How to start your own community choir 4 — The right place and the right time

Last week, in Part 3 of this series on How to start your own community choir, I looked at the issues of Finding the money in order to set up your own community choir. That means that you should now have a plan and an idea of where the money is coming from. The next step is to find the right place and the right time to start your choir.

By Jackie Kever

The right place

Let’s begin by looking at finding the right place. There are two main considerations, global and local:

1. geographical location
2. rehearsal venue

1. geographical location

Maybe you’re looking for a new place in the country to set up a choir. Or perhaps you’ve lived in an area for some time, and are thinking of launching a choir. In both cases you’ll need to look at:

• what choirs (if any) already exist in the area?
  
• can the local population sustain a choir?

competition

Some areas of the country, for various reasons, seem to have choirs coming out of the woodwork, whereas others have no choirs at all. It may seem to be an advantage to set up somewhere with no choirs at present, but there may be a good reason why there aren’t any choirs there, and this may end up being an obstacle!

You’ll need to find out first what choirs exist in your area. In the UK, you can look at various member organisations such as TONSIL (whose members include members include the Association of British Choral Directors, Sing for Pleasure, The Voices Foundation, British Choirs on the Net), Natural Voice Practitioners Network, Sound Sense, Gerontius, etc. There will be similar organisations in other countries. However, many small choirs don’t belong to any umbrella organisation in which case Google can be useful. Just look for your location (or nearby towns) and the word ‘choir’.

Once you’ve discovered what other choirs (if any) are in the area, then you need to consider the ‘flavour’ of those choirs. Can your choir offer something different from what’s already on offer? You have already worked this out in your Forward planning stage (6. What type of choir will this be?), but may need to tweak it a bit to fit in with local circumstances. But even if there is already a choir out there very similar to the one you’re proposing, it doesn’t mean that the two can’t co-exist. People will always go to the choir that they feel suits them best. This doesn’t just mean the type of choir, but also depends very much on the personality and style of the person leading it.

can a choir be sustained?

Depending on the local demographic, population size and density, and cultural heritage, one area can often sustain many choirs. What might be more problematic is if there is no history at all of choirs in the area. This may be for many reasons:

• the population density is too low to sustain a choir (in which case you may decide to set up somewhere a little distance away from where you’re based);
• there is no background of singing in the area (in which case you’ll need to kick-start an interest, possibly with a series of taster workshops);
• the local demographic is only interested in a very particular genre of singing (in which case you may need to adapt the flavour of your choir);
• the population is too diverse in culture, age, class, etc. (in which case you’ll have your work cut out, but it is possible);
• there used to be a choir, but it folded due to lack of interest (in which case you’ve arrived in the nick of time to prove everybody wrong!)

2. rehearsal venue

You’ve picked your geographical area and are now ready to find somewhere for the choir to meet. You can either set things up yourself, or you may find a venue willing to host you (for example, if the local arts centre might like you to set up a choir for them). Again you’ll need to do a considerable amount of local research. The internet can come in handy, but so can cafes, arts centres, health food shops, etc. Go around and see if you can find leaflets and posters advertising yoga classes, girl guides, etc. Make a note of the venues. Your local library often has a list of all the community groups that meet in the area. Make a note of the venues. Look up all the local churches and see if they have church halls. Make a note of the venues. See if there are any community halls, arts centres, galleries, performance spaces, etc. Make a note of the venues.

Once you’ve got a list of possible venues, make sure you’ve got the addresses and contact numbers. At this stage you’ll need to decide if you’re going it alone (i.e. hiring the space yourself), or trying to find a venue which will host and support your new venture.

finding someone to host you

This is related to the idea of someone employing you to start a choir (see Finding the money). Approach your local council and/ or performing arts service, any community centres, and any local arts centres. See if they are interested in having a choir at their venue. If they are, you may be able to get paid to set up and run the choir with the venue (and possibly publicity) being thrown in for free. However, you are then at the mercy of the venue as regards your income, what time and day of the week the space is available, etc. This is a very good way of getting started though, as you can always go private later. If they can’t pay you, some venues might let you use their space for free in exchange for some service, e.g. a free public workshop every now and then. Or maybe they need to fulfil some kind of community remit and you’ve come along at just the right time!

going it alone

Ring the person concerned with bookings and go to visit the space. Is it big enough? Will it be warm in the winter (or too hot in the summer?)? Does it have toilets on the premises. Is there a place to make tea and coffee? Is it accessible for people with mobility problems? Does it have disabled toilets? Can the sessions take place on the ground floor? Does the space feel right (this is intangible, but you’ll know when it’s right – often it has to do with the height of the ceiling and the amount of natural light)? Is there convenient parking (that is free at the time you want your seessions)? Is it easy to get to for your proposed members (e.g. is it on a bus route? is it in the middle of a complicated one-way system? is it a long way from the main population centre?)?

If, after answering all these questions, the venue seems to be suitable, then you need to ask:

• how much does it cost to hire; and
  
• when is the space available?

You will have considered your budget and sources of finance in Part 3: Finding the money. At this stage you will need to have an idea of what is a reasonable price to charge for individual sessions given the local demographic. You can look at what other choirs in the area charge, or similar length leisure activities (e.g. two-hour dance or yoga classes). Will you be offering any kind of concessions? This will enable you to work out very roughly what your expected income might be in the early days of your new choir.

Now that you know how much it costs to hire a particular space, will the projected income from choir members (assuming a slow growth in numbers) be sufficient to cover your costs? If not, where will the extra money come from whilst you’re building up the choir? You may have to reject some venues at this stage.

The right time

When a particular venue is available may end up dictating when you run the choir. But first you must give some consideration to the ideal time that you would like to have your regular sessions. This brings us to finding the right time. Again, this can be divided into global and local:

1. when is the best time of year to launch your new choir?
2. when in the week/ month is it best to run your regular sessions?

1. best time to launch

If you’re starting from scratch, you’ll need a certain amount of lead-in time to publicise the choir and let people know that it’s happening. The best time to launch your choir depends on whether you’ll be running it on a regular basis, and if so, how frequently.

There are pros and cons to running choirs on a weekly basis or on a monthly, or less frequent basis.

weekly sessions

Weekly sessions ensure that a pretty stable group of people will make up the choir (it is possible though to have a weekly ‘drop-in’ choir, but this does mean that each session has to be self-contained as you can’t assume any continuity from week to week) . It means that you can build week on week with voice training/ warm-ups and songs. You can decide to close the choir and have new intakes only at set points in the year. The sense of community may be stronger as people make friends and become familiar with each other. With a shared block of songs, it makes concerts easier to put on. The main downside is that some people are not able to commit to such regular sessions. Also, it means that you can’t go away for long periods to have holidays, take courses, or run other projects since you have to be there every week.

monthly sessions

Running a choir once a month means that you can often have longer sessions, especially if it is on a weekend. You can then focus in detail on a handful of songs and really nail them. You can even have themed sessions, drawing on different singers’ interests each time. People who find it hard to commit to weekly sessions, or find evenings difficult, will prefer this. It can be much more relaxed on a weekend and more fun since there is no long-term commitment. If you do work for a whole day, for example, you can even have a little public showing of what you’ve learnt at the end of the session. You can schedule the sessions to fit your other commitments and don’t have to have a session every single month. You can give people plenty of advance notice of sessions so they can put it in their diaries and make sure you get people to turn up. The main downside is that there will be little continuity from session to session. You may not end up with a ‘choir’ as such since this is little more than a series of one-day workshops. But this may suit both you and the local demographic.

sessions by the term

Many people run choirs which follow the local school terms. The main advantages of this are:

• choir members with children (or grandchildren) of school age won’t have to miss sessions;
• there is a precedent in that adult education classes follow the same pattern; and
  
• it means you have a familiar structure with ready-made breaks over the important holidays.

If you’re going to run the choir by the term, there is no point in trying to set the thing up in, say, June or July just before the long summer break! Also, if you plan to start in the spring term (January), it means your main publicity will have to go out just before Christmas when people have a lot more on their minds. However, many people do decide to take up the new hobby they’ve always been promising themselves when January comes around (New Year resolutions). Most adult education classes and all school years start in the autumn, so perhaps September is a good time to launch. That would give you the whole summer for a publicity campaign and possible taster workshops. On the other hand, many people go away for the summer, so publicity may fall on deaf ears.

If you plan to run the choir monthly, or even less frequently, then the launch date can be more flexible. Do take the long view though and think about why people might choose not to join a choir at a particular time of year.

Whenever you do decide to launch, you must make sure you have a long enough lead-in period to let people know of the choir’s existence. I will be covering the topic of Getting the word out in Part 5 next week.

2. regular sessions

Now you’ve decided how frequently you’ll be running your choir, you’ll need to decide the time of day, day of the week, and length of each session.

It’s worth bearing in mind that most potential choir members choose a choir simply because of the day of the week it’s on!!!! Many people just make their choice based on what night they have free — even travelling a bit further rather than going to a choir on their doorstep if they are doing something else on that night. Look at what else is on locally and try not to clash with other events which your choir members might like to attend. You may have to be guided on this by the availability of your chosen venue.

Having chosen your day, choosing the right time can have consequences. For example, if you choose a daytime slot, you’ll be restricting your possible recruits severely (e.g. stay-at-home parents, the unemployed, the retired). You’ll also be trying to tap into groups which may have little disposable income which might prevent you from covering your costs or earning a living. On the other hand, choosing such a targeted group might help you build a successful choir since you’re dealing with a specific niche.

If you decide on a weekday evening, you have to remember that most people work. You want to give people time to get home and have some supper before they venture out, so don’t start too early. Also, don’t start too late as people will have to get up for work the next morning, and also may get tired quickly after a day at work. This will also affect the length of your sessions. Anything from one to two hours is probably optimal. But if you’re running daytime sessions at the weekend, then you can have much longer sessions.

next week

Next week, in Part 5 of How to start your own community choir, I'll be looking at publicising your new choir and letting people know it exists in Getting the word out.

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

How to start your own community choir 3 — Finding the money

Last week, in Part 2 of this series, I looked at the Forward planning that is necessary before you actually start your own community choir. One of the issues that came up was: where is the money going to come from? In this post I will consider three possible approaches to financing your community choir.

By elwino

You’ve decided to start your very own community choir and have spent some time doing your forward planning, but somebody is going to have to finance all this. At the very least there will be the cost of hiring a venue to hold choir sessions in. Not to mention admin. costs (stationery, internet access, postage, etc.), publicity costs (promoting the choir initially, future concerts, website, etc.), and your own time (if you want to earn money from the enterprise).

There are at least three approaches to this:

1. get employed to run the choir
2. make the choir self-financing
3. seek funding and grants

1. Get employed to run the choir

In many ways this is the easiest option if you can find it! I started off being employed by my local council to run an adult education evening class called Songs from Around the World. They promoted it heavily for me throughout the city. It was a fantastic break for me since they supported me through the difficult growing period in the first few terms of the group. Things began slowly and it wasn’t for about 6 months until I had the necessary 12 or so minimum people signed up. Fortunately the council’s performing arts service really wanted the group to work so financed the initiative until it began paying for itself. The other big advantage was that they also found and paid for our rehearsal venue.

This is a great way to start out, but can have disadvantages further down the line. For instance, if (and when!) the choir becomes more successful, you will still be getting the standard council’s hourly rate for part-time teachers even though the income from the choir has gone through the roof. Also, as the choir grows, it may become harder for the council to find suitable venues. You may not have a lot of choice and end up in an out-of-the-way draughty school hall somewhere on the edge of town!

When I first started, it was quite easy to get into adult education, but increasingly in the UK you need to have certificates and paperwork to show you’ve completed this course and that course and that you have no criminal record, etc. etc.

Other ways of getting employed to run a choir are:

• find a suitable community arts centre that is prepared to host you and support you (I run the choir Woven Chords on this basis);
• get employed to take over an existing choir (sometimes an existing choir needs a new leader and the choir itself — via the committee — will employ you).

Both these options involve negotiating a suitable fee based on the size of the choir and the amount of work involved. Both of them bring a certain amount of admin. support and usually a ready-made venue.

To avoid any of the disadvantages mentioned above, you might decide to:

2. Make the choir self-financing

This is the clearest option: you charge choir members a fee to attend, and you take all the money. You have complete control over how much you charge, when the sessions are held, what venue to use and so on. As you become more successful and the choir grows, you end up earning more money.

The disadvantages are that in the early days when first starting out, you will usually have only a small number of choir members. This almost certainly won’t cover your costs. There is also no guarantee that the day will come when your choir is popular enough that you’ll be making a decent wage. You will also be responsible for all the admin. (collecting money, advertising for new members, finding and paying for a suitable venue), although it is possible to get help with this — see 4. Can I do it alone, or will I need help? in last week’s post on Forward planning. I’ll be looking at some of the issues involved in using a committee or group of volunteers in a later post: Carrying on (7. whose choir is it any way?).

3. Seek funding and grants

This is an option that I haven’t personally tried since I’m allergic to endless form-filling!

There are many sources of funding for the arts available, some on a local level and some on a national level. In all cases the funding will almost certainly not last for the proposed lifetime of the choir. Most funding bodies don’t want to get tied into providing money for an indefinite period. They are far happier funding specific projects with a limited lifetime and clear outcome. You may be able to get funding to help with the initial stages of setting up your choir. This will help to get you past the build-up stage when the income from choir members will be quite small. You could also apply for funding for a specific need: e.g. publicity, training, one-off taster workshop.

Even when your choir is up and running you may be able to tap into funding for a specific project, e.g. commissioning a composer to write for the choir, setting up a local choir festival.

Try your local council first for advice (find out who your local arts officer is) , or (in the UK) you can contact your regional office at Arts Council England, Arts Council Wales, Scottish Arts Council or Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

next week

Now we have a plan and an idea of where the money is coming from, the next step is to pick a location for your choir, sort out a venue and decide what time and day of the week to run it. Next week I will look at choosing the right place and the right time.

go to Chris Rowbury's website

How to start your own community choir 2 — Forward planning

You’ve decided that you want to start your very own community choir, so what’s the first step? Why, planning of course! Before you rush into the fun bit (the singing), you’ll need to take a lot of things into consideration. In fact, it’s not until at least Part 6 of this series of posts that you will actually do any singing! (unless you sing while you plan, which is admirable)

Last week, in Part 1 of How to start your own community choir, we looked at what the term community choir might actually mean and I suggested that it should be open to all and also involve a sense of community. With that in mind, we can now begin to look at what is involved in setting up your own community choir.

However, before you rush into anything you’ll need to ask yourself some tricky questions:

1. why start a choir now?
2. what skills do I have for running a community choir?
3. what do I want to achieve?
4. can I do it alone, or will I need help?
5. where is the money going to come from?
6. what type of choir will this be?
   

1. Why start a choir now?

Perhaps you’ve been meaning to do this for years and only now have got around to it. Or maybe you’ve taken early retirement or the kids have just left home. Whatever you think the reason is, it’s worth reflecting on why you haven’t done this before. Is it really the right time? Will this be a flash in the pan, or are you truly committed to making it work? Do you have to start a choir now (e.g. you need a way to make money), or is it just going to be a hobby (i.e. you have much less to lose if it doesn’t work out)? On a more general level: given the current economic climate, will what is basically a leisure activity for people be able to sustain itself financially?

There is another question that will pop up in a future post when I talk about finding a location to set up your choir: is there a need for a choir here and now? You may live in an area which is already saturated with choirs, or there may be such a low density of population that a big enough choir can’t be sustained, or even (and I can’t imagine this!) a place where people simply don’t want to sing as part of a group. Perhaps this is not the best time or place to be starting a choir (although I don’t want to put you off — honest!).

2.What skills do I have for starting and running a community choir?

Have you done this before? What experience do you have? There is a big difference between singing in a choir and leading one. How do you find out whether you have the necessary skills? Maybe you’ve run a small singing group with 5 or 6 people in it; perhaps you’ve led the after-school singing club; or you might have stood in for the musical director at your local choir one week.

Any of these will give you a clue as to whether you have the necessary skills to run a choir. But do you have the right skills? I’ve spent over 25 years teaching adult groups in the performing arts. Several times I have been asked to run a children’s group and each time it has been a disaster! Why? Because the skills I have developed in leading adult groups are very different from those needed to lead a group of children. Similarly, the skills needed to conduct a classical piece with an experienced choir of people who can all sight read are very different from those needed to teach a simple African song by ear to a group of inexperienced singers.

If you don’t have the experience or lack the necessary skills, where can you get them from? It might be possible to start out as an assistant in an existing choir (perhaps the one you sing in already?). Find a friendly choir leader who is prepared to mentor you and give you opportunities to teach songs to their choir now and again. There are also training courses and workshops you can go on. Some specifically for leading singing groups (conducting, teaching songs by ear, etc.) and some about setting up and running community groups in general. Here in the UK there are several organisations that can help you find such training: Sing for pleasure, Natural Voice Practitioners Network, Association of British Choral Directors, Sound it Out, Sound Sense, TONSIL, British Choirs on the Net, Gerontius, Making Music, ... to name but a few.

3. What do I want to achieve?

There are far easier ways of gaining glory than standing in front of a choir and waving your arms around! Leading a community choir should not involve your ego too much. Although you will be the ‘leader’ in many senses, a community choir only really works if there is a true sense of equality and community. Your job is to bring out the best in people, to give them a good time, to create a group who work as a team, to make beautiful music together! In an ideal world, the best choral directors are those who are not really noticed. The best result (in my book at least), is when a group feel that they’ve done it themselves and that I’ve made myself redundant.

There are many, many reasons for starting a community choir. At one level it doesn’t really matter what your reason is, but it’s always a good idea at the outset to have some idea of where you might be heading. Will this be a performance choir? Will you eventually want to hand over the reins to the choir members? Will this be a group to help people gain singing confidence after which they will leave and go onto other choirs? Will it simply be a fun session every now and then for people to drop in to have a good sing-song? The clearer you can be about this at the beginning, the more likely you are to have a successful choir.

4. Can I do it alone, or will I need help?

Do you have the necessary admin. skills to back up the choir? Some people are absolutely fantastically amazingly good and charismatic on an artistic level, but can’t keep accounts, mailing list databases or tidy offices. It’s fine to admit that you need help in certain areas, but you’ll have to factor this in: how can you find someone reliable to help you? how will you manage to pay them?

One way of getting help to run a community choir is to set it up as a constituted body with a committee made up of choir members. You will then have a number of (unpaid) people with clearly defined roles (secretary, treasurer, etc.) who are there to help and support you. And perhaps more importantly, this will give your new choir an identity of its own rather than just being a one-man or one-woman enterprise. If you decide to go down this route, you can approach existing community choirs that you know who would be happy to give you a copy of their constitution so you can have something to base your own on. It might also be a good idea to get a few interested singers on board at this stage to form your first committee and help you get the choir started. It’s probably best for these committee members to be potential choir members rather than asking friends and family (i.e. it’s not the same as having a neutral executive board).

You might also decide that you want external help in order to finance the project. Which brings us on to ...

5. Where is the money going to come from?

Aha — the thorny issue of finance! This will be the subject of next week’s post.

6. What type of choir will this be?

Yes, it’s going to be a community choir, but what ‘flavour’? What kind of people will make up the choir: absolute beginners who haven’t sung before? people who think they can’t sing? anybody and everybody? experienced singers? Will it be for a particular sub-section of the community: young people, the unemployed, gay men, over 60s, adults with special needs? What kind of music will you be making: unaccompanied harmony singing (acappella), songs from the shows, world music, barbershop, Western classical music, simple chants and rounds, sacred music?

Perhaps one of the most important considerations is whether the choir is going to perform in public or not. This is not something that needs to be fixed. Some choirs start off as non-performing choirs, but end up doing public concerts. If your choir is for inexperienced singers, or people who don’t think they can ‘sing’, then it’s probably a good idea to emphasise that the choir won’t be doing public performances. If, however, you want to attract more experienced singers, then you might want to flag up that the choir will be performing regularly (in which case you’ll need to do some forward planning and research possible local venues for performances).

It may seem that asking these questions goes against the idea of ‘community choir’ that I laid out in last week’s post, i.e. that the choir is open to all. However, every person has different needs and different tastes, so a single community can support several ‘open to all’ choirs, each with a different flavour. ‘Open to all’ means that, in principle, you won’t exclude anyone from joining you choir. But that also means that people are free to join whatever choir suits them best.

You need to be very clear from the outset what kind of choir you are setting up. That is what people are signing up to. If you decide later to change the nature of the choir (e.g. by narrowing the repertoire to just Eastern European songs or by beginning to perform in public), this should only be done in consultation with the current choir members. It’s not fair to move the goalposts on a whim without considering who it will affect.

next week

Next week, in Part 3, I will be looking at possible ways to finance the setting up and running of your community choir: How to start your own community choir 3 — Finding the money

go to Chris Rowbury's website

How to start your own community choir 1

OK, strap yourselves in, this is going to be a long topic entailing a series of 10 posts! Stay tuned for future weeks when I’ll be looking in detail at how to start a community choir.

Children At Risk Foundation – CARF (www.carfweb.net)

Here are all the posts in this series:

1. What is a community choir?
2. Forward planning
3. Finding the money
4. The right place and the right time
5. Getting the word out
6. The first session
7. Carrying on
8. The choir which just grew and grew
9. Tending and caring for a growing choir
10. Case study: guest post from David Burbidge
    

What is a community choir?

Apparently singing is the UK’s second most popular activity after sport. According to The Guardian:

“there are more than 25,000 choirs and over half a million singers in the UK*. They get some of the health benefits of the sporty types — increased lung capacity, better posture and so on. But they also get the sheer joy of singing in a group with friends.”

*These figures are supplied by TONSIL (The Ongoing Singing Liaison Group) which

“represents 14 organisations promoting choral singing across a wide variety of genres, supporting over 25,000 members choirs and over 500,000 singers, who each year perform to audiences totalling nearly 3 million.”

(In stark contrast to this, Cindy L. Bell of Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY wrote a paper this year entitled Toward a definition of a community choir in which she contends that “many community choirs [in the US] are either facing a declining membership and ageing singers, or have evolved into semi-elite performance machines that are no longer characteristic of the community”).

Many media outlets have picked up on this phenomenon of late (e.g. The Times: Choirs are becoming cool, especially since Last Choir Standing arrived on the BBC.

So … choirs are cool, and more and more people seem to want to join singing groups. An excellent time to set up your very own community choir. But before I can start on that, I have to ask: what do we mean by community choir?

Let’s start with fellow Natural Voice Practitioner Denis Donnelly, and his musical partner Shivon Robinsong. In the promotion for their training programme for community choir leaders, they say:

“Imagine … a world where every city, town, and neighborhood had a community choir, one where the music of many cultures and faiths was celebrated. Imagine … a non-auditioned choir in your community where all were welcome. Imagine … that this choir could support and engage in powerful community-based activities.”

For me, they have hit on the two essential defining points of what a community choir is:

• open to all
• a sense of community

Open to all

A community choir should be open to anybody who wants to come and sing. Basically, everyone is treated equally and nobody is excluded. This means that:

• there are no auditions (everyone is able to sing)
• the choir is not affiliated to any particular idea, culture or organisation (e.g. church or other faith group, particular style of music)
• no prior musical knowledge is required (e.g. the ability to read music)
• people are not excluded on the basis of age, race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, etc.
  

In practice, however, it may well be possible to call a choir a community choir even though it only targets a specific (possibly otherwise under-represented) sub-group of the local community, e.g. community gospel choir, gay men’s chorus, barbershop group, women’s choir, youth chorus, etc.

Sense of community

A group of people singing together, united by their love of music, will inevitably create a strong sense of community. This is definitely something that any community choir should strive for instead of being a group of anonymous voices who are simply there to serve the needs of the music and/ or the musical director. To this end, many community choirs often have some kind of organising committee which represents the views of the choir as a whole, and which also helps to run social events for the choir.

Any community choir also exists within a wider community from which it draws its members. Such a choir can become a focal point for a local community by offering public performances, raising money for local charities, setting up concerts for local schools, care homes, etc., and representing the local community on a wider stage by, for example, entering choir competitions or performing at national choir festivals.

Even though a community choir might be initially set up by an individual or a local arts organisation, eventually there should be a sense that the choir is a result of “people grouping themselves together — not from policy on high.” (Community singing doesn't need bureaucracy).

Now, armed with a slightly less vague idea of what a community choir is, next week I shall look at the planning needed before you rush out and start your choir. Part of this involves difficult questions such as: why now? what do I have to offer? where is the money coming from?

See you next week for part 2 of How to start your own community choir — Forward planning.

go to Chris Rowbury's website

There are plenty of good reasons to sing

I posted a couple of weeks ago on reasons why people might not join choirs or attend singing workshops (I love to sing, but I’m not leaving the house!). Deb suggested that I should point out the reasons why people do join choirs and come to singing workshops. Well, here we go …

Watoto children's choir by Colin Adland

It seems to me that there are four main areas of benefit to singing in a group:

1. social — singing is a community activity
2. personal — singing creates a sense of achievement
3. musical — singing together makes for a great sound
4. well-being — singing is good for your health

1. Singing is a community activity

• you will make friends who have a shared interest
• working as a team — every contribution counts, but the team must pull together as one
• creating a community of like-minded people with a shared goal
• you will meet people from a range of different backgrounds
• and for you men out there: there are always far more women than men in mixed choirs!

2. Singing creates a sense of achievement

• when you finally nail a difficult song
• constantly improving your singing technique
• regularly developing your vocal skills
  
• learning new skills and languages
• remembering words and melodies
• being challenged by more difficult material
• performing in a concert in front of an audience
  

3. Singing together makes for a great sound

• being part of a big musical sound
• the pleasures of harmonising with others
• creating beautiful music together
• rehearsing to make a song sound really good
• getting positive feedback from audiences after working hard on a song

4. Singing is good for your health

• warm-ups improve the body’s flexibility, sense of rhythm, balance, self-awareness, etc.
  
• breathing techniques help to reduce stress and relax the body
• expressing yourself through sound helps to release emotional blockages
• being part of a group working together creates a sense of belonging, community and shared endeavour
• singing is an aerobic activity that increases oxygenation in the blood stream and exercises major muscle groups in the upper body
• singing has a positive effect in reducing stress levels through the action of the endocrine system which is linked to our sense of emotional well-being
• singing can increase lung capacity, improve posture, clear respiratory tubes and sinuses, and can increase mental alertness through greater oxygenation
• singing promotes both a healthy heart and an enhanced mental state as well as improving your immune system — so you will live longer!
• recent Swedish research has shown that choral singing has strong effects on well-being, in that positive emotions increase significantly, and, in turn, negative emotions radically subside. Choral singers, particularly women, are happier, more alert and relaxed after a rehearsal.

I’m sure there are many, many more very good reasons for joining a choir or attending a singing workshop. Do let me know if you can think of any others!

Next week: How to start your own community choir.

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A small post about blogs and blogging

I only usually post on this blog about choirs and singing, but I’d like to share a couple of items about my blog in general.

You may be interested in a little interview I did for Fuel My Blog the other week: We Are Fuel My Blog. I talk a little bit about how and why I started the blog, and the process of writing each week.

I also got a 7.0 (very good) rating out of 10 from blogged.com. They evaluated the blog based on the following criteria: Frequency of Updates, Relevance of Content, Site Design, and Writing Style.

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Singing across the age divide

There are choirs for gay men, choirs for women, choirs for socialists, choirs for hire, choirs for weddings and choirs for the deaf. There are Welsh choirs, youth choirs, gospel choirs, Bulgarian choirs, barbershop choirs, school choirs, church choirs and the Young at Heart Chorus. But there don’t seem to be that many truly mixed, general choirs with a wide age range. The world of choirs seems to have become ghettoised (I've touched on this subject before: Children and special interest groups first?).

As you probably realise already, I run choirs and singing workshops that are open to all – and I mean all (my only personal restriction is that I don’t work with ‘kids’, i.e. under 16s. I’m just not good with crowd control!). However, the reality is that most people who attend my choirs and workshops are over 40, with many over 60.

Now it’s not that youngsters don’t like to sing. There is much good work going on in schools, many youth choirs of all types across the country, and I even get the occasional 18-year-old wandering into one of my sessions. It’s just that young people tend to stick together creating homogeneous choirs of singers of a similar age. Many young people are put off by the word ‘choir’ and think that it’s fuddy duddy, uncool, old-fashioned and full of old people. They may be right on the last point, but then that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy if they don’t join.

I really don’t know how to appeal to youngsters! I’d love to run groups which truly reflect a cross-section of society in terms of social background, age, race and gender. However, the reality is that it’s mainly older middle-class white women who join. The sessions I run are fun, high energy and with a wide-ranging repertoire. When the occasional adolescent does stumble across a workshop of mine by accident, they usually enjoy it.

I came across a young choir recently called The Heard: “a contemporary choir for the contemporary people of London. They’re not looking to ancient eastern spirituality to get a natural high; they’re just singing their favourite songs together in perfect harmony for kicks.” Although they perform vocal versions of more contemporary repertoire (Bjork, Radiohead, Hot Chip, Klaxons) they are actually fairly traditional in their approach. The arrangements are not particularly exciting and often the choir simply acts as a backing group to one lead singer.

So what attracted these young people to join this ‘choir’? Was it just the repertoire? Was it that fact that the leader is also young?

I’d love to have some suggestions on how to get more young people to join general, open-access choirs. Please send me some ideas!

What happens to all the people in youth choirs when they leave school or get a bit older? Why don’t they join adult choirs (see When and why do we stop singing?)? Would a contemporary pop repertoire attract more young people? Could I form a young people’s choir by simply saying “open to all 16 – 25 year-olds”?

On another point: I’d like to run a new workshop doing acappella covers of more contemporary ‘pop’, but can’t think of a snappy title! Any suggestions? I would like to cover the more ‘indie’ bands such as Radiohead, Elbow, Vampire Weekend and the like.

Next week, after Deb’s comment on last week's post (“How about another list: unexpected benefits from singing in the choir!”), I’ll be covering the opposite topic to my reasons to not sing post: There are plenty of good reasons to sing!

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I love to sing, but I'm not leaving the house!

I know quite a few people who love to sing with others, but somehow don’t ever get around to joining a choir or coming to a singing workshop. They know they will enjoy it, singing is very important to them, there’s nothing really stopping them, and yet still they don’t come.

Last week I talked generally about why we avoid things that make us feel good. This week I’m looking at specific reasons why people who love to sing might not join a choir or go to a singing workshop, even though it’s something that they know they will enjoy. These are some of the reasons I came up with. Do please add to the list!

“I can’t sing”
Aha, this old chestnut! A common complaint heard from many people who are very happy to sing around the house for their own pleasure, but would hate to ‘inflict’ their horrible voice on other people. Of course everyone can sing (see Why people think they can't sing). Not necessarily in the same way or to the same standard, but they can sing nevertheless. All the choirs and singing workshops I have ever led are based on this fact and we somehow manage to make a really good sound together. We perform to paying audiences who really enjoy our concerts and have sold many CDs.

“I’m too embarrassed and frightened to sing in front of others”This is completely understandable if someone has not sung in the company of others for a long time. I try always to point out that everyone else probably feels the same and that nobody will be put on the spot and asked to sing solo. The beauty of large groups singing together is that people can ‘hide’ in the big sound and only come more forward when they are ready.

“I think that ‘choirs’ are formal, stuffy and boring”The word ‘choir’ does conjure up images of interminable school assemblies or long church services or rows of posh people dressed up and standing stiffly singing music that we can’t really relate to. However, anyone who watched the recent Last Choir Standing series will know that there are many, many different kinds of ‘choir’, and certainly one that will suit each individual taste. We need to reclaim the word ‘choir’!

“I’ll need to be ‘musical’ and able to read notation and understand music”Some choirs indeed require certain musical knowledge, but there are countless choirs and open singing workshops that don’t assume any kind of musical knowledge or previous singing experience. Lots of these teach songs by ear and never even hand out lyric sheets.

“It will be full of old people!”Yes it’s true: many established choirs tend to consist mainly of people over 40. This can put off younger singers. However, from my experience, I’ve worked with groups whose ages range from 18 to 80 and it’s simply not an issue as everyone is connected by their common love of singing. I’ll be covering the topic of attracting younger members in next week’s post. 

“I won’t know the songs”When joining an established choir they will almost certainly already have a repertoire of songs. The choir I lead, Woven Chords, now has over 180 songs in its repertoire! However, in a one-day workshop, everyone will be in the same boat as all the songs will be fresh and new. Even if someone does know a song already, they certainly won’t know the particular harmony arrangement. In most choirs, new members are gently led into the old repertoire, and every new season starts with songs that are brand new to everyone, so there’s no chance of you getting left behind!

“I’m too busy and certainly don’t have the time to make a regular commitment”This mainly comes from blokes I have to say! I guess many men put their jobs before their own pleasure and leisure. It’s strange how we have many women in choirs who have high-powered jobs and families, yet they manage to find the time to come and sing. Really, is it that much of a time commitment, especially for those who say they love to sing? Two hours a week, or maybe five hours on a Saturday. Surely you can find fit in having a good time in your busy schedule??!!

“Singing together is old-fashioned and usually religious or classical”It may seem to be old-fashioned, but that doesn’t detract from the fun and enjoyment that can be had. Dancing is old-fashioned too and has been around for millennia! Most people know singing together from church or by seeing classical concerts, yet there are many, many choirs and singing groups throughout the country who don’t sing religious or classical music. The choir sessions are fun and vibrant, nothing old-fashioned or dated about them!

“I don’t know how to find a suitable choir or singing workshop”Google is a wonderful thing. Most choirs and people who run singing workshops have websites these days. Just type in ‘choir’ or ‘singing workshop’ and your location and something’s bound to come up. If you definitely want an opportunity to sing based on the main principles that everyone can sing and that you don’t have to have any musical knowledge, then you want a group or workshop run by a Natural Voice practitioner. Go to the NVPN website and search under groups or workshops and specify your location.

“I’m terrible at remembering words and tunes”Me too (see Papa's got a brand new song)! Many people don’t like being in that strange state where they don’t quite know what they are doing and are a bit lost. It’s not a nice feeling. But you have to be patient and allow plenty of time to get a tune and the words under your belt. It’s about trusting the process and making mistakes as you become more familiar with a song. Many people think they can’t ‘sing’ because they imagine that ‘proper’ singers only need to hear a song once before they know it perfectly. They don’t realise that even professional singers can take several months to really learn a song and make it their own. Like most things, learning songs gets easier with practice.

“I’m too scared to perform in public, I just want to have fun”Many community choirs in this country never perform in public, there are also plenty of singing for pleasure groups who just meet to sing together with no thought of anyone outside the group hearing them. Even if you join a choir that performs, it is usually not compulsory to perform. However, as you get more confident as a singer I’m sure you’ll want to share the wonderful sound with an audience!

I’m sure there are many, many other reasons why people don’t join choirs or come to singing workshops. I’d love to hear from people who can add to this list. If we can help to counter these obstacles, we can get more people singing!

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Why we avoid things that make us feel good

“I love singing, but I haven’t sung for years and I really, really miss it.”

“So why haven’t you joined a choir or come to a singing workshop?”

I ran a Beach Boys workshop a while back and a woman came up to me at the end to thank me. She said that she hadn’t sung since she was at school about 30 years before and had really missed it. I asked her why she had decided to start again now? Why had she left it so long? Why had she chosen this particular opportunity on this particular day?

She couldn’t really give me a clear answer. This set me to wondering: if someone loves to sing so much, why don’t they join a choir or come to one of the many singing workshops that are available? More generally, how come there are loads of things that we love to do, that make us feel good, and yet we constantly put off doing them??!!

I used to love jogging and would go out every evening for at least half an hour come rain or shine. I absolutely loved being outside and giving the lungs a good work-out. I always felt great when I got back thanks to those good old endorphins. Yet when it came time to go running, actually going upstairs to change into my running gear felt like a huge pain. I was too tired, I couldn’t be bothered, it was cold outside, I’d only just got home, there was something good on TV … there were always plenty of excuses. It took an enormous amount of will power to walk up those stairs and change into my running shorts. I left the house reluctantly and with a heavy heart, yet within minutes I was grinning like a Cheshire cat and really, really having fun.

There are so many activities like this that we know we enjoy and make us feel good: meditating, going for a walk, doing some gardening, clearing our room up, cooking a great meal, exercising, phoning an old friend, … and yet we put them off and put them off even though we know they will make us feel good afterwards.

These are not the kind of things that we know we ought to do because they are supposed to be good for us: diet, stop smoking, go to the gym, etc. With those activities we don’t usually get a buzz of pleasure, just a sense of smug satisfaction that we’ve done a chore. No, the kinds of activities I’m talking about are those that we’ve done many times before and are guaranteed to give us pleasure and make us feel better.

If you’ve read this far, perhaps you’re now expecting the pay-off: an answer to why we avoid these things. But I’m afraid I simply don’t know! I do it myself, and everyone I know does it. It continues to baffle me. I’ve had people in my choirs who say that singing is their first and only love, that they would be lost without it, that it’s a life saver, and yet after a few sessions they leave and never come back! I’ve had people desperately begging me to jump to the front of the choir waiting list because they absolutely need to join right now because they love singing so much and would be lost without it. When a vacancy arises I invite them to join, but they never turn up!

Of course, there may be other, personal reasons why these people behave like they do, but it does seem strange. I’d be fascinated to hear from any of you out there who might have any kind of insight into why people avoid things that they know make them feel good.

In next week’s post I’ll be looking at several very specific reasons why people might not join a choir or go to a singing workshop even though they love to sing with others.

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Should singing together be a guilty pleasure?

Imagine going to Soho with a group of like-minded friends and gathering in a dimly-lit, subterranean private room with plush seats and stylish decor. Fully kitted out with all the necessary equipment along with a comprehensive cocktail menu, this should be a night to remember! It’s not cheap mind, and you might not want to tell all your mates where you’ve been or what you’ve been up to, even though it’s all perfectly legal and above board.

And what is this secret, guilty pleasure? Why, singing together of course!

Welcome to the world of Lucky Voice:

“the most liberating, heart racing, life-affirming social singing experience on earth.”

Founded in 2005 by Martha Lane Fox (of lastminute.com fame), their

“glamorous bars have allowed groups of friends to sing their hearts out in the luxury of their own private rooms.”

I stumbled across Martha talking about Lucky Voice on the radio last week. She was saying that there were few opportunities these days for people to gather together and sing. Gone are the days of community sing-alongs and families gathered around the piano at home. Gone are the days when there was a large repertoire of songs with lyrics and tunes that everybody knew and could sing together.

Instead we have karaoke! But even then many people are embarrassed to sing in front of strangers, so Lane Fox has imported an idea from Japan and set up private booths where you can sing your heart out (after a few drinks to loosen up the inhibitions) with only your nearest and dearest as audience. What a sorry state of affairs!

Perhaps we don’t sing together as readily as we did in the past (see Singing from the same hymn sheet and Singing together), but there are plenty of other opportunities to sing together in this country which aren’t expensive and which celebrate a sense of community and inclusivity rather than clandestine, exclusive gatherings. I mean, of course, the thousands of choirs and singing workshops across the UK.

However, these choirs and workshops still don’t generally attract a true cross-section of society. Many choirs have an ageing membership and it’s still hard to recruit men. I want to look at what might be preventing people from joining choirs and singing workshops in my next post.

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The devil doesn't always have the best songs!

It turns out that the devil might not have the best tunes after all. Although I run a secular choir (I don’t have a religious bone in my body!) we do end up singing a lot of sacred songs. This is purely because some of the tunes and harmonies are fantastic! In fact, because the sacred songs go down so well, I even created a one-day workshop called Sacred Songs to Soothe the Soul.

In a comment on my last post (Singing together) Deb said:

“I gather that many choirs had their roots in religious settings. Where that is the case, it would not be surprising if some choir members and some audience members were less than happy if the choir’s repertoire is extended to secular pieces.”

I guess the opposite applies also: if a choir is purely secular and then starts including a lot of religious songs, some of the choir and audience might be a bit upset! I know of several secular choirs that strongly object to any religious songs being sung. Some exclude them entirely, whilst others simply change the words. (I have even heard of one musical director changing all occurrences of the word ‘God’ to ‘dog’!).

I’ve covered the subject of the joys of community singing and why so much singing happens only in religious contexts (Singing from the same hymn sheet), and also the difficulty of finding suitable venues so often ending up performing in churches (Not enough venues to go round). I’m always surprised by how strongly people feel about solely religious or solely secular choirs and repertoire. I know of many non-religious people who simply won’t come to see a musical performance (of any kind) in a church since they assume it will be overtly religious. I also know of people who will only go to concerts if they have strong religious content. I remember going to see the Harlem Gospel Choir expecting an evening of superb music, but it turned out to be more like an evangelical meeting!

There is a more general issue here other than just secular vs. religious: how much can a choir change its repertoire and still keep it’s members and audience on board? When you join a choir, you sign up to its particular style, approach and repertoire. If that were to suddenly change, then you would be justifiably upset. However, all choirs need to grow and develop, and as long as such changes are gradual, there should be no problem. The difficulty comes when a choir (or band or song-writer) becomes associated strongly with a particular style or genre and the public expect them to always deliver in that style. A problem of becoming too successful?!

Deb goes onto say:

“I’m a member of a “world music” choir — while I don’t think we have consciously avoided religious or praise songs, the pieces we have sung so far have virtually all been secular. I don’t know for sure, because I haven’t asked, but I would expect this is one of the reasons why we have one of the most visibly diverse memberships I have ever seen, including people from several continents and with a range of beliefs.”

We, too, are a world music choir. Whilst being clearly secular, we do have a lot of sacred songs in our repertoire. We don’t do overtly ‘praise songs’, we tend to avoid any ‘Jesus’ references (‘Lord’ is OK as it’s more inclusive), and I always try to cover a range of different faiths. I guess it may be a bit easier in my choir since we sing in the original language so the meaning is not to the forefront, rather it is the beauty of the music and harmonies. The main difficulties are in gospel and South African church songs when the lyrics are in English. I try not to change lyrics, but I do select songs carefully.

The fact is, the harmony singing tradition of countries such as South Africa and New Zealand arose in the first place from christian missionaries bringing harmonised hymns with them. These harmonies were then appropriated by the indigenous people and assimilated into their own music. However, many of the resulting songs still revolve around the church. So if we want to sing harmony songs from certain cultures, we will inevitably come across religious songs.

Like Deb’s choir, I try to encourage as diverse a membership as possible. Since the choir has no allegiance to any particular faith or culture (I try to cover songs from as wide a range as sources as possible), it should be equally attractive to all. I like to think that our choir is neither secular nor religious, but just celebrates good songs whatever their source.

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Singing together

Despite an apparent re-awakened interest in singing, we don’t sing together like we used to.

The plethora of TV programmes like X Factor and Pop Idol show how popular singing still is (but mainly they show us how desperate some people are for fame!). We buy CDs by the shed-load and download MP3 tracks like they’re going out of fashion. We love singing: we love to listen to it, and we love to join in with the karaoke down the pub or sing with our mates at the football match.

However, despite the interest in TV programmes like The Choir, The Singing Estate, and Last Choir Standing, we tend to sing alone in the bath rather than in choirs or communities.

In last Friday’s Guardian, Laura Barton wrote a fascinating piece about the Staithes fishermen’s choir (Laura Barton on the sweetest sounds she ever heard) (actually, it should be called the Staithes men’s choir since they say that “we are not a fishermen’s choir because there’s no bloody fish!”). At the end of the article she says that

“it makes me a little sad to think of how we have lost each other’s voices, drifted too far now from those communities sewn together by song, where music is the thread that runs from generation to generation and from each to each, joining neighbour to neighbour, sacred to secular, land to sea.” (Laura Barton)

Back in April 2007 I wrote of the “good old days when we all used to gather round a piano and just sing for hours” (Singing from the same hymn sheet) and of the important part that religion played in providing a large repertoire of songs that everyone in the local community would have known. The Staithes choir was one of three that centred around the Methodist chapels of the 19^th Century.

“The fishermen all foregathered on the staith on a Sunday evening, in front of the Cod and Lobster, and they marched up the street singing at the tops of their voices ... and then as they come to the various chapels, which of course they all had their own ones, they peeled off still singing, and went into it. And it was then that if you come down at this village on a Sunday evening you’d practically hear them lifting the roofs off.” (from the article Staithes men's choir on www.mustrad.org.uk)

Today the choir has to spread its net wider to appeal to audiences, and they now include folk songs and more recent compositions. However, there has been some resistance to the choir’s more secular material, and audiences, particularly organisers, are not always in agreement with the choir’ diverse repertoire.

Unfortunately, like many long-established choirs (especially those relying on male voices), the Staithe’s men’s choir finds it hard to recruit new, young members. Slowly it will fade away as members gradually die.

“We aren’t getting youngsters in. And you find that wherever go, if you listen to the Welsh choirs, and see them on the telly, you don’t see many young ones in.”

I’ve written before on the subject of the difficulty of attracting young men to choirs, and why it’s difficult getting to men to sing in any case (Where are all the male singers?). It was very satisfying to see Only Men Aloud on Last Choir Standing. However, they were in a minority. All the other male voice choirs in the competitions were had much older members, and the mixed choirs were distinctly lacking in male voices.

I ran a Beach Boys workshop on Saturday and there were around 40 participants, of whom only six were men (and only one of these could have been called ‘young’!). I was chatting with a member of a barbershop group who said that they had run a series of free workshops for men to introduce harmony singing. They got about 4o blokes signed up for the short course, but afterwards, only two of them stayed and joined the barbershop choir. Something to do with the difficulty of making a regular commitment! But how come so many women in choirs manage to make a commitment? Why is singing more important to them? I don’t think I’ll ever figure out why more men don’t join choirs!

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The great choir debate

Yes indeed, everyone’s talking about it. The buzz is on the street. Heated arguments can be overheard at bus stops. Debate rages on the 08:37 to London Bridge. Shoppers stop in the aisles to discuss the finer points of choral singing.

Or not!

During the recent Last Choir Standing TV programme, their website proffered a few questions which were answered by some choral specialists and then opened up to the general public. They called these questions (rather grandly) The Great Choir Debate. I thought I’d take a brief look at the questions and offer my own two ha’p’orth. I’d love to hear what you think, so please leave a comment.

1. What’s the one thing an untrained person can look for in a choir that indicates how good they are?
   The size of the audience and the length of the choir’s waiting list. If the choir is any good – at whatever level and in whichever style – it will have a good following and loads of people wanting to join.
2. Are there any surprising benefits from singing in a choir?
   I don’t know about surprising, but there are clearly many benefits from belonging to a choir: health, maintaining mental agility, making new friends, developing music and listening skills, sense of achievement after performances, sense of belonging to a community, and more.
   
3. What should a choir wear, and should points be deducted if they look terrible?!
   Hmmmm …. one person’s ‘terrible’ is another person’s ‘chic’. Choir dress is a bit of a sore issue with me (Dress to impress?). I really don’t believe in uniforms, and certainly not robes! I don’t think it matters what a choir wears as long as there is a sense of cohesion to give the impression that everybody belongs to the same group and, most importantly, the people have made an effort (whatever that means to the individual). As to whether points should be deducted, I don’t believe in choral competitions any way, so no.
4. Is there anything a choir shouldn’t sing?
   Obviously there can be no generalisation here, I think it’s all down to taste (see When is a song not a song?). I think it’s very, very difficult for a large choir to sing a lengthy ballad, especially those with flexible timing. It’s very hard for the group to stay absolutely in time with each other and to be able to articulate well enough. I also don’t think choirs should sing songs whose original version depends a lot on instrumentation (e.g. well-known guitar riffs), since that will involve impersonating instruments – something that I just don’t get!
5. Should singing be compulsory in schools?
   I think music should be compulsory in schools. Not sure everyone should be forced to sing though.
6. Can anybody sing in a choir?
   Yes. That’s not to say everyone is equally able to sing well, and not that everyone can perform to an acceptable standard, but everyone can sing.
7. Should choirs include ‘choreography’ in their performance?
   Since I believe that the voice is rooted in the body, I have long thought that there should be some element of movement when singing (Making a song and dance of it). Not necessarily full-blown choreography (which can be a bit distracting and becomes more musical theatre than a choral performance), but there should be some life in the singers and an indication that their bodies are connected to their singing. There was a lot of good choreography in Last Choir Standing, but there were some points where I just wanted people to stand still so I could listen.
8. Is the world of choral singing competitive?
   It doesn’t have to be, although there are many people who join choirs because of its competitive nature. Personally I’m against choral competitions (Singing competitions are for losers and OK, you win - facing the competition).
9. Is there anything conductors do that sets the alarm bells ringing?
   Yes: lose their temper, shout, get stressed, be unclear or confusing, promote a ‘me’ vs. ‘them’ attitude. Choral conducting should be done in a calm, encouraging, supporting manner to get the best out of the singers (In you I trust). Conductors should also create a sense of shared responsibility amongst the whole choir.
10. How many people does it take to make a choir?
    I think there is a difference between an ensemble or singing group and a choir. I think a choir has to be at least 20 or so strong. It is possible to have just four singers to sing a four-part harmony, but it’s not a choir. There’s a similar situation in the orchestral world: a string quartet or chamber group is not an orchestra.

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