony part so I sang it to them (believing that I knew it). Afterwards they said that they weren’t sure that’s exactly what I’d taught them. This sowed a doubt in my mind and I went to get the written score to sing it again. The second time round I realised that I had been absolutely spot on the first time! It was my subconscious brain that had remembered it. I just opened my mouth and trusted what came out. But as soon as someone asked me a question, my rational brain kicked in and I began to doubt myself.

I often see people singing hesitantly because their conscious mind is telling them that it’s not sure that they know what they’re doing. However, 9 times out of 10 they’ve got it right, if only they’d trust themselves and the learning process. At times like that I tell people to behave as if they know what they're doing and invariably it will come out right.

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Where did you get that song, where did you get that song?

I’m often asked by concert-goers and choir leaders alike “Where do you get all your songs from?”. Well, here’s the short answer to this simple question: “From everywhere and everyone”. Now for the longer answer!

When I started my first choir back in 1997 I reckoned I had enough songs to last me for one term (about 10 weeks) after which I was seriously thinking about panicking or retiring. But now, somehow, after teaching in excess of 500 songs over the last ten years, I have another 600 waiting to be taught!

Like most things, when you become seriously involved in something new, your radar begins to pick up signals from previously unnoticed sources. I listen to a lot of CDs in the car (all that driving between Coventry and Stamford!) as well as Late Junction on Radio 3. I also used to listen to World Routes on a Saturday afternoon on my way over to Stamford, but now that they’ve moved it to 3pm, I have to miss it. I occasionally listen to Andy Kershaw usually by using the BBC’s “listen again” facility.

Often on one of these programmes I might hear a wonderful track that might be suitable for the choir, so when I get home I use the internet (a wonderful tool!) to look at the track listings for the programme. Then I track down the CD on the web (using Google) and try to listen to a few more tracks before possibly buying the CD (again, over the internet).

So I have ended up with loads of world music and roots CDs in my collection. If I want to teach one of the songs I can often work out the parts from the recording (if it’s already in a harmony arrangement) or I work out the tune and put my own harmonies on. Often I do background research on the internet to try and find the lyrics (I will never teach a song phonetically from a recording unless I can find the proper lyrics in the original language, and preferably a translation or a rough meaning). Sometime I might stumble across a written score or arrangement which I can buy or copy (anything for an easy life!).

You have to be very careful when searching for lyrics and song information on the internet. Never believe everything you read! Rather like finding a builder, I always look for at least three independent sources. I stress independent, because some sites just copy and paste information from other sites! I have sometimes found the background to a song which seems a bit suspicious and have ended up tracking down the individual who wrote it and asked them for their source. Often it’s just hearsay!

I also collect many written scores. I buy books from a variety of sources (again the internet is a good place to start). Fortunately I read music so can usually pick out the tune on my guitar, but some traditional music has fiendishly difficult rhythms or harmonies so I really need to hear a recording first and then use the score as an aide memoir and basis for teaching and harmonising.

Being a pretty poor musician, I often type a score into the notation programme I have on my computer (Finale PrintMusic about £70) simply so I can transpose it (lame, I know!). Sometimes the transposition is not straightforward (the bass becomes too low, or the tenor part is no longer suitable for women, or the top part becomes too high for a community choir) and I need to tinker around and move parts about (which means sometimes the bass get the tune for a change!).

Some people out there do wonderful acappella arrangements for choirs, but don’t write music or choose to make their work available for people who don’t read music. This ranges from the wonderful Dee Jarlett (of Naked Voices and the Gasworks Choir) to Ysaye Barnwell of Sweet Honey in the Rock (“Singing in the African American Tradition”). Some arrangers make both available, i.e. written score accompanied by a CD with all the parts on.

I learn a lot of songs by attending workshops (this year I’m going on a Northern Harmony workshop in Wales, and a fantastic world harmony week at Laurieston Hall). Sometimes I record the workshop whilst I’m there (although increasingly I just want to be a punter and enjoy the workshop), but sometimes I can get the written score or a recording from the workshop leader (or at least they might point me in the direction of a useful source).

Over the years I have also started to do more of my own arranging. I might find a lovely tune in a old music book (I get lots from second hand shops) or hear an old folk song on a CD that I’ve borrowed from the local library.

A good place to start is the Natural Voice website which has a resource section of members’ stuff (Nickomo’s books are particularly useful and he also transcribes songs taught at the Unicorn summer singing camps). Northern Harmony books and recordings can be bought from their website (they take sterling cheques as payment). There are various world music publishers out there (e.g. World Music Press), publishers of particular genres (e.g. Bulgarian) and general acappella publishers (e.g. Acappella.com)

So there you have it. A mix of listening to CDs and the radio, going to workshops, buying songbooks and written scores, going to the local library, and also receiving suggestions from choir members.

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Papa's got a brand new song

The beginning of any term is always shaky as I usually start three or four songs at the same time. We don’t finish a song in a single session, but keep a few on the go for several weeks. I personally believe that this variety is a better way of learning (but what do I know??!!). Hence in the first few weeks of term we often don’t have a clear grasp of where a song is going or what the final version will actually sound like. Some people have suggested that I play the choir a full version of the song before I start to teach it, but often I don’t have a recording or perhaps it’s a new arrangement that I’ve not tried before.

Another issue is that I’m not familiar enough with the song yet, despite the fact that I’ve spent ages on it at home! I practice and practice and think I know it inside out, but then in front of the choir when everyone’s a bit tired and we’ve already begun two new songs that evening, I suddenly realise that I’ve not totally nailed a particular interval or part of the harmony and it all goes pear-shaped

Unlike most people in the choir, I get to learn all the parts of every song. This is mainly due to simple repetition. I now know all the parts to over 500 songs! People often ask: “how do you manage it?”, “how do you remember them all?” Maybe I have some talent for it, and I know I have a good ear, but the main thing is that I get to repeat each song/ part at least four times when teaching a new song – that’s four times more than most people!

So here’s a hint when learning a new harmony song: listen to the other parts attentively while they’re being learnt (resist the temptation to natter!), you then learn the words more easily and can also sing your part in your head at the same time and see how the harmony works. In short, you get to repeat the new song/ part more times.

In many of the cultures that we source our songs from, people start “learning” songs from when they are children. They repeatedly hear others singing the same song, over and over again from a very early age. Even if there’s no conscious effort to learn it, a song will get into the brain of those around despite themselves. We see a similar effect on children of choir members who hear their parents singing their parts around the house, and before we know it, they know the song better than we do!

Basically, we are trying to short circuit years of repeatedly hearing a song in different contexts, so what we are doing is slightly artificial. To make things easier, musical notation was invented and people started using written scores instead of really listening and relying on their own memory. But then you never really get the song inside you!

It turns out that some people believe that they can “sing” because they think that “proper” singers only have to hear a song once before they’ve learnt it perfectly. It often comes as a surprise when I tell them that even professional singers take a few months before they really get to grips with a new song.

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Words are flowing out like endless rain ...

Since we don’t use written music in the choirs and workshops I run, I always hope that people start to listen more carefully. However, we live in a very visual culture and it takes some time to develop the necessary listening skills. People can usually pick up a tune quite quickly, but words are another matter. For very simple songs with only one or two words, I try to simply teach by ear and let people learn virtually syllable by syllable. When there are perhaps half a dozen or so (and we are usually talking foreign words here!), then I’ve started to write them up on the wall (see last week’s The writing's on the wall!). But what if a song has several verses or many words — even English ones? Then I usually (reluctantly!) hand out lyric sheets – and here’s where the problems start!

The two main issues are:

• once people have words in their hands, they are very reluctant to ever put them down
• how do we become as familiar with all the verses as we are with the first verse?

Performing without words
My ideal is for any choir to perform without books or pieces of paper so they can really listen to each other and sing out to the audience and make a real connection (rather than looking down at a piece of paper). Once I’ve given out lyric sheets though, it’s very hard for people to put them down! many people put in the work at home and learn all the lyrics, but for some people, no matter how hard they try, the words just don’t seem to stick. Although the foreign words might seem strange and difficult at first, often these are the ones that are recalled more accurately as they have to be learnt syllable by syllable without direct reference to their meaning. English words (or even French ones – most of us have a little school French) are harder in some ways because it’s easier to remember the meaning and hence people end up paraphrasing (which often means the rhymes are lost).

So how does one enforce the “no words in performance” rule? One can be strict and insist on everyone learning all the words (“you can’t sing in the concert unless you’re word perfect”); one can drill the words endlessly, week after week; one can put the fear of God into people, and shout at them to learn or even physically take their words away from them. I don’t relish doing any of these! The emphasis in my choirs is on fun. Also, a scared choir is not a pleasant thing to watch.

So … does anybody have any bright ideas about how to dispense with words for those long African songs, or those 15-verse English ballads, or that Welsh hymn?

I also can’t think of any helpful hints to give people on learning words at home. The trouble is, learning words by rote off the page uses a different part of the brain than when you learn words and tune at the same time. One solution would be to sing all the verses for each part on the parts CDs that I make the choir. The trouble with this though is that I would then only be able to fit about a quarter the number of songs on each parts CD.

Beyond Verse 1
When I begin to teach a song, I usually use the words to the first verse when teaching the tune and harmonies. We often spend a few weeks on this until it’s locked into the brain properly. But then we realise there are four more verses to learn – and most often in a strange foreign language! These are always much harder to learn than the first verse. Often the syllables fit into the tune in a different way, sometimes the rhythm is even slightly different. No matter how often we sing the other verses, we never seem to repeat them as much as we did with the first verse. After Verse 1 people are just reading off the page and trying to fit words to a tune in a fairly abstract way rather than learning them together as we did the first verse. If I ask people to go home and learn the words, it’s with a different part of the brain and never seems to flow as well as Verse 1.

I’ve tried teaching new songs line by line (with all the harmonies), and doing the first line of every verse before we move onto line two. The trouble with this is that we never seem to get an overall picture of the whole song, and it ends up being bitty and also a bit of an overload to deal with so many foreign words.

I’ve tried moving straight onto Verse 2 as soon as we’re beginning to master Verse 1, but that somehow seems to push all knowledge of Verse 1 out of people’s brains in order to make sense of Verse 2! I’ve even resorted to adding one new verse each year – which does seem to work, but takes a very long time to finish the song!

Anybody got any bright ideas?

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The writing's on the wall!

Well, it’s the second week back after the Christmas and New Year excesses. Loads of choir members always seem to turn up late to the first session after a long break, as if they’ve got out of the habit of going out on that night of the week. I’m always slightly worried that nobody will turn up at all! I try not to get complacent and don’t expect everyone to return, but am always pleasantly surprised when familiar faces arrive who have been coming for years and years. It’s surprising how quickly everyone gets back into the swing of things again and all are in fine voice.

I always try to introduce some new elements at the start of each term. This term I have written the words for simple foreign songs on large A1 sheets of paper which I then put up on the wall. There are always people who immediately write the words down, even if there is only one or two words in a new song, even though I ask them not to! To be fair, some people have a visual memory and need to see the words written down at least once (me included). However, many people simply don’t like to inhabit that strange space where they haven’t quite learnt something yet. It usually takes a few weeks before a new song begins to bed in, and rather than working through that difficult, eggy stage where you haven’t quite grasped it fully, people panic and rush to write the thing down, frightened that they won’t remember. The trouble is, once words are written down, it is very difficult to stop looking at them! Even if I know a song inside out and back to front, as soon as the lyrics appear in front of me, my eyes are drawn to the page (more next week in Words are flowing out like endless rain ...).

The “words on the wall” scheme seems to be working well though. Nobody so far has written down their own version – knowing that they’re up on the wall somehow allows people to relax. And very soon people have assimilated the words and no longer need to look at them on the wall. The question then becomes: when is the right time to take the words down?

There seems to be a different part of the brain involved in remembering song lyrics. Often, if someone asks me for the words of a song, I can’t speak them out but have to sing them. It’s as if the melody and lyrics have been stored together and inextricably linked. As opposed to when one learns a poem, say. This seems to get stored in a completely different part of the brain and is recalled in a different manner.

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The Natural Voice Practitioners Network

As well as being my birthday today (!), this weekend heralds the annual gathering of the Natural Voice Practitioners’ Network (NVPN) at Wortley Hall, near Sheffield. Each year a group of between 60 and 70 Natural Voice practitioners (from an overall membership of 240) from all over the UK gather for a weekend of peer group sharing, workshops, networking, dressing up and, above all, singing. The gatherings began as a way of celebrating the birthday of our founder and inspiration Frankie Armstrong.

All Natural Voice practitioners share a common philosophy towards voice work. Simply stated, we believe that singing is everyone's birthright, and that:

• everyone can sing (whether they think they can or not!)
• singing should be accessible to all (so many practitioners teach by ear rather than using written music)
• the voice begins from the body and the breath.
  

Many members of the network run community choirs based on this philosophy, although we are a very broad church with members from all areas of voice work.

To get a good grounding in the Natural Voice approach, and a chance to learn how to set up and run a singing group, Frankie (along with her partner Darien Pritchard, a Feldenkrais and massage practitioner) leads an annual week's training workshop at Kinnersley Castle in Herefordshire. 2007's training week is 11th to 17th April. Full details can be found on the NVPN website under "Events/ Workshops".

One of the issues currently exercising NVPN members is how to put the network on a more professional footing. We're thinking of introducing a code of practice along the lines of the code recently introduced by Sound Sense, the UK development agency for community music.

As part of this exercise we are fine tuning our "unique selling point". How do we differ from, say, Sing for Pleasure, or the Association of British Choral Directors? And believe me we do!

I hope to go into these issues in more detail in a later blog.

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Minor Chords: women's singing ensemble

Going back to work yesterday was a bit of a shock for all concerned! After a surfeit of turkey, mince pies and rubbish films on TV, we were all a bit sluggish, but it was good to be back.

This was the first session in 2007 for the women’s group that I lead in Stamford. The group is called Minor Chords (a weak pun based on the fact that all members are also in the bigger choir Woven Chords) and consists of 12 women who have the singing skills and commitment to meet alternate Saturdays for three hours to tackle more complex and difficult material than the main choir does.

Minor Chords started in March 2001 and has seen a few personnel changes, but a substantial core of the original group are still with us. We took on four new recruits last February which injected a bit of new energy and dynamics. We don’t hold formal auditions, but require members to be able to hold a part on their own. Over the years the standard of the group has risen considerably and it’s becoming harder and harder to find suitable new material which is sufficiently challenging!

Our repertoire is eclectic, but we do like our Eastern European harmonies! On the go at the moment we have a Maori hymn, a Greek folk song, Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds”, a Bulgarian song arranged by Philip Kutev, and we’re just starting a stonking gospel number called “Get away Jordan”. As well as many traditional songs from Eastern Europe, we’ve also branched out a little and have the Beach Boys in our repertoire, as well as a lovely arrangement of “My Blue Heaven” by Primrose Music and a round by Moondog ("Nero's Expedition").

We’re always looking for challenging new material so if you know of any fab, interesting songs out there please let us know! Also, if you fancy having us perform in your area, we’re always ready and willing.

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