Everybody has a place in the choir

… and there is a place in a choir somewhere for everybody.

Frank joined our choir a while back. He hadn’t sung for ages, but gave it his best shot for a couple of sessions. Then he wrote to me saying that although he’d had a great time and thought the choir was fantastic, he wasn’t going to continue because he couldn’t always produce a note accurately and he felt that he didn’t have much of a vocal range.

I wrote back to say that pretty much everyone else in the choir was in the same boat!

This led me to think about the experiences that people have when they first join a choir and the assumptions that they bring with them.

Will they have me?

Most people who have not trained or had singing lessons think they can’t sing. I tell people that I earn my living by running choirs and singing workshops based on the principle that everyone can sing, but they are quick to let me know that they are the exception and can’t sing a note.

This is the first obstacle for someone joining a choir. They assume that everyone in the choir can sing much better than them, and that they need to be of a particularly high standard to even have the gall to think of joining such an auspicious group of people as a CHOIR. Of course, there are professional choirs out there, and choirs who audition their members. But there are also many, many community choirs, non-performance choirs, open-access choirs, choirs who sing for fun, choirs who don’t even call themselves ‘choirs’, and so on.

There will be a choir out there for you who will embrace you with open arms and whose members’ singing skills are pretty much the same as yours. Do your homework first though. If you are really inexperienced and under confident as a singer, then probably not a good idea to audition for the local professional ensemble! Start small.

If at first you don’t succeed …

You may join a choir and not feel at home. Every choir has its own ‘flavour’ and group dynamic. The repertoire may not interest you; they might move at a learning pace that’s just too fast (or too slow) for you; they may insist on using written music and you may not be a sight-reader; they might be a performing choir whereas you just want to have fun. Whatever the reason, the first choir you join may not suit you. It’s nothing to do with you, just the wrong choir. Try another one until you feel comfortable.

New kid on the block

When you first join a choir you will assume that everybody knows more than you and they are much better singers than you. This is partly because the people already in the choir are used to the musical director’s strange ways. They’ve indulged him over time and are familiar with his foibles and teaching methods. They are aware of the kinds of songs he introduces. They are used to the warm up and way in which the choir stand (or sit) to rehearse. This is simply a matter of unfamiliarity so you’ll need to give it a few weeks before you begin to feel comfortable.

However … there is a very good chance that everybody else in the choir feels as under-confident as you! Even though they’ve been in the choir for a few years, many members will feel that they have limited range, difficulty learning the tune (and the words), are not as good a singer as the other people in their part, don’t have a particularly beautiful voice, etc. etc. But what they may be good at (and this is something I try to drum into my own choir) is to behave as if they are great singers and know what they’re doing. Just by pretending like this, they come across as confident, able singers with not a care in the world. You will learn this trick too!

I always make a point of starting each new term with completely new songs that nobody in the choir will know. I point this out to any new members, so the first few weeks are a completely level playing field and everybody is in the same boat. This helps newcomers to relax a little and discover that even the old hands take a while to learn new material and stumble badly sometimes!

Will you be my friend?

It can be a little daunting joining a large group of people who already know each other. It can appear at first glance to be a bit cliquey and hard to break into the group. Yes, it’s true that many choir members have become friends, but it’s also true that the basses, for example, won’t know all the altos, and vice versa. People also look cliquey in each part because they’re often worried about getting things wrong so cling together for mutual support!

Every choir that I’ve ever run is super-friendly and make new members welcome very quickly. They’ve been there themselves at some point in the past. A choir is all about team work, especially if it’s a harmony-singing choir. So no new individual is a threat, rather they are extra support to existing members. And who knows, maybe the new member can pick things up quickly and help the others!

What part do I sing?

Many people without a musical background don’t understand the notion of ‘parts’, certainly won’t know technical terms like ‘second soprano’, and probably won’t know where their vocal comfort zone is. When someone joins the choir I ask them whether they like to sing high or low. Even that can be confusing. How high is ‘high’? So I usually demonstrate the range for each part of a new song to help people decide.

With a community choir, none of the parts are that high, and none of the parts are that low. Probably nobody in a community choir is a true ‘soprano’ or a true ‘bass’. Most of the men will be baritones (i.e. sitting uncomfortably between the tenor part and the bass part, not truly belonging to either), and most of the women will be altos (although maybe not able to reach either the highest or the lowest alto notes). So in a community choir, the arrangements are usually for an alto/ baritone choir. The tenor part is not too high for the men, yet not too low for any women who want to sing it. In fact, pretty much everyone in the choir could sing any part.

There is, however, a difference between the range of notes you can sing (how high or low you can go) and where you are most comfortable in singing. This latter has a technical name: tessitura. It’s the range of notes that suit your voice, it’s where your particular type of voice feels most comfortable and shows itself off to its best. That is not necessarily the same as the total range of notes that you are able to sing on a good day, but may be more limited.

Melanie in our choir always sings in the tops. She sings in her ‘head voice’ (that is her voice which sounds high and light like a girl in the school choir), although not terribly well to be honest. When we do the warm ups it turns out that Melanie has a wonderful low voice hiding in there. She can hit very low notes in her ‘chest voice’ (the voice that we use in everyday speaking) and they sound wonderful: warm, dark and resonant. That is her natural tessitura. But Melanie doesn’t like singing there! For probably cultural and historical reasons she feels that ‘proper’ singing is when she sing high in her head voice. Ah, well, we’ll just have to let that one go!

Nobody will miss me if I don’t turn up

A choir can be a very large group of people. Even the smallest choirs usually have a more than 20 singers, so with a three-part harmony song, there might be six other singers in the part with you. So who will notice if you don’t show up for a concert? You’re only one voice, and not a very good one at that. Nobody will miss you, six voices sound pretty much the same as seven.

But what if everybody in the choir thought like that? What if the other six singers in your part didn’t turn up because “nobody will miss them”? Then we don’t have a choir! A choir is an organism that is defined entirely by the singers who make it up. Everyone is as vitally important as everyone else. If the singers don’t come, then the choir just doesn’t exist. Every individual’s voice makes a vital contribution to the overall sound of the choir. If it were a different bunch of singers, it would sound different. You do count, you are important, so please turn up to the concert!!!

But nobody here looks like me!

Liz Garnett made a comment on a post called Singing across the age divide that has stayed with me. She said:

“I think a lot of choir membership is driven by people turning up and seeing if the other people in the room look like them.”

Imagine you are a bloke and turn up to find a room full of women, or you are a black woman walking into a sea of white faces, or a 20-year-old surrounded by 50-somethings. It doesn’t feel like your tribe. Maybe you don’t belong. Maybe you shouldn’t be here.

Choirs in general, and community choirs in particular, are egalitarian places. Everybody is equal in status. No one singer is more important than any other. It is an inclusive group of people where you are judged solely by your willingness to join in. So, in theory, there are no barriers of race, age, gender, disability, nationality, language, etc. Oh, to have a truly multicultural choir which spans the generations!

The reality is though that any given choir often reflects the demographics of the community that it is based in. But even then, it may not be a true reflection. My first choir was based in the Midlands of the UK, a region well-known for its multicultural make-up, in a city which has a huge range of ages, races and nationalities. But the choir ended up being predominantly middle-aged white women!

So if you walk into the choir and there is nobody there like you, then see yourself as a pioneer who is helping to mix things up. You will be warmly welcomed and soon made to feel at home. Then one day, when another person similar to yourself arrives at the choir, they will see a familiar face and perhaps be more inclined to stay.

If you stay, you might never leave!

After I wrote back to Frank, he decided to give the choir another go, and now he is firmly ensconced as a bass. If he’s anything like the other members we’ve had over the years, he may well be in the choir forever! I was glad that I’d challenged his assumptions, and I think he was quite surprised to discover that most of the other choir members had the same misgiving as him, even though they’d been members for some time.

So don’t let your assumptions and pre-conceptions put you off or you’ll be missing out on something wonderful. Get out there and join a choir!

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

Preparing to sing: hip wiggling and knee bending

This is a guest post from Alexander Massey of Authentic Voice™. It originally appeared in the Natural Voice Practitioners’ Network newsletter in June 2005. This post is the last in the series Preparing to sing. 
 

This is the fourth in a series of four posts looking at warm ups and how you prepare to sing.

Preparing to sing: physical and vocal warm up ideas for choirs

Now that we know warming up for singing is a good idea (Preparing to sing: why bother?), and now that we’ve considered what kind of things we might do in a warm up (Preparing to sing: what should a warm up consist of?), I’d like to turn to some specific exercises that you might use in a physical and vocal warm up for a choir.


This is the third in a series of four posts looking at warm ups and how you prepare to sing.

Preparing to sing: what should a warm up consist of?

OK, we’ve looked at why we should bother to take the time to prepare to sing (Preparing to sing: why bother?), but what will that preparation consist of?


This is the second in a series of four posts looking at warm ups and how you prepare to sing.

Preparing to sing: why bother?

I’m often asked for ideas for vocal and physical warm ups for choirs. I’m also always on the lookout for new ideas for my own choir and singing workshops. I can get bored quite quickly doing the same old exercises, and so can the singers I’m working with.

This is the first in a series of four posts looking at warm ups and how you prepare to sing.

How to teach (and learn) a song by ear

the oral tradition

For thousands of years all over the world people have sung — to express joy, celebration and grief, to accompany work and devotion, to aid healing. People sung before writing was invented and before musical notation developed. People continue to sing in cultures where there is no written language. People were singing complex unaccompanied harmonies long before Western classical music evolved. Singing is a natural, joyous activity which anybody can do any time.

Long ago, all cultures were oral cultures: there were no books, no writing, no advertisements, no TV. All stories, songs, information, history, secrets, gossip, news, facts were passed on by word of mouth. From their birth babies would be exposed to the same old songs time and time again. They would become familiar with the sounds, feeling and context of the music long before they understood the lyrics or remembered the melodies. But slowly and surely they would begin to join in, and very soon they would know all the songs inside out. It was a very natural, but long drawn out process. Simply put: it was rote learning by repetition.

teaching by ear

When teaching a song by ear, you are trying to short-circuit this long process and compress it into a relatively few hours. So you need to be clear, precise and accurate whilst maintaining an atmosphere of concentration, relaxation and fun. Yes, people are drilling (like when you learn your times tables), but you need to make it a pleasure!

In this post, I’m assuming that you’ll be teaching a song in parts, i.e. with different harmonies, and that it will be unaccompanied, i.e. with no piano or recorded backing. I’m going to cover everything that I think is important, but not all of it will apply to you as everyone will be at a different stage and each group will have different abilities. So excuse me if you think I’m sometimes teaching my grandmother to suck eggs!

find your starting notes

Before you even start to teach a song, make sure your arrangement is within the range of the particular group you’re teaching it to. Then ensure that you have the starting notes for each part at hand (see: start as you mean to carry on). How will you find them? Make sure you have a piano or pitch pipes or a portable keyboard or a tuning fork or whatever else you need. There’s nothing worse for singers’ confidence if you pick a note out of the air and get the wrong one!

who starts?

There might be four or more parts to a song. Which is the best part to start with? It’s not necessarily the tune! If the group aren’t familiar with the song beforehand, then all the parts seem like the tune to them. Often the bass part is useful first as it anchors the song’s harmonies and/ or rhythm. Or perhaps you might start with the main tune and teach everybody so that they get all a sense of the song and its timing.

call and response

Basically teaching a song by ear is call and response. You sing out a line and the choir sing it back to you. The easiest songs to teach then are those which are call and response in any case. Many African songs fit this bill.

One thing that I hadn’t really thought through when I started my first choir way back when, was that I would have to sing solo in front of a group of people! This is something you’ll have to get used to as you’ll need to sing confidently and accurately whilst teaching. It will come in time, so if you are nervous, start with easy songs.

breaking the song into small chunks

One of the worst things you can do is to teach, say, the whole of the Alto part in one go, especially if it’s quite a long song. The other parts will get bored, lose concentration, and even worse, get the Alto part so solidly in their heads that when it comes to learning their own part, they’ll get very confused!

So you’ll need to break the song down into short, manageable chunks. Sometimes it is quite obvious where these chunks are. They often coincide with breathing points. But at other times, there is no obvious break, so you may not stop at a natural pause, but in the middle of a run. In this case, you will have to overlap the next chunk when you come to it so the join is made clear.

By choosing small chunks, you can get the harmonies up and running in a very short space of time. People will begin to feel they are all part of the song as it builds and they will get more satisfaction and fulfilment. Parts won’t get bored or tired hanging around. People will become familiar with the nature of the harmonies more quickly.

If you do have to teach a fairly long chunk to one part, then get the other parts to either hum their own harmony quietly at the same time or, if you’ve not come to their part yet, they can speak the words in rhythm quietly to get familiar with how they fit in. This will help stop the inevitable chit chat that can occur while teaching!

using hand signals

Not everyone learns in the same way. We have become a very visual culture and people are less accustomed to listening to things attentively. In which case, some people might initially find it hard to follow what you’re singing. It is useful to accompany your own singing with some kind of visual aid (no, not a musical score!).

The most obvious one is hand signals. Use the flat of your hand horizontal to the floor and move it up and down to correspond to the pitch going up and down. If you want to indicate a big jump in notes, then indicate a bigger gap between one hand position and the next. If you want to indicate a very small interval, i.e. a semitone, then maybe just incline the hand slightly to show the notes are very close together. The Kodály method takes this one step further and has a different hand shape for each note.

As an aside, it’s a good habit to learn to take nothing for granted. I was once teaching a song to someone using hand signals, but he looked very puzzled. “Why are you waving your hands in the air?” he asked. “When my hand goes up it means the note is higher and when my hand goes down it means it’s lower” I replied. “What do you mean ‘higher’ and ‘lower’?” he asked. Then I realised that it is just a convention that we have adopted. If someone is used to playing the piano, then high notes are to the right and low notes to the left, not higher and lower physically!

teaching separate choir parts

Each different part may require a slightly different tactic. There are different issues for a mixed choir if it’s a man or a woman leading. If a woman is teaching a mixed choir, then she probably won’t be able to reach the bass notes. When she sings the tenor line, the men in the tenor part might end up singing too low as they perceive her to be singing low in her own range. Correspondingly, if a man sings the tenor line at pitch, he might confuse the women in the tenors who perceive him to be singing high in his own range. You’ll need to adapt accordingly and respond to the particular group you’re working with.

You’ll also need to decide which order you teach the parts in. You’ve already decided which part to begin with, but which part is it best to teach next? You might also change the order as the song is built up. You need to adapt to each particular song.

where are the words?

For some simple call and response songs, you’ll not need to hand out lyrics. There are often very few words, and in any case, you sing them first and everyone else repeats them. However, if a song has lots of words, what do you do? One option is to put the words in large format up on the wall (see: the writing’s on the wall). This helps people to look up and to see you clearly. If you hand out lyrics, there is a danger that everyone buries their head in a piece of paper and stops paying attention!

This can’t be avoided though with songs that have many verses. I often teach a song just using the first verse words, then when the parts are under their belt, I hand out the full set of lyrics. This does have its own problems though.

beyond the first verse

If you keep rehearsing the first verse of a new song, people will struggle when it comes to subsequent verses (see: words are flowing out like endless rain ...). The words will be unfamiliar and they may have difficulty fitting them to the tune. However, if you overload people with too many words when they’re first learning the song, then it may become overwhelming and too difficult.

One solution is to teach the first line of each part, say, then to practice that melody with the first line of words for every verse before moving on.

There is a similar difficulty with teaching in small chunks. As you build the song up, the first chunk ends up being sung far more times than the last chunk. That means that the ends of verses are sometimes not learnt as fully as the beginnings. One trick that I use in subsequent sessions when learning a song is to build up the song backwards. i.e. sing the last chunk first, then add the one before it and so on until the whole song is sung.

it all takes time!

Some people believe that ‘real’ singers only have to hear a melody once then they can repeat it and have ‘learnt’ the song. When I tell them that professional singers take many months before a song is really under their belt, they are often surprised. As I mentioned at the start, we are trying to short-circuit a process which would have taken several years in our small community hundreds, or even thousands, of years ago. We would have heard and rehearsed the same song many, many times as we were growing up. Now we are expected to learn a song in just a few sessions!

When someone new joins the choir, I point this out to them and tell them that we will be returning to the song we are learning for many weeks. Even when we think we have learnt it, we will run through it each week until it sits comfortably inside us without having to think too much about it. We might do it in different ways each time, try it faster or slower, do it in an operatic style, build up the parts slowly from verse to verse. The more ways we can explore the song, the more likely it is to stick.

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

Taking care of ourselves as choir and workshop leaders

It’s a dark January evening. It’s cold and raining and we’re snuggled up in the warm eating our supper. But choir starts in half an hour and we have a drive or a walk which will take us to a dark, draughty hall which takes an age to heat up. It’s that time of year when everyone is feeling under the weather and there are lots of colds and sniffles about. We’d much, much rather stay at home and watch telly, but work beckons.

Of course, we are some of the lucky few who actually enjoy our jobs, don’t have to work in an office and are often free to organise our time as we want. It’s one of the best jobs in the world, and when the choir rev up and you are awash with glorious harmonies, your spirits lift, and you’re glad you managed to get out of your comfy chair to brave the cold.

Yet sometimes it can feel like: give, give, give! We might have a few workshops and/ or gigs in a row which all need a lot of preparation. We are beginning to feel like a song factory, churning stuff out at a prodigious rate. We’re trapped in an endless cycle of arrange, plan and deliver. We are tired, run ragged, bereft of new ideas, not sleeping and fighting off innumerable germs picked up in all the different venues that we work in. Although we are not irreplacable, we do have an important role. If we don’t turn up to a session, there’s often nobody else to lead it. If we aren’t there to conduct the concert, it may not go ahead. We sometimes soldier on even when we should be in bed nursing a cold.

Our job is demanding and we need to look after ourselves. Here are some tips to help you keep sane and well.

make time for you

You can make time for your work and prioritise things like cooking and doing the laundry, so why can’t you carve out some time just for you (see also Why we avoid things that make us feel good)? Make a deal with yourself to find some regular time on your own. During this time find pleasurable things to do, just for you:

• relaxation (this does not include watching TV which is stimulus!);
• meditation (mindfulness can help with physical and emotional tensions which may arise when working);
• reading;
• listening to music (how often do we do that outside work?);
• taking a long hot bath;
• treating yourself to a regular massage (go on, it’s worth it!);
• going for a walk;
• socialising after choir;

value yourself

Make sure you are adequately rewarded for the work that you do. The time and energy you put in adds up to far more than just that used during a session. A one-day workshop might use up three to four days of your time and physical energy. Factor that in when setting prices and allowing for recovery days.

feed yourself

Instead of giving all the time, make sure you do some receiving. You need to feed your mind and body (see make time for you above). Go on a course or learn a new skill. This doesn’t have to be music, although professional development can feed you also.

Instead of viewing the choir as something that needs feeding all the time, walk in and expect support from the group instead.

you’re not alone

You don’t have to do everything yourself! Don’t accept sole responsibility for everything that happens in a session. Allocate jobs to section leaders. Send parts off to rehearse separately. Set up a committee. Find a friend or buddy who can point out to you when you’re getting a bit too intense or manic in a session. It’s all too easy to get swept up in the moment, but you will feel drained at the end! Find a deputy and take a week off.

Cultivate a peer group network or set of professional buddies who you can meet with or phone on a regular basis to have a good moan, swap war stories, get ideas from.

don’t take it personally!

There is always that one person who gives us a funny look during the warm up, or tuts when we get a note wrong. Suddenly our confidence collapses and we become unduly affected by a single person’s negativity. Think of them as a mirror to an area of weakness that needs development. How can you learn from them? How can you reflect it back to them?

take care of your voice

You don’t have to sing at full volume all the time, even if you’re working with a large group. If you sing quietly, people will be more attentive (see Little voice).

If your voice is tired, try making a croaking noise like an old door opening. It will relax your vocal cords. Be mindful when teaching (see meditation in make time for you above). We often have the tendency to jut our chin forward when teaching!

you are only there to teach songs

Have a buffer between you and the choir, a kind of psychic barrier. You are not responsible for their welfare, their relationships, their problems – you are just there to teach songs!

chill!

We do a warm-up at the beginning of a session, but sometimes forget to do a warm-down at the end. This can help the transition back into everyday life. It can bring you down from the high that often comes in a session and help to stop you buzzing so much that you won’t sleep later!

 

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

New website design

Finally, after months of tinkering and learning new programming languages, I have got around to finishing my own website. Do drop by and take a look. I would love to hear your comments on design, usability, etc.

chrisrowbury.com

On the website you can find details of all my forthcoming workshops, together with details of other workshops that I offer and groups that I lead. I hope you enjoy it!

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

Among friends: the importance of support networks

We are lucky that singing is a very social activity. Whether we are a choir leader or singer, we are amongst friends each week. But being the one out front can also be a lonely place.

I'm different! by yewenyi

Many creative people lead a fairly solitary existence — painters, writers, composers, for instance — and have to make an effort to meet with like-minded people. Choir leaders, however, have this built into their work. Each week we are in the company of a group of people with a shared purpose and love of music. We have fun together, we create together, we make mistakes together, we may even go for a drink together. Yet there is always a subtle difference between the person standing out the front waving their arms, and the singers who stand in close proximity to each other. And at the end of the rehearsal or concert, we leave alone. The buzz of the singing fades, the tiredness creeps upon us (after using all that energy), the sense of community dissipates.

It’s at times like these (or when arranging songs and researching songs at home, or struggling with how to teach a particular song, or when we’re dealing with awkward customers …) when we need a friend or colleague who we can talk to. Someone who really understands what we’re on about!

Last weekend was the Natural Voice Practitioners Network’s annual gathering near Sheffield. Around 70 voice practitioners come together each year to share skills, laughter, songs, ideas, war stories, and general gossip. Some of us are lucky to have other choir leaders living nearby and we can get together occasionally in order to have a good moan or to swap techniques. But others maybe only get the chance to meet friends and colleagues face to face once a year. It is an amazingly valuable time where we can let down our guard, own up to our insecurities, get help with problems, and generally talk shop.

For this reason alone, it is worth joining some kind of peer organisation or even to create an informal peer group. When our job involves giving out to others and supporting people most of the time, it is even more important to ensure we get nourishment and support for ourselves (I will cover this in more detail in next week’s post about looking after ourselves as choir leaders).

But it’s not just choir leaders who need support and who can feel isolated. Even in a big, happy group, there can be individual singers who feel alienated or overwhelmed. This is especially true for new choir members who are walking into what might be perceived as a big clique. daharja has written on her blog The Chorister recently about welcoming new choir members and how Happy choristers sing better.

So go out and find some new mates to talk shop and drink coffee with. Happy choir leaders lead choirs better!

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

How to start your own community choir 10 — Case study: guest post from David Burbidge

As the 10th and final part of the series How to start your own community choir, I’m delighted to present a piece written by David Burbidge of Lakeland Voice (Please contact me if you are interested in writing a guest post in the future!). David is a long-standing Natural Voice Practitioner who runs several community choirs and other singing projects. Here are some of his thoughts on running community choirs.

Howgills by dvdbramhall

I do all the admin for my groups and all the teaching.

Years ago I used to hire a lot of teachers and do all the admin myself but then I found I was inviting divas to swan up from the capitol who expected to receive all the glory, take all the money, and treat me like the household drudge. But strangely on a few occasions when I did some teaching for holiday centres abroad I found I was being paid very little on the grounds that I was really only one notch above being on holiday, and that it was the organisers who were doing all the work who should receive the lion’s share.

Now I do it all myself and nobody complains.

Privately run as opposed to run by arts centre

My local singing groups are mainly made up of singers who came through my local arts centre course Discover Your Voice for people who believe they can’t sing. Once they believe they can, they move on to my group Lakeland Voices. They then continue paying me roughly what they paid at the arts centre — although unlike there, I do allow people to come for one-offs, but of course they get a huge discount if they pay for the whole term which most of them do. I generally say it’s a 10 week term (as it is at the arts centre) — but there will be other free events, which most terms bring it to the equivalent of a 13 week term. This has the advantage of allowing late starters to pay for the full term and not feel that they’ve missed out.

Also because I run this group rather than the arts centre it means we can go on our outings to sing in candlelit caves and by waterfalls and up on the fells without the centre freaking out about their insurance (and lost revenue in their bars).

There isn’t a great deal of admin. I don’t need to advertise much as we’ve been going for about 10 years and word of mouth always works best — though I do put stuff on local websites. I have an email group which all the singers join (specifically for the choir) and I send them background information on the songs we sing with links to information on the internet, information on forthcoming events, words for the songs, some instruction on singing issues as they arise. I find this very useful as most people can’t take in all the information in a session along with learning new songs. I’m a fast touch typer so this doesn’t take long and I enjoy finding out about the songs for my own benefit.

Home learning

I make a learning CD which has about 30 of our songs on it which people buy for about cost price. Then by email I can let them know which ones to practice before the next session if they’ve learnt it before (or to familiarise themselves with it if they haven’t already learnt it) .

I also always invite them to ring me if they miss a class so I can sing their part down the phone so they can catch up. You’d think I’d be really abused with a system like that, but it’s very few people who do ring for this service and I’m always pleased when they do ring as it shows they are keen.

Other than that, I just keep a list of the names of those who have paid, how much they’ve paid, and a record of their contact details in case I have to cancel a session in an emergency.

Managing the space

I ask the whole group to help with chairs (as I do at concerts and public singing workshops. It takes about 3 minutes if everyone does something). Also I bring teas, coffees and biscuits and cakes and then ask for volunteers to help bring it out. At concerts we generally put it all onto trays and bring it round to the audience and sometimes those who are helping have just come for the concert.

We rent a lot of youth hostels (or rather independent hostels as the YHA has turned into some sort of dreadful B&B organisation) for our weekend events and there we follow the old youth hostel code of everyone mucking in together. Sometimes this works so well and there is such a spirit of cooperation I think it helps the singing, and the singing helps the participation. It also means that I can charge less as I don’t need to pay anyone. Sometimes some people don’t do their bit, but I’ve never heard anyone complain. With some groups I have done a rota which of course prevents the people who help being the same ones every time, but also I always feel a bit disappointed when I have to do this as it shows a lack of trust. Harmony singers are mostly good hearted responsible people. We have a lot of activists, pacifists, humanists, charity workers, environmentalists and if they are not when they start, generally go that way.

My ideal groups are those where everyone helps each other and the running of the event without needing to be asked (I say in the introduction that some assistance will be asked for). This works well with adults. I’m not sure it would be so successful with some of our younger youth groups though they usually have leaders with them anyway.

I have started using Lucia and Anika, first class cooks, for doing our meals. I used to just ask for volunteers which didn’t work so well (although sometimes did!). As I live with Lucia and Anika is my 22 month old daughter, this keeps it in the family.

I also only used to do vegetarian food, but since we’ve started doing all the exchanges with the Slovene choirs, and since the chairman of the Town Twinning Committee is the local butcher, and since the Slovenes won’t eat anything unless it was walking about and breathing, we’ve started doing meat dishes (or rather Lucia has) as well. I still find it all slightly repugnant. We always cater for other special needs.

Committees

I don’t work well on committees. I was in some NVPN committee once and missed most of the meetings, was late for the few I did attend, and then fell asleep when I was there, which is pretty par for the course re: committee meetings. So I now I don’t even try to be part of a committee. But I am impressed by those who do manage to work in this way.

So ... I’m not sure if what I lead is a community choir, probably not a Community Choir in the official sense of the word.

But I do have an open access policy which includes people who can only make it for one session, those who have never sung before, and those who don’t speak English (who we provide translation for). We learn all our songs by ear (although on some of my weekend events I do occasionally use written music, and certainly with the west gallery music) and sing songs from communities around the world where singing together in community is the norm. Occasionally I will email people the written music if they need it to learn the part but then insist that they don’t bring it to the session (and if they do, I very rudely take it off them!).

I am also completely unashamed at moving people around. So if we are learning a song which some people know and others don’t, I always ask who doesn’t know it? And then make sure they are sitting next to two people who do know it (when sitting in a circle this is easy to do — much harder if we were in rows). Also with beginners and the less confident who tend to sit on the edge of their part in the mistaken belief that this is like sitting at the back of the classroom where no one can hear them (but in reality is the most difficult place to be as they are now exposed to the singing of another part very near to them) — with them I will occasionally move them into the centre of their section. They worry that they will be putting people off if they are in the middle, but usually if they are supported by good singers (who tend to gravitate towards the middle of their part) they sing much better. We will often sit to learn longer songs, stand to sing them or to learn short rounds and move around as much as possible.

I don’t stop people talking when other parts are learning their part unless they are being very disruptive, or if that part is not very confident. And also I keep an eye out on new and vulnerable singers and make sure they are connected to others. New people I will always introduce the group to and them to the group and to individuals living near them, or who have similar interests.

We have an old man in our group who occasionally makes inappropriate comments perhaps of a slightly sexist nature, which the group usually ignores on the grounds that he is 80 and perhaps not likely to change. But once, we had learnt a round and were walking around the room singing it (in that milling about way we sometimes do) and I noticed a new singer who had her fingers in her ears so she could hear her own part and also noticed that the old man was purposefully singing very loud leaning towards here, not to help her but to distract her. So I shook my finger at him and he stopped. I guess what I’m saying is that I tend not to be an authoritarian unless it’s really needed (in my view that is!).

Leadership styles

Leaning towards a non authoritarian style of leadership has it’s problems in that sometimes we have people (usually men) in our groups who perceive the absence of a strong leader as a power vacuum that needs to be filled by them. I don’t mind this so much if they are really helping the group, and try and respect any useful intervention they might be making, but usually I find it highly irritating and find myself wanting to lock antlers with them. Strangely it happens less and less these days. Perhaps I have a clearer sense of my own authority now. With overt power struggles I always enlist the group asking them what they want. There are few people who engage in a power struggle who would demand that the group does what they want rather than what the majority of people in the group want.

We sing songs from around the world and host several visiting choirs and visitors from around the world. I do encourage as much interaction amongst the singers as possible and only feel responsible for teaching the songs and managing the space. For their emotional woes I encourage them to support each other (which of course they do).

Once we’ve learnt the songs, I then join the singers in the circle — either bass or tenor depending on who needs the most help. Sometimes the bigger group of basses need someone confident with the part as 10 basses singing the wrong notes can be worse than 2 tenors not being heard much. I only conduct if it’s needed — they seem to keep the time very well without me.

I suspect the quality of the teaching and the singing suffers because I have so many other roles in the group as well, although if I know the song really well, I find I can be incredibly distracted and still teach it well. I taught Nickomo’s four part arrangement ‘I am a River’ in the pouring rain on a walk down Dentdale besides the river Dee and while we were waiting for the Sportsman’s Inn to open (where we then sang it round the open fire along with other songs, before continuing our walk over Blea Moor via the Settle Carlisle line to Ribblehead, where we were staying).

Foreign tours

I have found on foreign tours that these work best with a well established group. Touring with VoiceMale in Slovenia this year was a dream. I couldn’t have hoped for a better group who loved everything we did and were full of praise for everything I organised (although I did get that old feeling of being the household drudge again — a rather unfortunate need for glory, I think. My friend Trudi tells me this is a male thing and is why women generally don’t fight in wars). We sang with several community choirs in Slovenia, performed concerts while the Queen was there (though our tickets had sold out so she couldn’t get a seat), went into schools and met singers there (and taught them to play conkers which we had strung before coming to the class and even primed some of them to break on the third or fourth hit). A wonderful event.

Conversely, the scratch choir I toured with in August which I led was more troublesome, with endless complaints about dogs barking, or that they couldn’t pitch from my portable Casio keyboard (which I only use for my own pitching!). Also terrible backseat driving (which VoiceMale didn’t have at all) as I was driving the minibus. And I now never lead groups at Christmas as I did one year. The emotional needs are just too much. I’m sure you’re thinking, “Ah, this is Tuckman’s theory of group process about how groups go through a storming period before they create norms and then perform.” And I think you’re right, hence why I prefer established groups to some extent. And of course there are things I can do to help that storming period through (but generally don’t).

Singing for singers

One other thing I find helps is to remember who the group is for and what they’ve come for.

When I worked as a journalist on a newspaper we were always being reminded by our editor to think of the readers. This is because many of us would just be writing for each other, for other journalists — that witty turn of phrase which does nothing to help the story but will get a good laff in the pub at lunchtime. So I tend to ask myself if I am choosing songs because that is what the singers will appreciate, or because I think they are clever. Sometimes I find teaching songs which most of the group already knows is very welcome by all the singers, even though I’m always thinking “Oh I can’t teach this one, she already knows this one.” If people do know songs, I try to respect this, and perhaps even ask them to help the others in their part with learning it. I don’t think people in the group mind having a little responsibility during the session as long as they are not overall responsible.

I love what I do and surprisingly make a living at it. Though people tell me that the minimum wage level of income I have at the moment won’t be enough when my daughter is no longer 22 months old but is demanding ponies and ballet lessons. I’m not really an anarchist and anyone coming to any of my groups would probably be very surprised to know that I hold any of the ideals of anarchism. But I do find that by having this at the back of my mind, that the best groups are unled ones, then it keeps me closer on course for leading the group in a way which is more about serving them and less about fulfilling my needs.

I often say to my groups (and I have heard this many times from other teachers as well) that harmony singing is the perfect model for democracy — that everyone is encouraged to be different, to be empowered in their difference, and it is that difference which creates a richer whole, and a whole where they fit in, rather than need to be separate in their difference. But musical directors are also a good model for dictatorship and autocracy with their need for absolute obedience from, and control of, the group.

I find it helps to remember that we work between these extremes.

David Burbidge

Smithy Cottage, Farfield, Sedbergh, Cumbria LA10 5LW, England

Email: davidburbidge@hotmail.com Tel. 015396 21166

www.lakelandvoice.co.uk

videos at http://www.youtube.com/Davidburbidge

“And this shall be for a bond between us: that we are of one blood you and I;
that we have cried peace to all and claimed fellowship with every living thing;
that we hate war and sloth and greed, and love fellowship ...
and that we shall go singing to the fashioning of a new world.”
William Morris

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

Happy new year!

I wish you all a joyous, happy and peaceful New Year.

May all your hopes and dreams come true
and may you find fulfilment in all that you do.
May your health and happiness be fulsome
and may all your aspirations and strivings succeed.
May all your plans and schemes come to fruition
and may all your sorrows and pains be insignificant.
May your material and spiritual wealth be boundless
and your disappointments few.

go to Chris Rowbury's website

How to start your own community choir 9 — Tending and caring for a growing choir

A version of this article first appeared in the August 2008 edition of the Natural Voice Practitioners’ Network’s newsletter.

In last week’s post I wrote about the problems that Octavia had encountered whilst building up a successful community choir. These are problems that many of us share. There are no simple answers, and I’m sure many of you have come up with creative and successful strategies of your own. I’d like to share a few approaches that I’ve tried in the hope that they may be useful to someone. I’d love to hear of other ideas that work!

My choir has become so skilled that people don’t think they’re good enough to join!

I always try to make the point at performances that the choir is non-auditioned and works on community choir principles, namely the belief that everyone can sing, and that you don’t need to have any particular knowledge of music. It’s a fine balance to say that basically “anyone can do this” whilst acknowledging the skills and hard work that the choir has put in. To help with this, I always teach the audience a song in harmony (often a round). I then point out that they can all now sing in unaccompanied harmony and are eligible to join the choir!

Another solution to this is to simply accept that the choir is a more advanced choir and will only be able to take on singers who feel more confident. The choir will remain open-access, but possibly become self-selecting. As long as there continue to be totally open-access ‘beginners’ choirs available, I don’t see this as a problem.

We have built up a huge repertoire of songs, and new members can easily feel overwhelmed.

(See also New singers, old songs)

This is quite a tough one and I haven’t found the perfect solution yet. No matter how much I tell new members that they don’t need to learn any of the back catalogue, they often feel obliged (or challenged) to learn as many as they can!

When someone joins the choir, I give them an information sheet and also try to take them to one side after a few weeks for a chat. I tell them that we have an extensive repertoire of songs, but that not everyone knows all of them. I hand out a lyric sheet to all of these songs and let them know that we always sing a few ‘oldies’ at the end of each session in order to keep the repertoire alive. If a part is really simple, they may be able to sing along quite quickly by just busking it. If they hear a more complicated song that they really love, then we have a collection of parts CDs available and new members can go off and learn their part in their own time.

When a concert is coming up, I tell new members that all the songs we’ve learnt that term (maybe up to six) will be in the concert and I’m very happy if they are the only songs that they sing. However, if they want to choose another couple to learn in their own time from a parts CD, then I’m happy with that too. But please, please don’t feel obliged to learn them all! Some people learn hardly any of the old songs, but there are always a few keen types who pick stuff up quickly who seem to learn the entire back catalogue in a few weeks!

I always try to revive some of the ‘oldies’ each term and spruce them up a bit by adding a new part, a new structure, more verses, etc. In this way I can help new members learn old songs whilst giving challenges to members who already know a song well. Older members can also use this opportunity to learn a different part!

Our weekly sessions used to be fun, but now they’re just rehearsals for our next concert.

(See also What a performance!)

I think this is all about balance. When I first started a choir it was never about performance, but about the joys of singing harmony together. At one extreme, some choirs never perform. However, many get to the point where members want to share their songs with the public. At the other extreme, there are choirs who perform 12 or more times a year who are constantly in rehearsal mode. They have little time to learn new repertoire, but what they do know is highly polished and well-remembered.

I try for a middle way. We do on average one performance at the end of each term. The bulk of the term is spent learning new repertoire, sprucing up a few oldies, revising dusty songs from the distant past, singing stuff we learnt the term before, and having fun! About half the way through the term I give out a list of songs we’ll do at the forthcoming concert. This gives people a chance to dig out old lyrics, listen to tapes they’ve made in previous sessions, and for new members to get hold of parts CDs.

I make sure that we run through all the songs in the concert at least once during the term. For the last two weeks before the concert, we rehearse the songs in order. One week we do the first half of the concert, and the next week we do the second half. Our concerts are usually quite long (two 45-minute halves) so can involve up to 30 songs or more. But there’s still plenty of time to comfortably rehearse one half in a two-hour choir session. We also have a full rehearsal on the afternoon of the concert which takes around 2 ½ hours.

This balance seems to work, but it’s always a little fraught towards the end of term, and we always feel like we could do with more rehearsal! To counter this, maybe one term a year I don’t teach any new material, but spend the time just polishing old songs.

I know of two other possibilities which perhaps others of you practise. Liz Underhill of Global Harmony has a whole day workshop rehearsal on a Saturday the week before a concert. Then the afternoon rehearsal on the day of the concert itself can be much shorter and just focus on technical things. The advantage is that people are less tired on concert day, the one-day rehearsal can be taken more slowly, and it can be more of a fun workshop day than an intense evening rehearsal after work.

Bruce Knight of Songlines keeps his concerts shorter than mine and also does a few songs with smaller groups of singers. This takes the pressure off the choir as a whole and leaves more time for rehearsing less material.

If I audition people, can I still call it a ‘community choir’?

I know of several choir leaders (me included) who run auditioned groups of one form or another, but who also believe strongly in the idea of community choir that I laid out at the start of this series. One of the two main defining features of a community choir is its ‘open to all’ policy. It would seem that by auditioning people, we are going against this important notion. I must admit that when I first thought of starting an auditioned group I felt that somehow I was betraying my belief that everyone can sing. But it’s quite obvious that everyone can sing in different ways, and sometimes a project requires particular kinds of skills or voices.

I think that it is possible to call your auditioned choir a ‘community’ choir if it still upholds the other features that I outlined, e.g. that the choir maintains a strong sense of community; that it is not affiliated to any particular idea, culture or organisation; that no prior musical knowledge is assumed; and that people are not excluded on the basis of age, race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, etc. I lead a women’s group called Vox Mondiale which I like to think of in these terms. I did audition people to join, but the only difference that makes is that we are able to tackle more complex material, learn songs more quickly, and focus on honing performance skills. Otherwise, I lead the group in much the same way as I do the community choir Woven Chords.

I don’t think we should get hung up on this. For me, the most important thing (whatever kind of group you run) is to be absolutely clear what the nature of the group is and not to change that without consultation with the choir. It is possible for individual choir leaders to run several different groups at once. Some may clearly be community choirs whilst others are not.

My choir has got so big I can’t take any more people on!

(See also Size matters)

When this first happened to me I felt very uncomfortable! I love working with large groups and always tell people “the more the merrier”. However, I first became limited by room size (I simply couldn’t squeeze any more people in and still work properly), then I realised that it was just more tiring working with larger groups. (I really don’t understand this: why is it more tiring teaching a part to 20 people than to 15 people?)

The Natural Voice philosophy states that we “aim to recreate the sense that vocalising, singing and singing together is natural and open to all” and that we “believe that vocalising, creativity and song should be accessible to all regardless of previous musical ability or experience”. Many of us interpret that to mean that nobody should be turned away from an open-access group. So I did feel very uncomfortable when I first had to close my choir to new members.

We now maintain a waiting list and take people on when possible in the order that people have gone on the list. Unfortunately, once people join the choir they tend not to leave, so it will be some years before some people are able to join! Occasionally one part is a bit thin on the ground (at the moment it’s the tenors, and we always need more blokes) so I recruit people from the waiting list on the basis of which part they sing.

I always let people on the waiting list know about the one-day workshops we run and of other choirs in the area. If you personally have the time and energy, you can always start another choir on a different night! Some people I know run one choir, but have several sessions each week. People choose the night that suits them and all sessions are the same. When a performance is coming up, the whole choir meet together to rehearse.

next week

Next week’s post will be a guest post from David Burbidge of Lakeland Voice giving his own account of his experience of leading community choirs. This will be the 10th and final post in the series of How to start your own community choir.

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

How to start your own community choir 8 — The choir which just grew and grew

Now that you’ve started your very own community choir and it’s fully up and running, I would like to look forward to some possible obstacles that you may encounter as your choir grows and becomes more successful.

A version of this article first appeared in the March 2008 edition of the Natural Voice Practitioners’ Network’s newsletter.

Once upon a time ...

Once upon a time there was a singer, Octavia, who decided to help all those people who wanted to sing, but were a bit scared to do so. She found a nice place to sing in and let everyone know that she was starting a new singing group. Gradually, over a number of weeks, people started to come along. They were all a bit frightened at first, but slowly their singing confidence grew and before they knew it they were singing in full, glorious, unaccompanied harmony!

Everyone had come along simply to have fun each week, and indeed they were all having a splendid time. But then an opportunity arose for the group to share some of their songs with the public. It was a very frightening prospect, but having put all that hard work in, they decided that they really wanted to have a go. Thus arose the first concert of this shiny new singing group. It went very well (there were a few small mistakes, but the audience was very forgiving) and they decided that they would perform more often.

It’s getting better all the time!

As time went by, the small singing group attracted more and more people who were a bit scared to sing out loud. In fact, it got so big (about 20 singers) that they began to refer to themselves as a ‘choir’ (what impertinence!). Things were going swimmingly as the months passed, but soon problems began to arise. Many of the singers who had been in the group from the very beginning had gained so much confidence that they had begun to think of themselves as ‘real’ singers. The concerts that they did became more and more polished. This meant that many people began to be put off joining the group because they seemed to be ever so good, and not really the place for frightened non-singers at all!

Another problem was that many in the group liked to sing lots of the old songs that they had been singing for a long time. They sang these well and liked them a lot because they were very familiar with them. But when a new singer joined the group, they found it hard to catch up with all these old songs (the list of ‘oldies’ was getting longer and longer by the week!). In fact, some new members of the group felt so overwhelmed that they left and never came back. Finally, although Octavia loved working with big groups, she was finding it more and more tiring each week as the choir got bigger and bigger. She had reluctantly started a waiting list for new people who wanted to join, as she couldn’t fit everyone into the nice room they used for their weekly sessions!

Octavia takes time out

As choir leader (for that is what she now called herself), Octavia took some time out and had a long think. How could she keep to her original aim of helping frightened singers to gain confidence and join in with the group, but at the same time keep the longer-serving members (who were now very, very confident singers and wanted greater singing challenges) interested and on board? How could she keep the old repertoire alive (which was much-loved by all) without overwhelming new members of the choir? And now that the choir was performing much more often, how could she balance the need for rehearsals (to make sure the concerts were of a high enough standard to warrant charging the audience to watch) with the need to teach new songs and simply to have fun each week?

She had heard of one choir that had a concert at the end of every term. They performed all the songs that they had learnt that term, and then never sang them again. Each term they learnt a whole new set of songs. However, she also heard that this frustrated a lot of the long-term members.

Octavia thought of starting a second group – just like when she had started out at the very beginning – a brand new group from scratch for people who were a bit scared to sing or who thought they were non-singers. But then she realised that at some point she would run into all the same problems with the new group as she had now. Would she then have to start yet another group? If people kept wanting to join, would that mean that she would end up with a choir for each day of the week?!

Another possibility was to stop performing completely and just run a beginners group. When new nervous singers became confident enough, they could just leave her beginners group and join a performing choir locally. But she needed to earn a living and realised that this was not a very good business model! If she just ran groups for scared singers, her definition of success would be that they would leave and join another choir, so she would lose their income and would need to recruit another singer to replace them. Eventually she would run out of under-confident singers locally and would go bust!

A choir just for performing?

“OK”, Octavia thought, “what about going in the other direction?” Wouldn’t it be great to have a really accomplished choir who performed regularly to a very high standard? Let go of the idea of just having fun singing each week and create a performing choir that just rehearsed and rehearsed each week and developed their performance skills. “Other people can run groups for beginners, not me!”, she thought. But then she realised that she’d need to have some kind of quality control. She would need to have just ‘good’ singers in her performance choir. That meant some kind of selection, maybe even auditions. It meant that she would end up saying to some people: “I’m afraid you’re just not good enough to join my choir.” How could she square this with her belief that everyone can sing? Wouldn’t this perpetuate those old horror stories of children being told at school to “stand at the back” or to “just mime” or “please stop that terrible noise”?

What about the size of the choir? From the start Octavia had felt uncomfortable about having a waiting list because she believed that everyone should have access to singing. But she found it very hard work each week with such a big group, and since she was being paid a fixed fee by the organisation that provided the room they worked in, she got paid the same regardless of how many people in the choir. She had heard of a few choirs that had grown so large that they had two choir leaders instead of just one. She was so used to doing things on her own that she didn’t really understand how this would work. Also, wouldn’t that mean that her income would suddenly halve?

It had all started so well, but now it felt like she was becoming a victim of her own success! What was poor Octavia to do??!!!

next week

Stay tuned for next week’s post (Tending and caring for a growing choir) when I will reveal the solutions that I have arrived at for the problems our fictitious choir leader has encountered. It would also be great to hear from some of you out there who have had to solve similar problems, or perhaps you would like to air some of your own which have arisen from running a regular group.

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

How to start your own community choir 7 — Carrying on

Congratulations! If you’ve got this far in the series, there’s a very good chance that you’ve started your very own community choir, and I wish you the best success.

Last week, after a long time spent planning, finding some money, choosing a suitable time and venue, publicising your new choir, we finally arrived at the very first session. I do hope it went well! Trouble is, you can’t now rest on your laurels (no matter how well-deserved!) as you’re going to have to do it all again next session! And again, and again, and again …

This week I’m going to talk about the nuts and bolts of carrying on with your choir on a regular basis so that it grows and flourishes. You need to try not to become complacent, but constantly try to keep the choir alive and thriving. No time to sit back and just coast, or you won’t have a choir left!

Once again, there’s a lot of information here as I’ve tried to cover all eventualities, but I’m sure that not everything will apply to you, so please don’t be too daunted! I’d love to get some feedback from those of you starting out to see if anything specific has helped you, or if I’ve left anything important out.

I’m going to be covering the following issues in this post:

1. Will anyone come?
2. Keep it different, keep it the same
3. I’m out of my depth here!
4. How do you teach songs?
5. Putting a session together
6. I’ve run out of songs to teach!
7. Whose choir is it any way?
8. What next?

1. Will anyone come?

Every year after our long summer break I end up sitting in an empty rehearsal room waiting for choir members to arrive. I always make sure I turn up early, so am often the first person to arrive. No matter how confident I feel, no matter how long I’ve been doing this, no matter how successful the choir has become, I still worry that nobody is going to come!

Even if your choir is thriving, you’ll need to keep the word out there. Keep on promoting the name of the choir and what you do on a regular basis. It will turn up trumps in the end and you may well become the “go to” person in town whenever anybody needs a workshop leader or choir to perform.

In the early days of your choir, you will probably want to grow by taking on new members. So you’ll need to continue to promote the choir and its aims to attract new people to join. You can use many of the techniques laid out in Getting the word out: e.g. fliers and posters around town, editorial in the local press. You may also want to run the occasional one-off workshop. You now have a keen, captive audience (your choir members) who may well want to attend. You can design a very attractive, populist, open access, non-threatening workshop to entice people to sing, then encourage them to join the choir. They will get a chance to see you in action and let your approach and personality sell the choir.

When you do take on new members, you’ll need to consider how you will incorporate them into your existing choir. People may feel uncomfortable coming into an already established group, so make sure you make them feel welcome:

• print a welcome pack;
• let them know which pub you go to for a drink after each session
  
• make sure you have individual chats with them at the end of their first session;
• allocate a ‘buddy’ to teach them the ropes and introduce them to others.

You may want to restrict when you take new members on, for example, only in the first two weeks of term, or only in September.

2. Keep it different, keep it the same

People love familiarity and are creatures of habit. People are coming to your choir for a fun evening and a bit of socialising. Make sure that you have some kind of familiar structure each week so that people feel comfortable. Don’t go changing everything around each week. BUT … it’s also important to keep things fresh and challenging without putting people off. This will prevent habits forming and people becoming lazy and complacent. It will help people learn by approaching things slightly differently each time. It will stop sessions becoming stale and boring. It will set challenges for people to aim for, and hence feel a sense of achievement. It’s a fine balance between familiarity and the new, but one worth cultivating.

Some things you might try:

• have a session entirely of ‘old’, familiar songs from your repertoire
  People love singing things they know. It’s only us choir leaders who insist on introducing new repertoire all the time! Resist this or you’ll end up feeling like a song factory!!

• have a whole term of revision
  Do the old songs, but in different ways, different styles, slightly different arrangements, focus on the performance of the songs, etc.

• get people to stand in different places
  Experiment with different choir formations. Try songs in small groups with just one person on each part, but everyone in the room singing at the same time. Spread people around the room at random. Get the basses to stand next to the sopranos. Have them singing a song whilst entering the room.

• different song styles and versions
  Make sure you have a spread of different styles of songs and countries of origins so that there’s something for everyone to enjoy. Do a radically different version of a well-known song. Sing a song they know well in an ‘inappropriate’ style, e.g. reggae, opera, cowboy.

• different approach
  Teach the next song differently. Don’t always start with the tune, or the altos, or the first verse. Teach the song with ‘la la la’ and introduce the words later.

3. I’m out of my depth here!

There will come a time (it happens to all of us!) when you’ll feel lost, inadequate or out of your depth. Don’t panic! Make sure you have some kind of support or peer group available. Join an organisation like the NVPN for instance, or have a good friend who you can moan at. Find someone who knows something about music, not necessarily a singer/ choral director. Find someone who knows nothing about choirs, or someone who runs a regular yoga class. Cultivate other choir leaders in the area.

You may find that your musical knowledge is lacking, so find a good teach-yourself book, or go on a course. ‘Professional development’ (which is the posh name for it) is vital in order to keep you nourished. There is often funding available for this (I got arts council funding to go on two courses: harmony singing and song writing). The NVPN run two courses just for people who want to run Natural Voice choirs. There is the basic one-week starting course (valuable even if you’ve been doing it a while) with Frankie Armstrong, and also a Carry it on course especially for those who need a little refresher later down the line. There are plenty of other courses available from a wide range of organisations: choral conducting, teaching songs, etc.

As you become more accomplished as a choir leader you might want to try your hand at arranging songs yourself. My advice is to just go for it! The proof is in the singing. You will soon find out if a song works! You don’t really need much musical knowledge. By the time you’ve taught a load of harmony songs, you will have developed an innate sense of how harmonies work. If you do decide to take this further, again you can find courses on song arranging for choirs (e.g. Ali Burns runs a song writing course each year).

Don’t worry if you feel that you have less musical training or knowledge than some of your choir members. You were the one who had the courage and initiative to set the whole thing up! You’re taking all the responsibility and people will be willing you to succeed. Ignore the person who keeps talking in jargon in order to show off (or conceal their own fears), but cultivate the person who has perfect pitch or a better sense of timing than you. Maybe promote them to ‘section leader’ to take responsibility for people singing the same part as them.

4. How do you teach songs?

I will be writing an entire post about this subject in the future: How to teach (and learn) a song by ear. I'm assuming that you'll be teaching songs by ear. Teaching people with a score in their hand is a whole other thing! For now, I’ll just mention a few things.

• Make sure you really know the song before you teach it. Rehearse at home. Use a multi-track recorder. Make sure you know each part equally well. Make sure you know the song before you teach it!
• Break each song down into easily manageable, separate parts.
• If you’re teaching harmony songs, make sure you don’t leave people hanging around too long before you teach their part – build the whole song, with all the harmonies, up slowly.
• You don’t have to do a whole song in one session.
• Keep revising the song, again and again. It takes a long time for a new song to bed in.
• Make sure you have a means of giving out clear starting notes. I use a chromatic pitch pipe (i.e. one that has all the notes in the scale, not just, say, guitar or violin string notes), but you can use a tuning fork (if you’re really clever!), a portable keyboard, or a piano if you have access to one. Don’t worry about giving all the starting notes to each part and taking your time over it. Even the best conductors do this!
• Don’t hand out lyric sheets too soon or everyone will have their heads down in a piece of paper! Either stick to simple, repetitive words, or put lyrics on the wall.
  

5. Putting a session together

As time goes by, you will settle on a suitable structure for each session. Bear in mind though that you’ll want a balance of familiarity and novelty (see above).

Here are some things you’ll need to consider:

• keeping a register?
  Will you be keeping a record of who comes each week? If so, how? Will you do it or can you delegate (it takes up time!)? What about collecting money? Keeping track of names will help you build up a mailing list for future publicity as well as being able to keep in touch with choir members.
  

• how to deal with latecomers?
  There will always be latecomers. No matter how often you read the riot act, no matter how important the rehearsal, there will always be latecomers. Make sure you are always on time or you won’t have a leg to stand on! Some people suggest starting on time no matter who is there. That way people who are late feel that they are missing something. However, in my experience, it is precisely those people who are late who could do with the whole warm-up session! Another idea is to just crack on with a brand new song at the start, before the warm up, so latecomers will feel left out. The most radical solution is to just lock the door and not let them in!

• how many songs per session?
  It is possible to keep each session totally self-contained and just teach one or two songs, then brand new ones next session. This works best with choirs who don’t meet each week, perhaps have longer than two hours, and don’t ask members to commit to more than one session at a time. If, like me, you run regular weekly sessions, then you can spread song learning over a number of weeks. I always like to have two or three on the go, plus revision of some from earlier in the term, plus a few ‘oldies’ at the end of each session.

• will we have a break?
  If you do have a break, I think it’s best to fix when it happens in the session and how long it lasts. Stick to that as a routine. Maybe have a bell or some claves to summon people back after the break.

• how long is a warm up?
  A warm up is always too long, or too short. Some choir leaders have a half hour warm up or more, whereas others hardly bother. You will find a wide range of needs within your choir and you won’t be able to please everyone! If you do, say, a 10 minute warm up, some people will get bored and find it long and tedious, whilst others will love it and want more.

• voice training, vocal development = confident singers
  If you run your choir on a regular basis, like weekly, then you can (and should) incorporate some kind of vocal development into your warm up. This voice training will pay off when it comes to song learning and song performance. Build on it week on week. Include tuning exercises, interesting scale exercises, challenges like walking whilst singing, small group singing, etc. – keep it fun!

• rehearsal vs. normal session
  When (and if) you have a concert coming up, you’ll need to rehearse the songs that you’ll be singing in some detail. However, don’t let the spirit of your fun, relaxed sessions go out the window entirely. Some people who come each session might not be doing the concert. People who love your relaxed approach to teaching songs might stop enjoying themselves if they end up constantly drilling the same song and seeing you lose your rag when it’s just not working! Remember: it’s only a concert.

• new members
  Don’t forget new members. Keep an eye on them. What will they do when you’re singing oldies (you don’t want them to feel left out)? What if they, in particular, are struggling with learning? Make sure you check in on them regularly until they are really part of the choir.

• keep people informed!
  It’s important to find an effective way of keeping all choir members (even lapsed members) informed of what’s happening. Some choirs produce a regular newsletter. Some choirs have a members-only section on their website. Some choirs email their members often. Some choir leaders have a ‘parish notices’ section around break time during each session. This is the time to let members know about session times and dates, when holidays are, forthcoming concerts, local singing workshops available. Keeping in touch regularly both inside and outside sessions helps to maintain a feeling of community and belonging.
  

6. I’ve run out of songs to teach!

Now that you’ve started a choir, your antennae will become super-sensitive and you will notice songs in places that you’d never noticed before. It’s good to keep attending singing workshops as this reminds you what it’s like to be on the receiving end, and it also introduces you to new songs. Listen to the radio, CDs, check out the internet, buy song books, nick songs from other choirs and choir leaders. You will soon end up with more repertoire than you know what to do with!

7. Whose choir is it any way?

There are many advantages to being the sole boss of your choir. You have no one to answer to, and you can make all the decisions yourself – you will have absolute artistic and administrative control. However, the disadvantages can be that it is a lot of responsibility and very hard work! (See 4. Can I do it alone, or will I need help in the Forward Planning post for more discussion.)

One ideal would be to be able to have complete control over the choir, but to have some help. If you have a very, very successful choir who can afford it, then you can simply employ some administrative help (or website help or graphic design help). Unfortunately, that doesn’t apply to most of us! You may be able to get the occasional grant to help with one-off projects such as promotion (website or poster design).

Another possibility is to get voluntary help. There may be people in the choir with specific skills who can offer their help. Some people like taking the money and keeping lists. Some people like to organise the Christmas party. The drawback of ad hoc voluntary help is that you might not like what they come up with (e.g. poster design) and if they don’t deliver on their promise, or miss a deadline, you don’t have much leverage.

A slightly more formal approach to enlisting voluntary help is to draw up a constitution and elect a committee. There are plenty of suitable choir constitutions available out there. You can usually get hold of an existing choir constitution and tailor it to your own needs. The people then elected to specific roles are somewhat more accountable, and because they are visible to the whole choir, they may feel more responsible when carrying out their duties! The possible drawbacks are if a plonker gets elected, you might be stuck with them for three years or so. Or conversely, you may get a fantastic committee, but people will have to stand down after a certain period.

Whichever route you decide on, you must make it very clear who ‘owns’ the choir (its name, website, recordings, etc.) and who makes the final artistic and administrative decisions.

8. What next?

Now that your choir is up and running and going along swimmingly, it’s time to think of the future. It’s always good to have something to aim for or a choir may stagnate.

You might decide that you’d like the choir to do some public performances. Make sure you ask the membership first! Many choirs have a regular series of concerts each year. It gives people something to work toward and a sense of achievement afterwards.

Keep introducing new repertoire. Experiment with a type of music that the choir has never done before. You don’t know, they may end up liking it!

Think about possible choir exchanges, foreign or otherwise. You host them, then they host you when you go and visit.

Perhaps you can commission a composer to write a song especially for your choir.

Make your own CD. You can quite easily get hold of decent mobile recording equipment these days. Find a hobbyist or someone starting out and set up a recording session. Or if you regularly record your concerts, you can put together a live CD.

Constantly keep an eye out for new sources of money. This might give you an idea for developing the choir in ways you hadn’t thought of.

next week

Now that your choir is up and running, it’s time to look at what might happen down the line. Next week I’ll introduce you to Octavia and the choir which grew and grew. You can maybe learn some lessons from her experiences.

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com