Getting the best out of your choir 3: the moderate choir leader

We first came across ‘the martinet’ in the first post in this series (Getting the best out of your choir 1: moderate or martinet?), and met her opposite number ‘the mouse’ in last week’s post. My contention is that there is a middle way between these two extremes, that the kind of leader to get the best out of a choir is one who is moderate in temper and approach.

Here is my definition of the ideal choir leader. Maybe we’re not all there yet, but it’s certainly something to aspire to!

the moderate

even-tempered
You need someone out front who can keep their calm whilst all around them is chaos and confusion (Calm down dear, it’s only a song!).

There will come a point with every choir when

• the singers seem to lose all their self-confidence;
• you tackle a song that seems to be just too hard to deal with;
• the rehearsal is going so bad that everyone wants to go home and bury their heads in the sand;
• no matter how hard you try the whole thing sounds just awful;
• the hideously complicated structure of the song you’re working on is just beyond everyone’s comprehension;
• the song that you’d perfected last week just falls apart in front of everyone’s eyes;
• everybody is stumbling over the words of the latest foreign song;
• despite weeks of hard work, the altos still can’t get their part right;
• hardly anyone turns up to the final rehearsal before a big concert because there’s a vicious bug going around;
• the lead soloist fails to turn up for the concert …

You get the picture: if something can go wrong, it will! In these situations it doesn’t help anyone if the choir leader gets stressed out, begins to shout, loses the plot, and generally has a melt-down. You need someone who is steady, takes it all in their stride, fills the choir with the confidence that everything is going to be all right, trusts in the process, and realises that in the grand scheme of things, it’s just a bunch of people singing songs.

fun-loving and playful
Bringing humour into the equation is a fantastic way of helping people relax and lose their inhibitions. A few laughs lets people off the hook and helps them to realise that it’s not the end of the world if they get something wrong.

In concerts, if the choir leader has a good rapport with the audience, they are immediately on your side. If you laugh at any mistakes, then the audience visibly relaxes since you’re not setting yourselves up to be perfection itself. Everybody loves it when they realise that you’re all human and therefore vulnerable.

Having fun and laughter isn’t the same as not being serious about what you do. We can make light of situations without compromising our standards. We still want to strive to be the best that we can and take our job of making music seriously, but approach it in a light-hearted way.

Being playful and child-like, using imagery and storytelling, improvising and trying things differently are all great ways of helping singers learn and to bring out the best. The focus is off the person and the music and onto imagination and risk-taking in a safe environment. Having played with a song in as many ‘wrong’ ways as possible liberates people from over-familiarity and set ways of singing, introduces the idea that there is no ‘right’ way of performing a song, and prepares people for any ‘mistakes’ during a concert which otherwise might throw them.

people person
Any half-way decent choir leader needs to actually like people! It’s not enough to just love music or singing, leading a choir is about working with people, not a bunch of instruments. Sure, it’s fun to have all those voices at your disposal, but behind each one is a unique individual. There will be vulnerabilities, rivalries, misunderstandings, frustrations, jealousies, fear, and so on – all those things that make us human beings. A choir leader has to acknowledge and work with this. You are not dealing with a bunch of robots who can deliver at will.

knows their stuff
Whether or not you use technical jargon or display your musical knowledge freely, you need to know what you’re doing! And if you don’t at any point, you need to be humble enough to admit it to the choir. They need to feel that they are in safe hands and that you know your stuff. Once you have built that confidence, you can take the choir into uncharted areas, but never ever bluff as you will soon be found out!

I like to use the analogy of an explorer. As a choir leader I am taking the choir on a journey. I have all the necessary gear: compass, ropes, warm clothing, maps, etc., together with a great deal of knowledge about navigation, finding trails, dealing with hazards, knowing the terrain, etc. etc. So I am totally equipped to lead people on a journey, but I don’t necessarily know where we will end up! I can guarantee though that we will arrive safely and have lots of fun on the way.

non-judgmental, encouraging and accepting
To get the best out of someone you need to encourage them, to praise them when they get things right or achieve something, but also to accept their limitations, acknowledge that they’re trying their hardest and to not judge them (especially in a community choir).

If you shout at someone, chastise them for making a mistake, sneer at them because they might not be as good as their fellow singers, ask them to do something that is beyond their capabilities, never acknowledge their achievements … then that person will go into their shell and not bother trying hard or taking the risk of getting something wrong. They will stop believing in themselves and will act through fear. This does not make for a good choir!

firm but fair
Being non-judgmental doesn’t mean that you can’t expect high standards. When someone gets something wrong, you can point that out and ask them to do it again. You can set standards and have expectations about a range of things: being on time, choir dress, not talking during rehearsals, learning words off by heart, tuning, etc. But you need to make your expectations clear to everyone and be consistent and fair. It’s not good changing the goal posts every time, especially if you don’t let the choir know! People respect a firm hand if it seen to be fair. Apply any rules you have equally to everyone.

one of the team
You are not the big ‘I am’, you are not the sole reason that the choir sounds good, you are replaceable, you are just one of the team: a vital component of the whole, but not special. You happen to occupy a specific role in the group that is acknowledged by everyone. You may have a particular set of skills and experience, but that doesn’t make you better than everyone else.

You are just one of the team and it is your responsibility – along with everyone else – to make the music as wonderful as possible and for everyone to have as good a time as possible.

focus on the people and the process
This is related to the fact that a good choir leader is very much a people person. To get the best out of your choir you can’t simply focus on the end product or the music alone. You need to acknowledge the individuals who make up the choir and focus more on the process of making music rather than sacrificing everything to the music.

I have talked about this before (We are not here to serve the music) and not every choir leader will agree. But I think that if you are a moderate choir leader with all the attributes that I have outlined above, you will end up making wonderful music, plus have the bonus of a committed group of choir members who work out of love and not fear and who have built a strong sense of community and friendship through their love of singing. A group who come together each week to have a laugh and sing together to make something greater than any particular individual involved.

By following this approach, you can produce great music to a high standard. There are other choirs which are run by martinets who also produce great music, but I know which choir I’d rather be associated with! I truly do not believe that the end justifies the means.

 

Next week I will be looking at preparing for performance. How come everything was great in rehearsal but it all seemed to fall apart in the concert? I don’t claim to have all the answers by any means and, as always, would love to hear from you and your own experiences.

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

Getting the best out of your choir 2: not too gentle, not too tough

In this post I’m going to look at two extreme kinds of choir leader, the mouse (unassuming, easily frightened, under-confident, feels small and insignificant) and the martinet who we met last week (loud, strict, stickler for perfection, dictator). I’m going to suggest that neither of these extremes is best for the choir, but there is the middle way of being the moderate.

Why are there different kinds of choir leaders? What turns ordinary people into the extremes of mouse or martinet? Even if we don’t think of ourselves as mice or martinets, we all occasionally drop into such extreme behaviour even if only for a moment. So it’s maybe worth giving some thought to where this behaviour might come from.

Here are a few things which might give an insight into a particular choir leader’s style. Not an exhaustive list by any means, and I’d love to hear from you if you have any other possibilities.

the martinet

control freak
Needs to be in charge of everything. The idea of uncertainty and disorder is a frightening one. People like this can be a little anal and will usually ask for complete accuracy of notes with no room for any variation. Will often use written scores slavishly.

not enough trust
Related to the above, due to their need to be in control, they take it upon themselves to be solely responsible for the music that the choir makes. They don’t see it as a team effort. If everything goes right they take the glory (see ‘look at me!’ below), but if it goes wrong it’s the choir’s fault because they didn’t obey the leader.

fear of failure: needing to get it right
This is more about other people’s perception. For whatever reason, the person is afraid of failing, or appearing to be a failure in any respect. These people don’t take risks, are averse to improvisation, come down like a ton of bricks on any mistakes, and insist on everything being perfect all the time.

look at me!
This is the choir leader as massive ego on legs. They are not really interested in the individual human beings that make up the choir, the singers are simply there to obey their leader and deliver the goods so the leader may be praised. Such leaders tend to over-conduct, like to be seen to be working hard, take the focus off the choir, indulge in pyrotechnic musical displays.

no self-confidence
Some martinets use their behaviour to mask their deep-seated insecurities. They may not have conducted much, or lack musical training, or not have worked with such a large choir, or just generally feel out of their depth. Instead of sharing this with the choir, they cover it up with appearing to be a strict disciplinarian hoping that nobody will notice.

not good with people
Some choir leaders are more interested in the music and can be a little bit ‘geeky’ in that way. They are not socially adept and would much rather be working with instruments who don’t talk back or have bad days. Because they lack social skills, they don’t know how to deal appropriately with choir members’ own insecurities, misunderstandings, and basic humanity. They will insist on over-long rehearsals and ridiculously high standards then not understand why people complain!

over-trained musically
Similar to the previous point, some choir directors are almost totally academic and are just out to realise the dots on the page. They have no understanding of the processes involved in working with human beings and translating dots into real, live music. They use inappropriate jargon when dealing with the choir without realising that most people have no idea what they’re talking about.

the mouse

lack of experience
Some choir leaders simply have little experience of leading a choir. They have no idea how rehearsals work, they don’t know the best way to bring a song to life, they’ve not conducted before, they’re not used to dealing with such large groups of people. Instead of covering this lack of experience with bluster (as a martinet would), they just crumble and are stunned into inactivity, mumbling, unclear instructions, lack of structure, etc.

out of my depth!
Even if a choir leader has a reasonable amount of experience, there will come a time when they feel that something is beyond them, either a particular piece of music, or an exceptionally big concert programme. They can’t bluff, but become even more mouse-like. They also aren’t able to admit that they’re out of their depth and lack the experience and self-confidence to change things to suit their abilities.

discomfort with leadership role/ dislike of responsibility
Some choir leaders just love music and singing, they may even have been a choir member until recently. They see other choirs and think it’s quite easy to lead a choir. But when they find themselves in that position, they realise that an awful lot of responsibility comes with the job. All eyes are on them and they always need to have all the answers. It’s much harder than they thought! But it’s too late to back out now, so they continue, but mice are not good at leading from the front.

just don’t care enough
A choir leader can end up being a mouse because they just don’t care about the resulting music or the choir members. They go through the motions, maybe the job’s been dumped on them, maybe they’ve been doing it too long and they’re bored. Their standards slip, they’re not clear when instructing the choir, they seldom give feedback.

not really musical – don’t know when it’s bad!
It is possible for someone to find themselves as a choir leader due more to enthusiasm than talent! They might love choirs and singing, but have no musical ability or deep understanding of music. They somehow expect it all to come together by magic with no intervention from them. They make a stab at leading and very quickly produce something that seems OK without realising that it’s dreadfully out of tune or the timing is wrong or they’ve taught the wrong part. They just don’t realise!

need to be liked
This is the correlate to the martinet’s “look at me!” desire. It’s not as much an ego thing, but more wanting to be liked and loved by every member of the choir (probably due to deep-seated lack of self-esteem). This means that they want to please everyone all the time. This is impossible in a choir! They will end up sending out mixed messages, and each time you come back to a song, they will approach it differently. They will confuse the choir because they are not giving them clear instructions.

fear of failure: scared of getting it wrong
Like the martinet, the mouse is frightened of failure. Their idea of hell is to be humiliated in front of the choir and an entire audience. If anything goes wrong, they will take it on as their individual responsibility. One way of avoiding this is to never actually finish a song. To have long, waffly rehearsals that don’t really go anywhere. To never commit to a clear idea of how a song should be done. To always avoid making strong choices about how to rehearse or perform a song in case their the wrong choices.

I had a dream

The other night I had a dream. I was trying to rehearse a very large choir made up of members from many choirs and groups that I have worked with over the years. They weren’t paying attention, but were generally milling around and chatting, being very relaxed and informal, not caring about the songs we were trying to rehearse. I was getting very frustrated and ended up shouting and swearing at them. In the end I just stormed outside and left them. I was standing outside leaning on a railing feeling pretty awful, when one of the choir members came out to find out how I was. She said: “That was a big shock! We hadn’t realised how you felt and the you really meant what you said.”

When I woke I had an uncomfortable thought: maybe this is the way I really feel and when I lead a choir I’m suppressing my real feelings. Perhaps I really want to shout and scream at people and all this patience is just a front. But that is definitely not the case. When I’m teaching or leading a choir, I feel calm and clear and enjoy being patient and taking time for a song to evolve. I don’t see any point in shouting, and don’t (well, hardly ever!) feel that I need to get angry or cross. Yes, I’m a dictator (I don’t believe that you can create art by committee, there needs to be one person with a vision in charge), but a totally benign dictator.

What kind of choir leader are you? If you’re a singer in a choir, what kind of leader is your choir leader? And how does it affect the end product?

Next week in Getting the best out of your choir 3 I will look at the characteristics that I believe make for a good, moderate choir leader who can bring the best out of a choir.

 

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

Getting the best out of your choir 1: moderate or martinet?

This is the first in a series of posts about Getting the best out of your choir. The whole series looks like this:

1. moderate or martinet
2. not too gentle, not too tough
3. the moderate choir leader
   
4. preparing for performance PART 1
5. preparing for performance PART 2
6. self-reflection
   

Martinet. Interesting word that I’d not come across in ages and had forgotten what it meant. In case you’re in the same boat, a martinet is a strict disciplinarian, someone who demands exact conformity to rules and forms. Whereas a moderate is person who is reasonable, temperate, judicious, just, cool, steady, and calm.

Which of these two types of person gets the best out of their choir?

I was listening to BBC Radio 4 in the car last week and caught the very end of Ken Clarke’s Jazz Greats. He and Pete Long were discussing clarinettist and bandleader Benny Goodman, and that’s where the word martinet popped up. Clarke said that Goodman insisted on:

“absolute perfection … you had a martinet making them work all the time and rehearse in between each gig”.

Pete Long told a story about Goodman in the 1970s making his band rehearse just their bows for three whole hours!

Obviously how you work with a choir depends on the aims of that particular group. A barbershop choir with a competition coming up will rehearse in a very different way from a choir that doesn’t perform and is just for fun. But I wonder, which kind of choir leader will get the best results out of a choir: a moderate or a martinet?

I’ve written before about my belief that a patient and forgiving approach to choir leading gets the best results (Calm down dear, it’s only a song!). But I do know that this doesn’t suit some choir members. They would prefer constant drilling, attention to detail, rigorous accuracy, focus on a small repertoire of songs, being told when they are ‘wrong’, etc. etc.

I’m sure it’s frustrating for some singers when I say “That’ll do” and we move onto the next song when clearly the first song needs more work. But I try to balance the need for quality, variety, fun and rehearsal by not dwelling to long on any particular song.

In some circumstances (e.g. competition, recording a CD, high profile performance) it is important to pay attention to all the details (tuning, dynamics, blend, etc.) and to rehearse the material well. However, there are very different ways of doing this!

There is the choir leader who becomes quickly frustrated when things don’t go right, who has unreasonable expectations of ‘perfect’ singing, who shouts when the choir aren’t improving quickly enough, who drills one section repeatedly whilst the others are standing around getting bored, who puts the fear of god into the singers in case they should make a tiny mistake. Yes, this is one way of going about things, but I really believe that it won’t create the best results. Also, choirs who are led like this tend to always be working on tenterhooks which is quickly detected by an audience who then also find it hard to relax and enjoy the concert.

Surely it would be better to create an environment of team-work, an atmosphere of calm and focused work where people are pulling together and where mistakes aren’t punished but just recognised as a necessary stage along a path towards a better performance. Surely such a calm, forgiving, reasonable, trusting atmosphere will bring out the best in people?

In the Radio 4 jazz programme I mentioned before, Pete Long also said that:

“Goodman was a martinet, but Jimmie Lunceford was a great teacher”.

Great teachers get good results because they bring out the best in people, they demand high standards but encourage people to believe that those high standards are achievable and within themselves already, they leave the music-makers with skills, self-awareness and understanding that they can apply to other situations rather than blindly drilling one particular piece of music. I would like to think that good choir leaders are also good teachers and that the whole choir moves forward as a team of music-makers who are constantly improving.

At the end of the jazz programme, Clarke says of Goodman:

“But when we listen to the music we can forgive some of the severity with which he treated the odd erring sideman.”

This is a case of the ends justifying the means, but personally I completely disagree. There is no need to be severe and abusive when trying to get the best out of people. It is inexcusable and should not be tolerated!

Next week in Getting the best out of your choir 2 I’m going to look at why there are different kinds of choir leaders and suggest that there is a middle way between mouse and martinet.

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

How to have an English sing-along

And I mean English … not Irish or Welsh or Scottish. How is it possible to have an unplanned, spontaneous and genuine gathering of people who sing together?

Mykl Roventine on flickr

I was listening to a broadcast from 24 May 2008 of a BBC Radio 3 programme called World Routes which included a session from the London Bulgarian Choir.

The presenter asked the choir’s leader Dessislava Stefanova:

“Why is there such a strong choral tradition in Bulgaria?”

Dessi replied:

“In terms of the authentic choral tradition, it is because this was one of the main ways in which people socialised – through song”

Also on the programme were Joe Boyd and Max Reinhardt who were recommending some of their favourite CD recordings from Eastern Europe. Their wide-ranging discussion included talking about the differences between village harmony singing and the more professional, often gypsy, musicians who might play at weddings and other celebrations.

It was quite clear that throughout Eastern Europe (and probably many other countries), there are still many, many communities where the everyone sings together on a regular basis. It is typical for individuals to have up to 40 or so songs in common, so very easy for groups of people to break into song.

But in England? When was the last time you had a spontaneous sing-along other than at a football match or at a pub karaoke session? Have you ever tried to start a group singing only to fizzle out half way through the first verse because nobody can remember the words? Or you launch into what you believe to be a well-known song only to be met by confused silence as nobody joins in with you?

Community singing used to be a big pastime in this country (see Singing from the same hymn sheet, Singing together and Should singing together be a guilty pleasure?). But every now and then it dies out and people try to revive it. The last time a really big initiative was launched in the UK was in the 1920s. That was perhaps one of the last times when the majority of people knew a whole bunch of songs in common. Even now, most people know some of these same songs: “Pack up your troubles”, “Bicycle made for two”, “It’s a long way to Tipperary”, “What shall we do with the drunken sailor”, “My bonnie lies over the ocean”. But they often can’t sing them right through without the lyric sheet!

The other week I tried to set up a singing evening with a bunch of friends. OK, it wasn’t entirely spontaneous, but the idea was that we would gather at someone’s house with the intention of having a jolly good sing-along. I asked people to bring instruments if they had them, and a song to share.

Worrying that it might be hard to get the evening going, I prepared a set of lyric sheets with around 20 songs, mainly from the 1960s (we are all of a certain age!). I certainly didn’t want to ‘lead’ the evening, but on the other hand knew that it might take a while to get going. In the end, a couple of people got guitars out and off we went.

I had hoped that:

• the evening would go very smoothly
• people would spontaneously start singing and everyone else would join in
• we would have plenty of songs in common
• there would be no long, awkward silences
• there would be a variety of repertoire, some songs with instruments, some without

However, it didn’t quite turn out like that!

• not everyone knew every song that I’d put on the lyric sheets
• sometimes the guitarists introduced a song that was not on the sheet, but nobody knew all the lyrics
• people were very nervous about initiating a song
  
• people began to rely on the guitarists and it became a little bit like a ‘performance’
• the focus was all on the lyric sheets and everyone appeared to forget all the other songs that they might know
• most people were very self conscious and a little scared of starting a song off, even though most of the people were in choirs and had sung in public

If you’ve read this far, you might be expecting an answer to the post’s title: How to have an English sing-along. Unfortunately I don’t have the answer! I was hoping some of you out there might have some good ideas on how to make a sing-along evening work better.

Can you think of ways of making such an evening go smoothly without it being led too formally?

Why do people end up being so self-conscious, even amongst friends?

Should I just give up and accept that for us, singing together is no longer part of our culture?

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

Why do you sing?

I came across an interesting article on Canada’s CBC Radio 2 blog the other day. It was entitled Why do you sing? and attracted several comments from people outlining their own personal reasons why they sing.

Although I’ve posted here not long ago about why people join choirs and singing groups (There are plenty of good reasons to sing), I’ve never really looked at why myself and others like singing in the first place, in whatever form.

I’m going to outline a few reasons why people sing, and tell you about my love of harmony singing, but I’d love to hear about your own reasons. Do leave a comment and tell me why you love to sing.

expressing what we feel

One of the comments on the CBC blog was “To sing is to express being alive”. There are songs for every occasion: sad songs, happy songs, angry songs, love songs. Singing is a way of giving voice to a strong emotion and sharing it with the world. It can be a means of communicating our feelings to others, but also a way of giving ourselves comfort and solace in difficult times.

feeling good

Many people realise that singing can make you feel good. But I’ve also found the opposite: feeling good can make you sing! Often when I’m engaged in something physical and pleasurable like walking or cycling I suddenly notice that I’m singing. It is a natural expression of the way I’m feeling.

Sometimes the last thing I want to do is to sing. But because it’s my job, I turn up at the singing workshop and before I know it, I’m singing (because I have to). After just a few bars however, I notice my mood lifting considerably. Singing should be part of the national health service!

private vs. public

Lots of us sing in the shower, while we’re hoovering, as we’re changing the beds. We sing alone in the house or the car. Nobody can hear or see us and we truly let rip (and think of ourselves as the best singer in the world!). But put us in front of other people and we soon clam up.

As soon as other people are present, we think that we are being judged in some way on our performance. This often affects how we sing and can sometimes be a big obstacle to allowing others to hear our song. On the other hand, there are people who sing because others are listening. They are born to perform and need an ‘audience’ to hear them.

singing together

Personally, I don’t like singing on my own. The reason I sing is to enjoy the harmonies, so I need other people (or a radio or CD playing). I sing because I love the relationship between different notes being sung at the same time. I love the way that harmony singing creates something which is greater than the individuals involved. It makes a separate thing which can’t be done alone, which needs all the participants, and yet no one participant is controlling the final result.

This can be a bit of a problem for me because if nobody is around, I can’t sing with any great pleasure! I need to have people to sing with, and they also need to know the same songs as me in order to join in.

work, rest and play

There are also wider cultural and societal reasons why people sing. There are many rituals in life which involve singing: weddings, funerals, religious services. Some cultures involve singing in their healing practices. Often when large groups of people come together for a shared activity (football matches, outdoor concerts, feasts), singing arises.

There are many examples of songs associated with work activities (work songs). Not only do these songs relieve the boredom of the work (often repetitive in nature), but can help synchronise work actions (chopping, hammering, waulking, reaping, pounding, hauling), help lift the spirits, and create a sense of community (“we’re all in this together”).

deeper meanings

There is a more fundamental reason underlying why we sing. Steven Mithen in his book The Singing Neanderthals: the origins of music, language, mind and body suggests that song and dance came before language. Mithen posits that music-making is a fundamental aspect of the human condition, encoded into the human genome during the evolutionary history of our species.

why do you sing?

So there are some reasons why people like to sing. But why do you sing? Do let me know by leaving a comment.

 

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

Singing the same note – differently!

The other week I was teaching songs by ear at a workshop as I normally do. There were a couple of women who seemed to be having a hard time catching on to their part. They were all over the place and seemed to be singing at random. Then it clicked: they weren’t able to find the right starting note from my voice. But when I sang the note to them at the pitch I wanted them to sing at (i.e. very high in my own range) they were spot on. I wish I’d picked this up earlier in the workshop!

But what does this mean: ‘singing at the pitch I wanted them to sing’? And why do some women get confused by my singing voice and others don’t? Do men have the same problem when women are teaching them by ear? And what on earth does ‘octave’ mean any way??!! This post is an attempt to answer some of these questions.

Pitching from the other side of the fence

You will have noticed that men generally have lower speaking voices than women. We become used to this from a very early age. This is usually the case with their singing voices too. This is such a familiar thing that we don’t really notice it.

We can understand each other’s speech with no problems. It doesn’t matter whether someone has a low or a high voice, the meaning carries across. But when the meaning is communicated by the pitch of the voice (e.g. when singing, or when speaking a pitch-based language such as Chinese), then all sorts of misunderstandings can occur.

If, as a man, I sing a note to a woman somewhere in the middle of my range, then she often automatically compensates for the fact that men’s voices are lower than women’s by responding with a note that is in the middle of her range. She will not be singing exactly the same note (i.e. at the same frequency), but she perceives that it is the ‘same’ in some sense. When I sing higher in my range, she also sings higher in her range. And when I sing lower, then she will sing lower too. We probably won’t ever be singing at the same pitch/ frequency.

Similarly, if a woman sings a note in the middle of her range to a man, then usually the man will respond with a note in the middle of his range. He will automatically make an adjustment for the differences between men’s and women’s voices. He won’t attempt so sing exactly the same note/ pitch/ frequency, but a note that he perceives to be the ‘same’.

So far so good. But some people don’t make these automatic adjustments. They try to match the exact pitch of the person singing to them. This means that men will try to sing very, very high (and usually fail) when trying to match to a woman’s voice, and women will try to sing ever so low (and usually fail) when trying to match with a man. This can be the source of a mistaken belief that someone can’t ‘sing’.

This is not too much of a problem when women sing very high notes in their range, or men sing very low notes, because we know that trying to match them is doomed to failure. But when we are dealing with middling notes, then confusion can arise. Do they want me to sing exactly the same note as they are singing, or do they want the equivalent note in the middle of my range?

This becomes even more complicated because some people think that just because they perceive two notes to be the same, then they actually are the same! If a man and a woman are singing a melody in unison together, then it can appear to the singers that they are singing exactly the same notes, whereas they will actually be singing an octave apart (more on the idea of the octave later).

In fact, when a man and a woman sing exactly the same note at the same pitch, it can feel very, very strange and unfamiliar!

Singing with the opposite sex

When I first sang in a small group with women, I found it very hard to stand next to a woman and sing. If I had to match her pitch, it felt at first like I was singing really, really high, but she was singing low! It took me a while to learn to feel comfortable and to perceive that we were actually singing the same note.

You may have come across this if you sing in the tenor section of a community which is often mixed men and women. I often find myself as a choir leader having to give out two starting notes: one low in my range for the women (who then sing low in their range), and one at the absolute pitch, high in my range, for the men. Then the men and women end up singing exactly the same note, but often perceive it to be different!

You might also find something strange when singing harmony with a member of the opposite sex. For example, a female alto and a male tenor might sing together. In absolute terms his harmony will be below her melody, but he may well perceive it to be higher than hers. This is because he will be singing high in his range, whereas she will be singing low in hers. And vice versa for the woman. It takes a while to get used to!

The same note sounding different!

To make matters even more complicated, two people of the same gender, singing exactly the same note (i.e. identical frequency) can appear to be singing different notes! This is something to take into account when considering the blend of voices in a choir.

For example, in a female harmony trio, the woman singing the middle part can sometimes appear to be lower than the person singing the lowest part because of the quality, texture and placement of her voice. This is connected with the concept of tessitura that I mentioned in last week’s post (what part do I sing?). Although two women may be singing the same note, for one it might be slap bang in the middle of her comfortable range, whereas for another it may be at the very lowest limits of her range and be rather uncomfortable to sing. This can make the two singers sound very different, even if they are singing the same note.

What is an octave?

Some community choir leaders whose choirs don’t use written scores and who don’t assume any musical knowledge on the part of their singers, often feel the need for some shorthand to creep into their rehearsals. If everyone understands “the harmony is just a third above” or “we need to have more of a crescendo at that point”, then it can save a lot of explanation. Jargon is simply a shorthand agreed between a particular group of people, and can be very useful. However, we can’t assume that everyone knows the same shorthand terms!

Many choir leaders use the term ‘octave’ as a shorthand. Personally I find this one of the most difficult concepts to explain to non-musical folk, even though it makes things much, much easier when talking to the tenors for example! If someone is pitching in the wrong place, it’s great to be able to say “No, you need to sing an octave up” or “The women will be singing in the lower octave for this part”.

All sound, including the singing voice, is made up of sound waves. We refer to a note as being ‘high’ or ‘low’ (although when considering a piano, for example, this could equally be called ‘left’ or ‘right’) depending on how often (or frequently) the sound waves hit your ears. Technically, the higher the frequency of a note (the faster rate at which the sound waves hit your ear), the higher it sounds. Similarly, the lower the frequency, the lower the note sounds.

Frequency can be measured in terms of number of vibrations or oscillations or waves arriving per second. In music, however, we tend to refer to pitch instead of frequency, although it is actually the same thing.

Any note that is double the frequency of another is said to be one octave higher. In music, such notes seem to have such a special relationship to each other that they are given the same name. For example, a note that is an octave higher or lower than a note called ‘C ‘ is also called ‘C’. Similarly, a note that is one or more octaves higher or lower than a note called ‘B flat’ will also be called ‘B flat’.

The reason that notes an octave apart have such a special place in music is that they appear to sound like each other (which is why they are given the same name). However, this is a factor of the musical tradition that one comes from. In Corsica, for example, because of its traditional harmony singing tradition, the interval of a fifth (that is, five notes apart in whatever scale you are singing in), as well as the octave are said to be the ‘same’ note because they appear to sound the same.

I’m sure many of you will have had the experience of singing in perfect harmony with a melody only to have a momentary doubt that you are, in fact, singing the melody by mistake because they fit so well together. For a brief moment, it appears that you are singing exactly the same notes!

The octave is therefore a very difficult concept to explain to those with no musical background. I have heard myself say things in the heat of the moment like: “It’s the same note, only higher”. Which is, of course, nonsense when you think about it!

The perfect match

So next time you are teaching or being taught by a member of the opposite sex and are finding things problematic, take a moment and think about where you might pitch your voice to get the ‘right’ note. Don’t make assumptions. My own choir are now used to being led by a man and pretty much all of the women make automatic adjustments (though there can be the occasional difficulty with the tenor part!). So when Michael Harper, a counter tenor, came to run a workshop and sang every part at the correct pitch, it momentarily freaked the tops out who were trying to sing somewhere in the stratosphere before they realised what was happening!

 

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

Everybody has a place in the choir

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

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

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

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

Will they have me?

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

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

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

If at first you don’t succeed …

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

New kid on the block

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

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

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

Will you be my friend?

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

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

What part do I sing?

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

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

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

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

Nobody will miss me if I don’t turn up

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

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

But nobody here looks like me!

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you stay, you might never leave!

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

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

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

Preparing to sing: hip wiggling and knee bending

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

Preparing to sing: why bother?

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

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

How to teach (and learn) a song by ear

the oral tradition

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

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

teaching by ear

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

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

find your starting notes

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

who starts?

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

call and response

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

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

breaking the song into small chunks

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

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

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

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

using hand signals

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

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

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

teaching separate choir parts

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

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

where are the words?

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

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

beyond the first verse

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

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

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

it all takes time!

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

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

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

Taking care of ourselves as choir and workshop leaders

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

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

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

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

make time for you

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

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

value yourself

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

feed yourself

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

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

you’re not alone

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

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

don’t take it personally!

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

take care of your voice

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

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

you are only there to teach songs

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

chill!

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

 

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

New website design

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

chrisrowbury.com

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

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

Among friends: the importance of support networks

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

I'm different! by yewenyi

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com