Breaking the habit of a lunchtime

This is revised version of a post which first appeared in December 2006 as Fighting habit and complacency.

It doesn’t take long to form a habit. Sometimes just a tea break, let alone a whole lunchtime. But it can take ages to break a habit.

Habits can be useful sometimes (if they’re not bad habits!), but they can also get in the way of learning and creativity.

that’s my chair!

There were about 30 of us at the workshop. It was a reasonably sized room with lots of those boring plastic chairs, all orange. We’d hardly sat down, when the workshop leader had us standing up for the warm up. We ended up moving all around the room, working with different partners, being generally silly.

We were then asked to sit down to learn the first song. Most people just grabbed the nearest chair, but one woman walked right across the other side of the room, got a chair, and dragged it back to where she had been standing.

It was her chair. The chair she’d first sat on when she arrived. It ‘belonged’ to her even though she hadn’t put anything on it, even though it was indistinguishable from all the others.

I’ve found this in seminars and lectures. If I dare to come back from the coffee break and sit in a different chair from the one I had before, people get miffed. I’ve somehow upset the subtle balance of things. I’ve maybe even sat in a seat that doesn’t ‘belong’ to me!

In these instances, people have very quickly formed a habit. In moments they’ve established a new ritual and made their claim on the space. And woe betide anyone who tries to change it!

a rose by any other tune

This weekend just gone was the annual gathering of the Natural Voice Practitioners’ Network. To kick the weekend off, several people took turns to teach us all some simple songs.

One of the songs turned out to have a very well-known tune, but with unfamiliar words. Most people had heard the tune before. However, the version we were taught was ever so slightly different from the one that most of us already knew. I know the song as Rose, Rose.

Even after singing this new version for quite a while, there were still some people who were sticking to the ‘old’ version that they already knew. It was proving to be too hard to change their habit of singing that particular tune.

but we’ve always done it that way!

The same effect can be seen with choirs when you try to breathe new life into an old song, or a new musical director comes on board. It’s as if the familiar version has formed deep ruts in people’s brains so it becomes virtually impossible to steer the song in a different direction.

Same with warm ups. It’s quite nice to do a few of the same exercises each week so that people can notice their own development, plus you don’t need to explain the exercise from scratch each time.

But the danger is that if an exercise becomes too familiar, people end up just going through the motions and don’t get the full benefit.

The ideal is to approach everything (well-known song, familiar exercise, concert) as if it’s for the first time (see the concept of beginner’s mind in the post Blame it on the weather). You will then discover new things about the song, the exercise, and you.

habit can lead to complacency

I have a bee in my bonnet about habit and complacency, which is why I always try to do something new and different each choir term.

For example, in the past I’ve tried different seating configurations, changing them from week to week. For the last few years I’ve dispensed with seats altogether (which initially upset some people!).

Sometimes I revisit a song, but approach it in a different way. Perhaps we’ll sing it much slower, or I’ll add some choreography, or put a new part in.

I’ll do anything really to keep things alive and in the moment. As soon as something becomes a habit, you stop noticing it. You stop being aware of what is happening in each moment which can lead to disaster:

• you don’t notice when the conductor brings the volume down;
• you don’t notice that you’re going faster than everyone else in your part;
• you don’t remember that an extra verse has been added;
• you don’t notice that the tops are going slightly flat so you need to follow them.

These are the enemies of learning, development and improvement:

• complacency
  “the last gig went really well, so the next one should be a doddle”;
• habit
  “but I always sit in that seat and can only sing if the altos are on my left side”;
• familiarity
  “that’s the way we’ve always done this song”;
• expectation
  “in concerts the altos always stand next to the tenors”;
• safety and comfort
  “I like being in the midst of the bass section as it helps me stick to my part”.

They can all lead to a loss of vitality in concerts, blandness and lack of energy in performance, and an unwillingness to try anything new.

shake it up!

What can you do, as a choir leader, to shake people out of their complacency?

What can you do, as a singer, to stay in the moment, even though what you’re doing is very familiar?

What are your own (good or bad) habits? How can you escape their tyranny?

 

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

Becoming a choir leader – it’s a long story!

I realise that apart from the About Me section on this blog, you probably don’t know much about me or my journey to become a choir and singing workshop leader. Well, now’s the time to reveal all!

Why am I telling you my story? Well, I thought it might be nice for you to know a little more about me, but also I want to show that you don’t need to have formal musical education in order to be able to follow your dream.

the early days

From an early age I’ve always loved music. My parents aren’t musical at all, but bought me a guitar when I was about 10 and sent me to lessons. Although it was a pain at the time, I’m really glad that I had that opportunity. It means that I can read music and pick out a tune on a guitar.

I had an amazing appetite for all kinds of music – from classical LPs (borrowed from the local library) to listening to Radio Caroline under the bedclothes late at night to hear the first airing of The Beatles’ White Album.

I was in the local church choir as a kid, but don’t remember much about the singing. Most of the time we would pass chewing gum and stories along the line during the boring sermons.

In primary school I managed to join the choir, but we just sang Christmas carols once a year and maybe led the singing at morning assembly.

I’ve never been the sort of person to sing to myself around the house (and still don’t), but I’ve always joined in with the radio or CD that’s playing, often adding the harmonies rather than singing the tune.

From the age of 11 I pretty much stopped singing except during school assemblies or at annual scout camp. I wasn’t in any choir or band (although I’ve always wanted to be in a rock band!) or orchestra.

When I was in my early teens I managed to get a holiday job working the lifts at the Fairfield Hall in my home town of Croydon. Once all the audience were in, I was able to watch the concerts for free: George Harrison and Eric Clapton were two of the acts I remember, but there were many more.

I was never in a harmony singing choir, nor did I ever attend any choral or classical concerts. The family did go to see Oliver! and Fiddler on the Roof in the West End though. But I hate musical theatre!

university and beyond

I was good at maths at school, so ended up going to university to study pure mathematics. During the first year I changed courses to do computer science. I then went on to do an MSc in Artificial Intelligence and began to study for a PhD.

I got bored with being an academic, so never got around to writing my thesis up, and went to Malaysia instead to lecture in computer science. Clearly all good training to be a choral director!!

I did nothing particularly arty, and certainly nothing musical, at university or beyond. When I came back from Malaysia I got an Artificial Intelligence research job at London University for three years. (If you Google my name, you will eventually find me credited on a join research paper from that time.)

discovering theatre

For some insane and inexplicable reason, I joined an adult evening class in drama whilst in London. Although very shy at the time, I took to it like a duck to water! From the very beginning I was interested in creating my own work and made a few shows with fellow class members.

I even auditioned at the University and ended up performing in a Jacobean tragedy at the Edinburgh Fringe. That’s the closest I’ve ever come to ‘normal’, straight theatre!

Having discovered this new creative drug, I quit the computer world, started to claim unemployment benefit, and threw myself into making theatre. I soon had my own company in London, attended loads of workshops and master classes, and then began teaching at several drama schools.

After a few years of this (and making no money!) I was really lucky to get a job as a performer with the Centre for Performance Research (CPR) in Cardiff (which began as the Cardiff Laboratory Theatre).

harmony singing and the natural voice

In Cardiff I was introduced to unaccompanied harmony singing. We used to include songs (often from Eastern European singing traditions) in the performances we made. I attended many local singing workshops, including one by Frankie Armstrong, the driving force behind the foundation of the Natural Voice Practitioners’ Network (NVPN).

I did workshops with Polish theatre companies, members of the Roy Hart Theatre, Japanese Butoh performers, and a couple of Georgian ethnomusicologists who introduced me to the joys of Georgian song.

I travelled the world with the CPR and was lucky enough to watch and train with a huge variety of different performing arts genres. But gradually the opportunities faded and I became poor and unemployed once more.

to Coventry and beyond

I thought it was about time I got a ‘real’ job and started to apply for posts as university lecturer in theatre. Eventually I got a job at Coventry University in the Performing Arts department teaching theatre.

When I moved to Coventry I immediately looked for a singing group to join so I could continue to sing the amazing unaccompanied harmony songs that I had discovered in Cardiff. But there were no such groups. There are lots of choirs in Coventry, but none of them did the kind of music I loved, and most of them were far too formal for my taste.

So the local council suggested I start an evening class called ‘Songs from around the world’.

“But I’ve never taught songs to people before!” I exclaimed. “Oh, you’ll be fine”, they said.

And so began my life as a teacher of songs.

There were times when less than a handful of people turned up to a singing session, but slowly, slowly the numbers built until I had a reasonable core of singers. The local council were amazing and supported me throughout this growing period. But eventually I realised that I couldn’t survive on the council pay, and decided to go private.

the birth of WorldSong and me as a professional choir leader

Thus was born my first choir: WorldSong. We met once a week on a Wednesday evening during term time. We started with around 20 singers, but over the years the choir grew to over 60 with a waiting list to join. It is still growing.

I took my university responsibilities very seriously and believe that I did a very good job. But this began to take a toll on my health and finally I had to take a year off work. During that time, I managed to continue to run the weekly choir sessions which helped to maintain my sanity. There’s only so much daytime TV you can watch when you’re ill!

Eventually I quit the university job and started to make my way as a freelance choir and singing workshop leader. By that time I had joined the Natural Voice Practitioners’ Network (NVPN) and had met many other practitioners. I naturally assumed that they all made their living by their singing work, so I was determined to emulate them.

Little did I know that most NVPN members have day jobs unconnected with singing! If I had known that, I doubt if I would have had the courage to attempt to earn my living solely from my singing work.

In 2000 I learnt that a choir in Stamford, Lincolnshire was looking for a new musical director. I had no idea where Stamford was, but it didn’t seem too far to drive, and it meant a change of scenery so I went over to run a workshop for them.

I got the job, so was now leading two community choirs (and I’m still leading Woven Chords to this day). Through this new job, another choir approached me, and I took over Global Harmony in Melton Mowbray. That was three community choirs! Although I was doing lots of driving, I was just about making a living.

onwards and upwards!

Over the years, the choirs that I’ve led have grown considerably. I’ve since handed over the reins to both WorldSong and Global Harmony. Along the way I’ve also run smaller, more advanced singing ensembles such as The Small Group, C-Section, Minor Chords and Vox Mondiale.

My singing workshops have taken off and pretty much every Saturday I’m running a one-day or weekend workshop somewhere. Plays havoc with your social life, but that’s the way it is.

I’ve also gone back to my theatrical roots and been working with the Foot and Mouth voice-theatre project for the last two years. This year we have two big premieres at local theatres.

I have developed enormously as a teacher and a choir leader, for which I thank the many singers that I’ve worked with from the early days onwards. I hope you had fun, and I apologise for the sticky moments when I didn’t fully know what I was doing – they call it on-the-job training!

lessons from my journey so far

1. Follow your dreams – you need to have a passion for what you do. That is what will sustain you through the difficult times. Don’t do it for the kudos, the money, the fame, the status, or for anybody else – do it because you love it!
    
2. You will end up where you need to be – you set off in life down one particular road, thinking you know where you will end up. But life will always throw a series of unforeseen diversions and cul de sacs at you. Before you know it, you’re a little bit lost, or on an entirely unexpected road. However, you will end up exactly where you are supposed to be, only by a route that you never could anticipate.
    
3. It takes time to build a choir – try hard not to compare your journey with others around you. There are stories of people who start choirs and have 30 or 40 singers in a matter of weeks. There are large choirs with over 100 singers. But your choir will probably take a long time to grow. Be patient!
    
4. You don’t need formal training to succeed – hi, my name’s Chris and I’m a charlatan! That’s what an ex-girlfriend used to call me. She couldn’t believe that I was teaching songs professionally yet had no music qualifications. But I knew that I could do it. I had a lot of teaching experience and understand music at a deep intuitive level. So don’t let the naysayers put you off – you don’t need formal musical education to run a choir!
    
5. You’re allowed to make mistakes – don’t beat yourself up when you get it wrong. When I think back to some of my early choir sessions I cringe at how bad and uninformed I was! I realise now all the things I got seriously wrong, but the enthusiasm of the singers carried me through. You won’t get everything right by any means. Allow yourself the occasional mistake and learn from it.
    
6. One step at a time – when you first start out and you get a group of singers together and it’s all working, you will feel great! Try to resist the temptation to start a second group, book a huge auditorium, plan to make a CD, etc. Take it one step at a time and let your new group bed in and mature before you take things to the next stage. If you over-extend yourself in the early days, it may all come crashing down!
    
7. It’s hard work! – the secret to success is to work hard. When you first start out it might take a whole day to plan an evening’s choir session. You will find yourself glued to the computer screen late at night designing publicity or sending out email invitations to your next concert. You need the discipline to stick at it and put the hours in or you won’t get anywhere.
    
8. You can’t plan your whole life – often at interviews they ask you: “Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?”. I’ve never understood this question. If I knew exactly where I’d be in five years’ time, I would basically stop living! There would be no surprises, no unexpected twists and turns, no pleasure at arriving somewhere new and different. I may as well put my life on cruise control and stop bothering.

You can’t plan your life’s journey. Things will go wrong, surprises will happen, you will get lost. And isn’t that great? Isn’t that what being human is about?

your journey

I’d love to hear about your own journey to becoming a choir leader, community musician, professional singer, etc., especially if you’ve had no formal musical education! Do drop by and leave a comment letting us all know what you do, where you’re from, and what your musical journey’s been like so far.

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

Revisiting the archives

I’ve been writing this blog now for three years. During that time I hope I’ve developed my writing skills and expertise!

There are many topics that I think are interesting, but which are now buried deep down in the archives. I thought it would be a good idea to revisit some of these old posts, to update them (and perhaps write them a bit better!) and to bring them out into the light again.

Every Wednesday from next week (13 January 2010) I’m going to revisit an old post and try to breathe some new life into it.

I hope you find these updates interesting. Do let me know if there are any specific old posts that you’d like to see revised and updated and I’ll do my best.

You can find old posts by going to the Blog Archive in the sidebar, or you can use the Search This Blog box to look for a particular topic.

10 things I want to achieve in 2010

It’s year’s end and thoughts turn to the year that’s just gone (The 10 most popular posts of 2009) and hopes for the year to come.

photo by photon bomb

I do hope it will be a happy new year, but also a productive, fulfilling and successful one. Which got me thinking: what do I want to change next year? What do I want to achieve? Are there new things I could try that I’ve been putting off?

These are ten things that I came up with. Maybe some of them will resonate with you too.

1. more ‘theatrical’ concerts

   2010 will be the 15th anniversary of the birth of Woven Chords, the community choir that I lead. I took over as musical director 10 years ago, so that’s two birthdays this year! To celebrate, our spring concert in March will be in a ‘proper’ theatre with lighting, wings, raised stage, etc. – something we’ve not done before.
   
   I want to create a performance that is not just a choir standing still (or jiggling a bit) on stage singing (What are you looking at?). I’d like to play with the dynamics, groupings, entrances & exits, lighting, etc. to make for a more theatrical show.
   
   Nothing too adventurous (or scary for the singers!) but something a little different in order to put on a proper entertaining ‘show’ with a few surprises for the audience. Nothing gimmicky, but not ‘just’ a concert.
   
   QUESTION: have you ever performed in or attended a choral concert which was out of the ordinary in some way?
   
   

2. professional development

   Some years ago, at this same time of year, I went on a weekend musicians’ retreat. It was a chance to reflect on our career, our practice, our future, etc.
   
   There was a disparate group of musicians from a range of backgrounds, but we had one important thing in common. When the facilitator asked us what we did for our professional development, she was met with a sea of bemused faces!
   
   She told us that it was important for us to always be developing and growing as musicians and that it was all too easy for our day job to get in the way. Either we didn’t make time, or thought that we had nothing new to learn.
   
   This was a real eye-opener for me. When was the last time I’d attended a workshop as a regular punter? When was the last time I’d read a book or article on choirs and singing? When was I going to make time to go and learn more about teaching rhythm for example?
   
   So that following year I attended several excellent workshops and not only learnt new songs and new approaches, but also learnt a lot about being on the receiving end and how workshop leaders work effectively. And I read a lot of books and articles too.
   
   But I’ve slipped off the wagon once more and haven’t made enough time for my own professional development. Not only does it rejuvenate my own practice, but it’s a wonderful break from feeling that I’m giving out all the time.
   
   QUESTION: what are you going to do next year to develop your own practice as a singer or choir leader?
   
   

3. engage more with readers

   Ever since I started this blog I’ve always intended it to be a dialogue. I have so much to learn and this is a way of putting ideas out there and (I hope) getting useful responses (Looking back – a year of blogging).
   
   I know a lot of you get something out of reading my blog because you’ve told me so. I also know that a lot of you are ‘lurkers’ – you enjoy reading, but don’t feel moved to ever leave a comment.
   
   I’m going to make more of an effort this year to engage more with you, the readers. Not sure how yet! Any suggestions gratefully received. It can get a bit lonely some times!
   
   One thing I’m definitely going to do is to leave more comments on other blogs. After all, I need to put my money where my mouth is!
   
   QUESTION: what is stopping you from leaving a comment?
   
   

4. develop more social networks

   Although I’ve been using the internet since 1975 (wow! it was called the Arpanet then), I’m still no expert. I have a Facebook page and I dabble on Twitter, but I haven’t really investigated sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, etc. I want to try to exploit sites like this more in order to create a sense of community online.
   
   Singing in a choir is one of the most popular hobbies in the world, and yet it’s hard to find that many choral singers on Twitter for example. I know you’re all out there, it’s just a matter of finding you all!
   
   QUESTION: do you have any experience using social networks that you can pass on? If you’re already in one of these networks, how about connecting with me there?
   
   

5. get more guest blog posts

   Last year I was privileged to have guest posts from David Burbidge, Alexander Massey and Deb Viney. That was three more guest posts than the previous two years!
   
   Sometimes I get bored with the sound of my own voice! It’s also nice to get a different perspective on a subject, or to hear from someone on a subject that I don’t know much about.
   
   So . . . even if you’re ‘just’ a singer in a choir, or you come from a non-Western singing culture, or you have a background in percussion, or the last concert you attended was particularly special – I’d like to hear from you.
   
   You don’t have to write much (I tend to have verbal diarrhoea so don’t use me as a role model!), just write from the heart. Drop me a line (chris@chrisrowbury.com) and let me know that you’d like to write a guest post.
   
   QUESTION: what are you passionate about that you could write a short article on?
   
   

6. re-evaluate exactly what I do

   Am I simply a teacher of songs or a community builder or a singing enabler? Maybe I’m all these things.
   
   I’ve been doing this singing lark for over ten years now so maybe it’s time to re-evaluate what I do. Perhaps it’s time for a complete change or at least a change of focus.
   
   I’m pretty sure I don’t do this because I’m only interested in, say, health or community. For example, I personally wouldn’t get much pleasure from leading unison singing in an old people’s home.
   
   But I’m not just in it for the end product otherwise I’d be running a sight-reading choir and churning out songs by the dozen.
   
   I do know that I love what is called ‘World Music’, especially the harmonies of Eastern Europe and the rhythms of Africa. I also know that I like to work in a relaxed, non-threatening, fun way and not to be always focused on performance. Beyond that . . . I’ll just have to see!
   
   QUESTION: what is the most important reason that you either attend or lead a choir?
   
   

7. run less pop song workshops

   Once upon a time I was struggling to get more people to join WorldSong. I realised that if I collared an average person on the street, they would know nothing of the singing traditions of the Republic of Georgia (Georgia on my mind), they would probably be put off by the idea of singing in foreign languages, and they would maybe think choirs were posh and only for people who read music.
   
   So I invented a range of populist workshops that I hoped anyone could respond to: Beatles acappella, Beach Boys bonanza, The Paul Simon songbook, etc. They were all very successful, and many people who attended these workshops ended up joining the choir (and learnt to love Georgian singing!). So much so, that the choir became full and we had to set up a waiting list.
   
   But now, all these years later, I have become known for these more populist workshops and it’s become a bit of an albatross around my neck. I enjoy running the workshops occasionally, but I don’t get nearly enough opportunities to teach the kinds of songs that I really love.
   
   It would be great to become known more for world music workshops than pop song workshops! Workshops like Songs on the Eastern Wind and World Songs.
   
   QUESTION: have you ever been labelled in a way that became restrictive? How did you change the situation?
   
   

8. re-design the blog

   When I started this blog way back in December 2006 (Choirs are becoming cool!), I didn’t know much about using Blogger. I used WorldSong’s red and black theme as a basis and threw together a quick design. Over time I’ve added more and more widgets to the blog too.
   
   During this time I’ve set up my own website (ChrisRowbury.com) with a clear and simple design which I’d like reflected in this blog. The main problem is finding the time to do it all!
   
   Since I’m not a full-time blogger or website designer, I have to find time amongst all my other higher priority commitments to get down to re-designing the blog. It’s all about priorities and trying to create an eight-day week! Do I migrate to the more flexible WordPress platform or do I design my own template or modify and existing Blogger theme? Time will tell!
   
   There are a couple of issues here: how we prioritise all the different types of work that we need to do as freelancers (The job of being a choir leader) and whether we can afford to pay someone to do work for us – website design, publicity, PR, etc.
   
   QUESTION: do you have any hints on how I might best re-design this blog to make it easier to use and nicer to look at?
   
   

9. attract more audiences for choral music

   We had a new guy join the basses this term. He persuaded his partner to come and watch Woven Chords’ Christmas concert.
   
   Apparently she had said: “I don’t like choral music!”, but ended up having a great evening, played our CD all the next day, and even gave her Mum a CD for Christmas!
   
   We often come across this: if we can just manage to get people through the door, they usually end up really enjoying themselves. But so many people get put of by words like ‘choir’ and ‘choral’ (Avoiding the ‘C’ word). If they do eventually get to a concert, they often say: “Oh, that’s what you do! Not what I expected at all.” (It does exactly what it says in the blurb – or not!)
   
   Does that mean that all our publicity was simply wrong? How do we describe what we do in order to get people to give our kind of music a go (Fitting into the right musical box)? How can we attract more (and younger) people to our concerts (Who is our audience?)? How do we dispel out-of-date preconceptions?
   
   QUESTION: how do you publicise your own concerts and do you have any tips on how to widen your audience base?
   
   

10. regularly reflect on and evaluate my own working methods

    It’s not enough to reflect on our practice just once a year, it’s something that should be done on a regular basis.
    
    Every new term I try to introduce new warm ups, new challenges, new approaches so that we’re always developing and not becoming complacent (Fighting habit and complacency). But this coming year I want to try and challenge many of the implicit assumptions I make.
    
    Why only acappella? Why world music? Am I a community musician or just a teacher of songs? Am I just interested in the end product? Why don’t I ever use written music?
    
    QUESTION: are there any assumptions you make about singing in a choir that maybe you’re not aware of?

 

So there we have it: my (professional) New Year resolutions for 2010.

Happy New Year and may all your own
hopes and dreams come true in 2010!

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

The 10 most popular posts of 2009

I reckon most of you will be too busy with Christmas to read my blog this week! Full to overflowing with turkey and all the trimmings, it’s hard to get off the sofa to switch on the computer. Besides which, computers might remind you too much of work!

photo by IngaMun

Rather than a normal post, I thought I’d list the most popular reads from 2009 in case you missed them first time around.

So . . . a very merry Christmas and happy New Year to one and all and thanks for reading. I couldn’t do it without you!

1. Preparing to sing: physical and vocal warm-up ideas for choirs
   After considering why you should bother with warm ups at all, and what kinds of things you might include in a warm up, this post lists some specific physical and vocal exercises that I use with choirs.
   
   
2. How to teach (and learn) a song by ear
   Some techniques and tips for teaching and learning songs without written music.
   
   
3. Preparing to sing: what should a warm-up consist of?
   Having decided that warm ups are a good idea (see next post), this post considers the elements that need to be covered in any good singing warm up: body, voice and mind.
   
   
4. Preparing to sing: why bother?
   Why bother with warm ups any way? 10 good reasons why it makes sense.
   
   
5. But I can’t sing that high!
   How to find a comfortable place in the choir for your particular voice.
   
   
6. How to be a good choir member
   What makes a good choir member? Things like punctuality, commitment, self-awareness, trust, sense of humour, etc.
   
   
7. Learn how to sing in tune – matching pitch 1
   Once you’ve figured out whether you’re singing in tune or not, here are some basic tips on how to go about improving your tuning.
   
   
8. Singing in harmony 1 – how do they do that?
   Singing in harmony with others needs a whole set of skills which are different from singing solo or with a backing band. Here are some hints on how to sing harmony effectively as part of a choir.
   
   
9. Singing the same note – differently!
   The thorny question of matching male and female voices! The introduction of the tricky concept of ‘octave’.
   
   
10. How do I know if I’m singing in tune?
    It’s all very well for your choir leader to tell you you’re out of tune, but what does it actually mean to ‘sing in tune’?

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

You are what you sing

In many ways, we are all defined by the songs we choose to sing. Our favourite ditties say a lot about our tastes, background, age, religion and culture.

photo by rgdaniel

Songs and singing help to define our very personality and sense of identity.

singing and the self

There is some very deep-rooted connection between our singing voice and our sense of self.

People with Alzheimer’s Disease and other forms of dementia withdraw into themselves, they lose the desire to engage in conversation. It’s as if their personality has got lost somewhere.

They struggle with finding the right words and remembering incidents from the past. Many people with dementia no longer have the ability to recognise even those closest to them.

But somehow their memory for songs and singing is preserved. The parts of the brain that work with speech and episodic memories are different to the parts that process music.

It seems that the musical part of the brain can remain intact long after other parts have stopped functioning properly.

singing for the brain

The UK Alzheimer’s Society provides a service called Singing for the Brain. There are numerous anecdotes of people who, after just a few verses, seem to ‘come back’ to themselves again and are able to express themselves socially.

You can read more about it in How singing unlocks the brain.

musical memory is different

I’ve discussed before that remembering songs and song lyrics is very different from, say, rote learning a poem (see my post The singing memory). The words are linked to the tune and hence stored in the musical part of the brain rather than the word part of the brain.

People with extreme cases of memory loss can often still remember music in great detail. One of the most famous cases is that of the British musicologist and conductor Clive Wearing. Due to an illness, he suffered a profound case of total amnesia. Because an area of the brain required to transfer memories from working memory to long-term memory is damaged, he is completely unable to form lasting new memories – his memory only lasts between 7 and 30 seconds.

Yet Wearing recalls how to play the piano and conduct a choir – all this despite having no recollection of having received a musical education. As soon as the music stops, however, he forgets that he has just played and starts shaking spasmodically.

You can watch him in action in a BBC documentary: The Mind – life without memory. It is remarkable to see the transformation when he becomes involved with music.

You can also read an account by the neurologist Oliver Sacks in The New Yorker: A neurologist’s notebook – The Abyss. Sacks has also written at length on music and the brain in his 2007 book Musicophilia which includes a chapter on Wearing.

you are what you sing

It’s as if a fundamental part of our identity is tied up with song and music. Even when our memories are failing and we withdraw from everyday life, a familiar song or piece of music can reawaken us. We come alive again, our personality reasserts itself and we live once more through the music.

It seems that singing touches a very deep primeval part of ourselves. Humans have sung for many thousands of years (see The singing Neanderthals by Steven Mithin) so perhaps it is song and music that ultimately defines us.

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

Does your singing voice reveal the real you?

We’ve all seen it: a timid, unkempt, nervous person approaches the microphone. We expect disaster. They open their mouth and the most amazing, beautiful sound comes out. They transform before our very eyes into a confident, charismatic singer.

photo by thefuturistics

Which of these is the ‘real’ person? The singer or the nervous wreck? Is the singer revealing anything about their true self which lies behind all the nerves and lack of confidence?

what you see is NOT always what you get ...

With the rash of talent shows on TV at the moment, transformations like this are seen almost every week. Someone walks on stage and chats with the judges who quickly form an expectation of what their singing will be like.

Crudely, if they seem a little bit dumb (or have a working class accent!) or don’t look traditionally attractive (or young!), then the judges (and us?) assume they will have a bad singing voice.

But what you see is not always what you get. It’s a joy to see the judges’ mouths drop open when their preconceptions are shattered.

Susan Boyle is now an international phenomenon. The look on the judges’ faces when she first sang on Britain’s Got Talent is a joy to behold.

Another example here in the UK is of Stacey Solomon. Again, just watch the judges’ expressions at her first audition on The X Factor.

... and what you get is NOT always what you saw

The opposite also holds true.

A young, attractive singer bounces onto stage oozing confidence and we have great hopes of hearing a fine singing voice. Until they open their mouths: Kyle, Onkar, Krisztina, The Dreamgirls, James.

A fantastically wealthy, supremely confident, handsome CEO picks up the karaoke microphone and belts out a song in the worst singing voice ever.

A beautiful, well-dressed, smiling, relaxed woman takes to the stage with ease and confidence. She announces the song in a husky, sexy voice, then proceeds to sing like she’s a little girl on helium.

which is the real you?

This raises the question: which is the real you? The person who is singing, or the person who is chatting beforehand? The person whose voice is soaring and who is clearly transported by the music? Or the person who’s scared of the audience, not bothered about how they look, worried that they’ll get the notes wrong?

Singing in tune is a skill that can be learnt quite easily. So if someone sings badly, we know that they can just go away and work on their singing voice. We don’t assume that because they have a ‘bad’ singing voice, then they are somehow ‘bad’ too. Next time they come back, we hope they will sing better.

But what about those people who can sing well, yet appear awkward, inarticulate and under-confident beforehand. What is their ‘true’ nature? Are they revealing the authentic person through their singing voice? How can they appear so confident whilst singing, but not whilst speaking?

Perhaps singing such a different mode of communication from speaking that two types of person can co-exist within the same individual: the confident singer and the shy speaker. Yet for most of us, public speaking is just as scary and difficult as singing in public. And for many, many people, singing is the scarier thing to do!

our singing voice makes us vulnerable

When we make music with our voices, we are using ourselves as an instrument. If a violinist plays badly, we can blame the poor quality of the violin itself, or argue that the player isn’t up to the job: she’s a bad violinist. But if we think someone doesn’t sing well, we tend not to say she’s a bad vocalist, but she has a bad voice.

We are our instrument, so any criticism of our singing voice is felt as a criticism of our self.  Because of this, we are often frightened to open our mouths, to sing out, to improvise and experiment with our voices. We stand at the back of the choir and sing very quietly until we are absolutely sure we have the tune right.

Our voices are very personal to us, more so than our bodies.

I used to teach at drama school and university and every time I would ask the students to improvise some crazy dance they would have no problem throwing their bodies around in the strangest of ways.

When asked to deliver a speech from a play, they would speak loudly and confidently.

But ask them to improvise with their voices and they would all clam up! Somehow people seem to feel that their voices are more revealing of their innermost being than anything else.

This is not just about singing though. Over the years I have been able to free myself of many vocal inhibitions so I can just let rip with my voice in weird and wonderful ways. But when I'm supposed to be singing a recognisable tune, then doubts can creep in as to whether I'm 'getting it right' or not.

musical vs. primal voice

There are many ways to use our voices in a free and natural way. Some people are able to let rip and improvise the strangest sounds. Some actors can howl and wail and speak their lines so they can be heard at the back of the upper circle.

There is something known as voice therapy which attempts to unlock the voice and set our voices, emotions and spirits free. Many alternative therapies involve screaming, shouting and chanting.

But I’m concerned with the singing voice, the voice that makes music. I believe that there is something deeper and more connected with our essential being when we’re singing, than when we’re simply freely exploring our vocal capabilities in a non-musical way.

feedback loop

As we become more confident with our singing, does that spill over into our everyday lives? Or do these two personas live in different worlds?

It doesn’t necessarily work the other way round. We’ve seen that people can be over-confident in other areas of life and over-estimate their singing abilities. So maybe singing confidence doesn’t carry over to other areas.

Why the mismatch? How is singing so different from real life and vice versa?

I realise I’ve asked more questions than I’ve answered here! I’d be really interested in your feedback. Do you think your singing voice reveals the ‘real’ you? How do you account for the mismatch between your everyday persona and your singing persona? Can learning to sing confidently spill over into other areas of your life?

next week

In next week’s post I will look at how singing helps to define the self and how our sense of identity is intimately tied up with our voices: You are what you sing.

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

Why basses can’t remember their part

It always seems to be the basses who forget their part. I used to think it was a bloke thing, but now I realise that there is often a good reason why it’s so hard to remember.

droning on

The bass part often follows the root notes of the chords as they progress through the piece. If it’s a relatively straightforward song, then there will sometimes only be three chords. This means that the basses only  get to sing three notes!

Even worse, if the basses are singing a constant drone to a song, which often happens in Georgian singing for example, they may only get two notes!

dude, where’s my tune?

With just two or three notes, it’s very hard to create any kind of interesting, memorable memory. Most of the time the basses are wondering how long they have to stay on this note and when they have to move onto the next one. There are often no clues for when to change, and no easy way of remembering.

The tops and the altos usually have an interesting melody to remember (with lots of notes!). The tenors can too, but in any case usually have some sexy blues notes in there to signal where they are.

But the poor basses have no road map of where to go. No wonder they find it hard to remember a featureless landscape.

the invention of musical notation

In the majority of community choirs that I’ve run, most people can’t read music. Give them a written score and it’s like hieroglyphics to them.

But very often I notice that singers in the bass section all have scraps of paper in their hands covered in scribbles. On closer inspection, the scribbles are a series of horizontal lines of different lengths, some above others. Something like this:

“Blimey!”, I say, “musical notation.”

“Oh, no”, they reply, “just some scribbles to make it easier for me to remember. I can’t read music.”

I ask them to explain how their scribbles help them.

“Well, the higher the line, the higher the note. The longer the line is, the longer I have to stay on that note. When the line changes, that’s when I change note. And the size of the gaps between the lines tell me if it’s a big jump in pitch, or a little jump.”

As I said before: musical notation!

Of course, these scribbles need a little tweaking before they become accurate enough, but it suffices for most bass parts as an aide memoire. You can see a more advanced version of this pictorial representation in my post Complex songs and learning by ear: musical maps.

quality time

Since the bass part often doesn’t have that many notes, choir leaders sometimes leave the teaching of the bass part until last. They also maybe don’t spend that much time on it since they believe it’s an ‘easy’ part. Sure, it might be easy-ish to learn as it doesn’t have many notes, but that can mean it’s fiendishly difficult to remember!

I always make sure when teaching a harmony song that I don’t always start with the tune (whichever part it’s in). Especially if it’s a brand new song that nobody has heard before, it doesn’t really matter which part you start with. So sometimes we kick off with the bass part.

If it’s one of those simplistic bass parts with very few notes, it’s hard to teach in isolation as there is no melody to anchor it to. On the other hand, it’s a great opportunity to really nail the rhythm of a piece before all the other parts come in. And when they do, they will have the benefit of a solid bass part to work with.

If you leave the bass part until last, it means they will have heard the other parts repeatedly so will often end up with some kind of melody locked in their heads already. So when they come to learn their own, relatively monotonous part, they may well go up and down in all the wrong places!

Treat your basses well and they will return the compliment.

not enough voices to go round

Certainly here in the UK many choirs find it difficult to recruit enough men. Which means that the bass section can be quite sparse.

Now the other sections have no problems remembering their parts. Or do they? There are lots of them, so as long as, say, 75% of them can remember, you don’t really notice those who are struggling. If someone is not too sure of their part, they can hide a little and take their time without being noticed.

But if your bass section only has six singers, it can be quite exposing. And if 75% of them can’t get it right, it can easily put the others off.

So maybe it’s not fair to judge the bass section in the same way as those other burgeoning sections of the choir.

confound those singers!

If you have a choir who are up for it, and a relatively straightforward harmony song, you can teach all the parts to all the singers. This will often give other parts an appreciation of the difficulties faced by the basses.

Another option is to switch parts around and give the bass part to someone else. This isn’t always possible, but giving the basses the tune from time to time can boost their confidence.

I’ve just taught a three-part version of The Water of Tyne. It has a lovely bass part which meanders all over the place. Too good not to share! So on different verses I have the basses singing the tune, and the tops singing the bass part an octave higher.

good arrangers write good tunes

You may be a lucky bass who has never had any of the problems I’ve outlined. This probably means that you’ve only ever sung songs that have been arranged well.

Any really good choral arranger will make sure that every part is singable and memorable with a good, interesting self-contained melody. Every singer will have something meaty to learn, and every part will stand on its own.

I learnt an arrangement of The Copper Family’s Christmas Song arranged by Alison Burns some years ago (available in Raining Bliss and Benison). I was taught the bass part and for years – until I came to teach the song myself – I assumed that the melody was in the bass. It turns out that the melody is sung by the tops, but the arrangement is so good that the bass part feels like a melody of its own!

or it could be a man thing!

Of course, I could be completely wrong and maybe after all it's just thing about men and their bad memories.

What’s your experience? Are you a bass who has trouble remembering their part? Does your choir have to wait while the male basses get reminded of that they’re supposed to be singing?

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

Singing out of tune isn’t always a bad thing

There was an article by Alex Petridis in The Guardian last week in which he claimed that:

“singing out of tune can convey emotions that being in tune can't”.

La, la, la, I'm not listening! by Jennoit

It made me wonder, in these days of Auto-Tune, whether singing out of tune is always such a bad thing.

There’s more to singing than just being in tune. Getting the notes right is just one small part of singing. Singing is about expressing feelings. It is a means of communication.

imperfection is being human

The norm in much of recorded music these days is studio-based Auto-Tuned perfection. This was maybe a laudable aim in the beginning — tighten up a few off notes here and there to make the song sound better. But now it is so common and so artificial that we crave some ‘real’ singing!

Humans are imperfect creatures. It is what gives us our individuality. If we all sound the same – perfectly in tune all the time – then we may as well just use machines to do our singing for us.

When listening to a choir, it is the small imperfections, differences in vocal quality and tiny errors in tuning that give the overall texture and richness of sound that we all love.

being entertaining

In the current UK series of The X Factor, there were a couple of impish Irish twins called John and Edward (Jedward). They can’t sing in tune at all, and yet they were voted in week after week, much to the confusion of some of the judges. But after a few weeks, even Simon Cowell reluctantly admitted that he was beginning to ‘get’ them and could understand how entertaining they are.

Sometimes a song is just one small element of an entertaining act. It’s the context that decides whether we expect singers to focus on being in tune, or whether it’s part of a greater entertaining experience.

tuning is in the ear of the beholder

Sometimes I watch a singer on TV and I wince because I think they’re terribly out of tune. Yet other people in the room don’t see the problem. It can also happen the other way round: my friends think a singer is just off, whilst I just can’t hear it.

There are objective ways of measuring whether a singer is off pitch, but we listeners aren’t that accurate and often hear people in different ways. Remember your Mum not understanding how you could possibly listen to that whiny, out of tune young singer? And sometimes a particular singer in your choir always sounds off key, but it’s the quality and texture of their voice that’s throwing you and not their pitching.

revealing your soul

There’s a beautiful Georgian healing song that’s been doing the rounds of community choirs for some years. Every time I’ve heard it it’s been slow and beautiful, but somehow a little too polished: Batonebo.

Then one day I came across a recording of a bunch of old Georgian men sitting in their village. They slowly (and not very surely!) stunble into the song, each one slightly out of time with the others and hardly anyone in tune. But it is one of the most moving renditions of the song I have ever heard.

The song was just a vehicle for these men to reveal their souls. We often forget this when we just stick to the notes or when we give a ‘performance’.

who are we singing for?

Most singing (and definitely most choral singing) in Western culture is done for an audience. The songs are ‘performed’ rather than just being sung for the sake of pleasure and expression. As soon as we are in performer role we begin to worry about how we are being received. Are we getting it ‘right’? Will they like us? Are we as good as other singers?

It’s in situations like this when too much attention can be paid to being in tune rather than trying to express the soul and heart of the music. We’re in danger here of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

we want expression, not perfection!

Many choral directors lose sight of the human side of music-making and treat their singers as just a bunch of instruments. Their focus is on creating the best possible realisation of a particular piece of music regardless. They fret about the tiniest details and get really bothered about vocal blend and being in tune.

I don’t believe that we should be here to just service the music at any cost. It’s all too easy to lose sight of why we are making music. I’ve written more about this in the post We are not here to serve the music.

more people are out of tune than you think

Although we live in an age of doctored and synthesised vocals, some of the most famous and well-loved singers throughout history have not had the most beautiful voices. We love them for their personality, humanity, imperfections, honesty and soul, not for their note perfect renditions of songs. Singers such as Bob Dylan, Edith Piaf and Tom Waits spring to mind.

but if you still want to sing in tune ...

Of course, we all aim to be in tune and if we can naturally sing accurately it’s just another tool we have to express our feelings through song.

If you find it tricky and want some hints on how to sing in tune, you can check out my recent series of posts to Learn how to sing in tune (after first figuring out How do I know if I’m singing in tune?).

which do you prefer?

Do you have any examples of wonderfully expressive singers who technically sing out of tune? Or maybe you prefer a perfectly in tune choir? Do let me know.

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

How many songs can you teach in an hour?

First I need to fess up: I have a low boredom threshold and always try to squeeze in as many songs as possible. Not always a good idea!

In an average one-day workshop (six hours with an hour for lunch), I can get through eight or more songs, all quite complex. I have been known to teach four songs in a single hour (including a warm up before I start teaching).

But am I trying to cram too much in? What is a reasonable number of songs to teach in a given time period?

how many is too many?

Obviously it depends on how complex the songs are. You can get a very simple round or chant up on its feet in a few minutes. A harder harmony song with four or more parts will clearly take longer.

Any good workshop leader will get a sense of whether they are going too fast or slow for the particular group they’re working with. You can’t always suit everybody, so you pitch your speed at the abilities of the majority. You’ll soon get an indication of how the group responds after you’ve taught your first song.

am I going too fast for you?

Rather than getting hung up on the actual number of songs, it’s important to be sensitive to how the participants are responding.

It’s no good soldiering on with a song at break-neck speed if people are finding it hard to remember their part or stumbling over the words. Also, it’s important to not move onto the next song too quickly. After all, people have come to sing and not just to learn.

The teaching of the songs is just a means to an end when we can all have a jolly good sing!

always assume the best in people

Having chosen appropriate songs for a particular workshop, I always assume that the participants will be brilliant singers, will catch on quickly, and will learn the songs with ease.I always make sure that I have plenty of extra songs in case they learn really quickly and I run out (which has happened).

Of course, it may turn out that people are having a bit of an off day, or I’ve over-estimated their experience of harmony singing. In which case, I will adjust, slow down, and teach at a pace comfortable to the majority of participants.

But you’d be amazed how seldom I have to do this. By assuming that people can do what you expect of them, they usually rise to the occasion. Even if a few singers are a little slower on the uptake, the majority will sweep them along with their enthusiasm.

Often, at the end of a workshop people are amazed by what they have achieved. But not me. I never under-estimate the participants’ abilities.

One participant summed it up thus:

“Chris has got the ability to make you feel you can do anything ... you have a go at the seemingly impossible and then you DO do it!”

It’s nothing clever – I just behave as if everyone can do anything and they usually deliver.

how to be patronising

The opposite of assuming that people can learn fast is to assume that all participants are beginners, will need spoon-feeding, and the teaching will have to be slow and easy. Sometimes this is the case, especially with complete beginners or people who have never sung before.

But in the majority of open workshops and choirs, most people have some singing experience and you will be amazed at what they can achieve. The danger is that if you set your sights too low, the participants can end up feeling a little patronised. If you set the bar high, people will be challenged but end up with an enormous sense of achievement.

I was a punter at a singing workshop a while back and the leader was just so S  -  L  -  O  -  W! I felt that I was in a kindergarten class, as did many of my fellow singers. So much so that we started to be silly and misbehave which I’m sure didn’t help the leader. She went over and over and over the words, then the parts so often that we lost the will to live. We certainly felt patronised rather than being helped to learn.

quickly learnt, soonest forgotten

In any one-off workshop people will be learning songs very fast with not much time for repetition. That means that the songs won’t have had time to really bed in and it’s almost certain that the next morning, most participants won’t remember a single note!

I believe that it’s important to point this out. If you don’t, many people might end up thinking that they’re not ‘real’ singers because they couldn’t retain the songs. You need to make it clear that learning a song in depth takes many, many repetitions (see Papa’s got a brand new song).

I am not a song factory!

As I said in the introduction, I love to keep introducing new songs. I have so many to teach that I just can’t wait to get them out there! I get a little bored hearing a song too often, so am keen to get onto the next one. This can create a big problem.

Lots of my colleagues have said the same thing: they feel like song factories. Week after week, we feel that the choir needs feeding and we constantly have to come up with new, exciting songs to teach.

But if we sit back for a moment, we realise that we’re making a rod for our own back. It’s not our boredom threshold that is low, we fear that our singers will get bored doing the same old songs and will only come to choir each week if we keep introducing new material.

The truth is usually the opposite: most choir members love to sing the old familiar songs rather than learning new stuff all the time. As I said earlier, people come because they want to sing, not to be learning all the time.

So us choir leaders need to slow down sometimes and go over the old stuff. Spend time revisiting and polishing older repertoire before moving onto the next shiny new song.

quality not quantity

I’ll leave you choir and workshop leaders with this thought: we worry that we need to give participants a good time for their money. This often translates as delivering loads of songs. But we have far more to offer than just song teaching and people have come to sing, not just to learn.

how was it for you?

Have you attended a workshop and felt that the teaching has just been too fast? Have you taught a workshop and realised that people are becoming bored because you’re going to slow? Have you been to a workshop where you’ve learnt lots of songs, but the teaching hasn’t felt rushed? Are you guilty of always introducing new songs to your choir?

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

What’s the point of live music performance?

Music and singing are auditory experiences. We don’t need to see the musicians or singers to appreciate their music. So why do we bother going to live music events? Why don’t we just stay at home and listen to a recording?

Photo by shaggy359

I can think of plenty of good reasons not to leave the comfort of your own home so the live performance had better be very good to persuade people to go out and spend money.

I can only think of a few reasons (but not many) why going to a live music gig might be a good idea.

Yet despite this imbalance, I still go (sometimes) to live concerts. Why is that?

It reminds me of that scene in Kramer vs. Kramer when Dustin Hoffman’s character makes a list of pros and cons for seeking custody of the kid: his cons far outweigh his pros and yet he still goes for custody.

There some deep down instinctive need to see music performed live, and no amount of logic can tease it out.

Or maybe you can? Do let me know if you can think of any really good reasons why bothering to go out in the cold and dark to a live music performance might be a good idea.

I’m mainly talking here about choral performances and other live music events which are mainly sit-down gigs. I think pop and rock concerts and summer music festivals are a whole other beast.

If we are going to ask members of the public to leave home and spend their money attending one of our concerts, we’d better know what we’re offering them!

Here are my two lists of reasons – pros and cons. Let me know what you think.

8 reasons why not to bother going to a live music performance

1. sound quality

   
   The sound quality at a gig can often be appalling. Either the venue/ auditorium has lousy acoustics, or you end up sitting way in the back, or some technical wizard has put the microphones in really stupid places and the balance is all wrong, or the guy on the sound mixing desk is having a bad day.

2. nothing to see

   
   You’ve made all this effort to come out, so you expect to get something extra to just staying at home listening to the CD. But no, there’s nothing going on, just a bunch of singers or musicians on the stage in their own little world making sounds. You begin to count the ceiling tiles or shut your eyes to concentrate on the music.

3. too expensive

   
   You can get a CD or download an MP3 for very little these days. But if you go to a concert hall you are expected to pay an arm and leg for a half-way decent seat, not to mention an over-priced programme full of adverts (and not much else) and interval drinks way above normal bar prices. Not to mention the parking costs.

4. not the best version

   
   They may be having a bad day. The principal violinist might be off sick. The solo soprano might have a cold. For various reasons there are a few bum notes this particular evening. The perfectly balanced, accurate, director’s cut is on the recording, not necessarily in the concert hall.

5. too many distractions

   
   Police sirens outside, popcorn munching, chatting, coughing, knees in the small of your back, people pushing past to get to the toilet – you get the idea.

6. uncomfortable

   
   Sitting still for a couple of hours is hard at the best of time, but in tiny seats designed for people of five foot and under with a shared arm rest is nigh on impossible.

7. inconvenient

   
   You have to find the venue, brave the weather, travel several miles, pick a parking spot, find your friends, remember your tickets, queue for the toilet, find your seats (in the gods no doubt) – you still get the idea.

8. not what you expected

   
   You might never have seen the musicians who made your favourite CD, but you have a pretty clear image in your mind of what they might look like and how they might be if you saw them live. Then you get to the gig and they are a deep disappointment! Not what you expected at all, and now it’s spoilt it all for you. You will never be able to listen to them in quite the same way. 

4 reasons (and one bonus reason) why going to a live concert is a good idea

1. can’t hear the music any other way

   
   Going to catch the live performance might be the only way to hear the music. There might not be a recording available or the choir might be singing new songs or new versions of songs, or it might be a bunch of people brought together for this one-off concert.

2. shared experience

   
   There is something about sitting in the dark with a group of strangers and experiencing the same event. It’s like a communal witnessing of something. Even if you don’t end up talking with anybody else about it, the fact that you all shared the same live experience at the same time gives it an extra dimension.

3. extras

   
   Like DVD extras, only live. Not included on the recording are things such as lighting, staging, choreography, costumes, between-song banter.

4. in the presence of greatness

   
   In our celebrity obsessed culture, we sometimes enjoy being in the presence of someone famous. So when the world-famous orchestra or choral conductor is in town, we like to go to see them just because we can. Like touching the hem of the powerful – maybe some of it will rub off.

5. magic

   
   This is the main reason why I go to live music performances. I have no other word for it and can’t describe it in any other way. There is something additional, elusive and special about being in the presence of a group of people making music live. It seldom happens to me in large auditoria or with large orchestras or choirs, but usually in a more intimate setting, often without special lighting or other effects. It maybe takes us back to those early days when there was no separation between performer and spectator, when everyone in the village was a music-maker and the experience was truly a shared one.

What do you think? Why do you go to live performances? As choir leaders and choir members we surely need to know why before we can expect an audience to bother to come to one of our own performances!

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

Avoiding the ‘C’ word: choir

If I say ‘choir’, an image will pop into most people’s minds.

• a bunch of fidgety 7-year-olds screeching out a barely recognisable version of Once in Royal David’s City at the school nativity play
• a group of loud old white men with fruity voices singing in Welsh
• rows and rows of posh people holding music books and singing in superior upper-class accents
• an angelic cluster of fresh-faced boys with ruffles around their necks facing sideways onto the congregation during a very serious, important service in a big, old church
• a sea of exuberant black faces dressed in identical floor-length robes moving and singing with uncontained joy whilst battling against some loud guitars and an over-amplified drum kit

I may well have missed out your favourite image, but you get the idea!

These common images either leave me cold or make me feel excluded. They’re either really bad examples of what a choir can be, or seem to be a special club which wouldn’t have me as a a member.

the choral world

I flail around the web trying to find like-minded souls, but if I use search terms such as ‘choir’ or ‘choral’ I stumble into parallel universes that I simply don’t relate to.

This is the impression I get:

• much of the choral world exists in the USA (with a small, but significant outcrop in Singapore)
• most choirs are faith-based, usually Christian, and based in churches
• most choirs use written music which is often referred to as ‘choral literature’ and is usually Western Classical music
• choirs are formal, old-fashioned and predictable with an aging membership and aging audience
• there are countless choral festivals across the world, many in Europe, but rather than just celebrating choral singing, they insist on measuring, comparing, testing and judging choirs through competition

OK, OK, you’re bound to tell me that your choir isn’t like that and there are exciting choirs out there who don’t fit these stereotypes. And I’m sure there are.

My point is that this is the impression created by the choral world, whether intended or not.

what’s in a name?

As soon as you use the word ‘choir’ in your group’s name, or say that you sing ‘choral music’, the danger is that all these stereotypes come into play. In which case, you may well be putting off potential choir members and audiences for your performances.

I mean, what impression would you get from:

The Anytown Ladies Institute Choral Society

or

The Somewhere and District Municipal Choir ?

what can we do about this?

It’s going to be really, really hard to change the cliched images that are associated with the word ‘choir’. After all, they have been built up over hundreds of years.

The thing that we can change directly is the name we give to our group. There are many ways of avoiding the ‘C’ word, some more successful than others. I’ll give a few examples below, but I’d love to hear from you about other solutions.

• subverting the traditional: The Spooky Men’s Chorale or The Feral Choir
• using an evocative foreign name: Libana or Chechelele
• saying what you do: Singing for Fun or Singing Our Socks Off
• using a pun: Only Men Aloud or Vocal chords
• using an alternative word to ‘choir’: Sheeptown Songsters or The Singers’ Circle
• a mixture of the above: Kitka women’s vocal ensemble

What’s you ‘choir’ called? Do you think using the word ‘choir’ puts people off? What other alternatives are there to the dreaded ‘C’ word?

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

The six qualities needed to be a good choral director

I wrote a while back about how to be a good choir member. But what qualities do you need to be a good choir leader?

Musical director by spoedman

Lately I’ve written quite a lot about leading choirs. I’ve looked at the basic job definition, the roles and responsibilities and the notion of the ‘benign dictator’ (What the job of choir leader involves). I’ve considered how you might assess a choir leader and whether the ends justify the means (How to tell if your choir leader is rubbish). I’ve detailed the nitty gritty of a typical week in the life of a choir leader including all the admin. and background preparation that’s involved in the job (The job of being a choir leader).

What I haven’t done is consider what kind of person it takes to do all this well. What qualities does a person need to be good at the job of choral director?

six qualities needed to be a good choral director

This is the list I came up with. It’s what I consider to be the minimum necessary to be able to do the job well. I’d love to hear if you think there are any that I’ve left out. They are not in any particular order.

1. enthusiasm

A good choral director needs to have an enthusiasm for choral singing, for song, and for music in general. But more than this, their enthusiasm needs to be infectious and inspirational. They need to sweep the whole choir along with their enthusiasm, excitement and vision.

2. fun

Any decent choir leader must have an excellent sense of humour and needs to maintain and atmosphere of fun in rehearsal and in performance. Most people join a choir because they want to enjoy themselves and have a good time. Excellent music-making will naturally follow.

3. decisiveness

A choral director needs to be prepared and know what they are doing and what they want to achieve. You can’t be clear if you don’t know what you want! It helps if your decisions are consistent and you don’t change from rehearsal to rehearsal. Choir members need to know that you’re in charge and that you have an end result in mind. They don’t want waffle and vagueness.

4. clarity

A good choir leader will be very clear with their instructions and directions. Choir members need to know what’s happening at all stages of rehearsal and performance without any confusion or ambiguity. They need to know that they’re in a good, safe pair of hands, that the director knows what they want and is clear in passing that information on.

5. musicality

A good choral director doesn’t necessarily have to have studied music, know music theory, be able to read music or play an instrument. But they do need to have a deep, intuitive understanding of how music and harmony works. They need a strong sense of musicality.

6. patience

Maybe this is the most important quality, especially with a community or non-professional choir. Learning songs and perfecting performances takes time. Not everyone learns at the same rate. Not everyone understands in the same way. Un-learning bad habits takes a long time. Some people may still be learning to sing in tune, whilst others are able to improvise harmonies.

You need to have a great deal of patience to be able to make allowances for all these different needs. That’s where a good sense of humour comes in!

leadership secrets from a maestro

As I was preparing this post, I came across an article by the classical music conductor Roger Nierenberg (Leadership secrets from a maestro). From his many years experience of conducting symphony orchestras and working with business leaders, Nierenberg  believes that a maestro and an executive face very similar challenges.

He then goes on to outline four basic things that a young conductor needs to know before stepping onto the podium. They can be summarised as:

• have a clear vision for success
• listen to your people
• be clear and unambiguous with your directions/ instructions
• it’s not about you: it’s about the music

These dovetail neatly with some of the qualities above, and some of the issues I considered in last week’s post on What the job of choir leader involves. Nice to know I’m in good company!

what do choir members think?

My perspective is obviously from the front of the choir. I’d love to hear from those of you who sing regularly in a choir: what do you think are the essential qualities of a good choir leader?

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com