Not enough venues to go round

As I mentioned last time, a few of us sang at a friend’s wedding the other week. It was in a beautiful old village church with a wonderful acoustic. We managed to just about squeeze 18 people in front of fixed pews, next to a stone pulpit and between two tall pillars. (I chose not to sing from the choir stalls. Why on earth do they have these things? Don’t the two halves of the choir just end up singing to each other? I really can’t see the reasoning behind the design!). The organist reminded me that the main Woven Chords choir had sung there one Christmas and been very well received. Of course, those were the days when we had less than 40 members (and it was a tight squeeze even then!). He wondered why we hadn’t come back and I had to explain that it would be impossible to fit 80 singers into such a small church. In the early days we used to frequent such small village churches and hence manage six or so concerts each year. Those were the days!

It has always been difficult to find suitable venues for choirs. Churches are usually very welcoming (and often free!), but with their fixed architecture they can normally only accommodate small singing groups or choirs. Some of the more modern Methodist and Baptist churches have a more flexible layout and some even have stages, but not every town has one of these. Apart from large regional theatres (which tend not to take local community groups, or whose auditorium is just too large to fill), there are really not many venues available to us. Hence churches, which I now see more and more as a valuable community resource independent of any religious affiliation.

There are, however, certain small-minded individuals who think that, just because we perform in a church, that we must be a ‘church choir’, and since they’re not religious they wouldn’t want to come and see us would they? This is despite the many laudable local and rural music touring schemes (e.g. Music in Quiet Places) which see small instrumental and vocal ensembles regularly performing in churches. It’s a shame that these ‘certain people’ are so small minded, as they just don’t know what they’re missing!

The fact that we’re often performing in churches adds yet another stereotype image to what we do in addition to the word ‘choir’ which itself puts lots of people off. Which is why I’m more and more tempted to try and find theatrical rather than musical venues. I have a current bee in my bonnet about making singing performances more varied and interesting as I don’t think it’s enough these days for an audience to just see a static semi-circle of identically dressed singers standing on stage. More on this later!

Are there any other large choirs out there who have found a solution to finding suitable venues?

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Thank you, thank you – you’re too, too kind!

There have been several times when performing that it’s not been appropriate for the audience to show their appreciation. Once was at a funeral, and most recently, at a wedding. There was also a time when we did a concert in a church and the first song was met with silence. I subtly mentioned to the audience that they were allowed to clap if they chose to and from then on it was just like a normal concert. I guess people thought that since they were in a church it wasn’t appropriate to clap!

To be fair, at the recent wedding there was applause after we had finished our little set when the vicar thanked us for singing. Of course, at the funeral, it simply wasn’t fitting. I was singing at the funeral and it was then that I realised how much I had become used to applause after each song. It was very, very strange to perform a song and have no feedback whatsoever. It can be similar when performing outdoors in a public space and people are just passing by.

Why do we need the applause? After all, it’s pretty much a convention. It’s quite rare that people don’t applaud at all. Sometimes it may be more enthusiastic or longer, but usually there’s some kind of smattering. So it’s not as if we need approval since the audience will probably clap under most circumstances. Maybe it’s just for us to know that they’ve actually heard us, whether they’ve enjoyed it or not.

In many cultures the idea of the separation between audience and performers is an alien one. Everybody is a performer, and everyone is an audience at the same time. The ‘performers’ are not special in any way, they haven’t spent time rehearsing and polishing, they just perform – singing, dancing, whatever – because that’s what everybody does in that culture. So the notion of applause and appreciation is not relevant.

Sometimes applause can be a little embarrassing. Many of our songs are very, very short so we can get through up to 30 songs in any one concert. On those occasions it feels like we’re expecting the audience to clap every few minutes (which they do), but it does feel a little like overkill. Also, with a big choir like Woven Chords which has around 80 members, it can be a little awkward when we make our first entrance. As the first few singers enter onto the stage there is enthusiastic applause which slowly but surely begins to die out as the audience realise that there are many, many more choir members to appear yet

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The Natural Voice approach

What exactly is the Natural Voice (note the capital letters!) approach to singing and voice? It’s something we’re struggling with in the Natural Voice Practitioners’ Network as I mentioned in an earlier blog (The Natural Voice Practitioners’ Network). It may seem to many outsiders to be some kind of wishy-washy organic wholefood let-it-all-hang-out way of singing, but is in fact a very specific discipline or approach to voice work (not just singing by any means).

When practitioners join the network, they state on the membership form that their “approach to teaching voice and song is in harmony with the Philosophy and Working Principles of the Natural Voice Practitioners’ Network”. Which is all very well and we had hoped then to form a network of like-minded individuals who all approached voice work in a similar way. However, over the years as the network has grown, we have become a very broad church which includes practitioners who focus primarily on sound healing, running community choirs, spiritual chanting, working with pregnant mothers, using voice for therapy, singing contemporary compositions, etc. etc. Although many practitioners working in these areas do use a Natural Voice approach, there is a danger that the term itself is becoming a catch-all phrase of convenience which is beginning to lose its strict meaning.

I am currently helping to formulate a code of practice which encapsulates more accurately what it means to use the Natural Voice approach. It is far from complete, but I thought I’d mention some of the key points here in order to try and clarify for people what our approach to voice is.

Currently the code is divided into four main areas:

• physicality
• accessibility
• cultural context
• style and approach

Physicality
This is the foundation stone to the Natural Voice approach. It reminds us that the voice is connected to and rooted in the whole body, and that each person’s voice is unique. The whole body supports the voice and needs to find a subtle balance between relaxation and alertness. An understanding of the body, breath, emotion and sound connection is central to our approach and demands physical awareness and exercising.

Accessibility
Basically nobody should be excluded from music-making. Singing is our birthright and should be accessible to all. Hence we don’t assume any prior knowledge, try to steer clear of jargon, use a variety of teaching styles to maximise everyone’s involvement, and try to accommodate those with physical and other restrictions.

Cultural context
We often use material from other cultures than our own and wherever possible, we find out and explain the historical and cultural context of a song or piece and credit its composer or source. We also choose material for our work which will be culturally accessible to everyone in the group.

Style and approach
We approach our work in ways that are unlocking, freeing, allowing, releasing, non-judgmental, and encouraging.

This is only a first stab and will need a lot more work, but I think it’s a step in the right direction and should hopefully clarify a little what is meant by the Natural Voice.

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Preparing to sing

As a Natural Voice practitioner each workshop or choir session that I run begins with a physical and vocal warm up. I slowly prepare people’s voices for singing as well as making a strong connection between their voice and their body. This is something I do regularly so it has become second nature.

However, many people who have not worked with me before often comment on the warm ups: “That was fun and different!”, “I’m not used to doing a warm up like that”, and even “Why do you bother to do a warm up? We never do in my choir”. This has often set me to thinking about what kinds of warm ups other choirs do (I can’t imagine! Just scales perhaps?), but also why do I bother to do warm ups at all?

In my regular weekly sessions with choirs the warm up is also a vocal training session. Over the weeks I can help people improve their breathing for singing, help them to connect with their body, increase their vocal range, improve the richness of their voice, etc. But for one-off sessions it is simply a warm up. My angle is that most people don’t sing regularly and also lead fairly stressful, unnatural and sedentary daily working lives. They need to be eased into singing so they don’t hurt their throat, they need to relax from the muscle tensions and stresses of the day, they need to re-connect to their bodies, they need to become aware again of their physical presence. The warm up acts as a transition from daily life to that attentive, relaxed, listening state we need to be in when we sing with others.

To demonstrate this quite clearly, I sometimes skip the warm up entirely and launch straight into a song. Then afterwards I do our usual warm up and then sing the same song again, asking if people notice any difference. Usually everyone notices something significant and enthusiastically join in with the warm up for the next few weeks!

In the late 1980s two Georgian ethnomusicologists (Edisher Garakanidze and Josef Jordania) came over to work with a group of singers in Cardiff for a week. After a couple of days of singing together, somebody asked if we could perhaps do a warm up before we launched into the songs each day. Both Georgians were rather confused, didn’t know what a warm up was, but said it was fine to go ahead. They watched in some amusement as we went through our paces! Which leads me to the following heresy: I don’t think you need to warm up every time you sing. If you sing regularly, every day perhaps, as people do in many cultures, then there is probably no need unless you want to access the limits of your vocal range.

Of course, the easiest way to find out whether you need a warm up or not is just to try without one next time and see what difference it makes. Me, I enjoy them!

Next week I’ll be writing in more detail about the Natural Voice approach to singing (The Natural Voice approach).

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Sing it like you mean it

I have to admit that I’m not really a lyric person. I might have been listening to a particular pop song in English for years when I suddenly realise what it’s actually about! Or someone might point out the really obvious meaning to me, which until that point has totally gone over my head.

I’ve read quite a few books on working with choirs and singing in general, and without exception they all talk about how to convey the meaning of the song and how the meaning affects the vocal delivery. I have one such book in front of me now: Choral Charisma: singing with expression by Tom Carter (I’m not singling this book out, just that it’s fairly typical of its type). There is page upon page of stuff like “Connecting to the meaning”, “Analysing the text”, “Plot and character”, “Making an authentic personal connection with the text”, “Matching music and meaning”. There is just one paragraph in the whole book called “When the language is foreign”. The author says: “The dilemma for singers in such situations is clear. If they want to connect to the texts, they need to know their meanings”.

Many of the songs in our repertoire come from traditions where the expression and communication is mainly through the music rather than the words. Often cultures with rich harmony traditions have songs with very simple – even banal – words. In contrast, traditions where the lyrics are important – such as ballads and storytelling songs – the song text is not complicated by harmonies or complex musical accompaniment. Some of the songs we sing don’t make much sense, even if we do have a translation! So how do we go about singing such songs?

For example, the following are rough translations of a few love songs that we have in our repertoire:

“My sweetheart is wearing a red fez.” Crven fesić (Bosnia)

“Oh, Dobric, your cool waters flow to three towns. There, gather the young boys and girls of Sibenik.” Oj Dobriću (Croatia)

“Girl with the black eyes, come here and marry me or give me a knife.” (the implication being so he can kill himself). Gogo shavtala (Georgia)

“As my own I graze you, and you are dragging yourself behind me, little doll.” (to a sheep!) Ja Helo (Helokane) (Czechoslovakia)

“There’s a handkerchief on the road where my dear one passes. He made a new cart with two horses and no driver.” Maramica na stazi (Croatia)

Maybe something of the poetic nature of the lyrics has been lost in the translation, but I personally don’t find that these English translations help me to sing the song! In any case, there are often cultural differences. What to our ears might sound rather like a military march, or a dirge, or an upbeat dance song might just as easily be a love song or a song of loss and grief.

Some people say that as long as you stay true to the spirit of the meaning of a song, then it’s OK. But I believe that every song has its own unique feel which cuts across cultures. I believe that as long as you stay true to the music of the song, then you can’t go far wrong. The sound of the lyrics (even if you don’t understand them), the melody and the harmonies all go to make up a whole which suggests a mood or feeling, regardless of what the song means (if it’s a well-written song!). Sometimes it’s even useful to do this with a song that you can understand. Why not try singing a song with English lyrics using nonsense syllables and try to find the underlying musicality of the song? Sometimes the music can get lost beneath the words and the desire to communicate the meaning of the lyrics.

Even though I’m not a lyric person, I try very hard to never teach a song unless I know what the lyrics mean and have some sense of the background and cultural context to a song. We may not use the meaning to help us sing, but it’s important that we respect the tradition that the song has come from.

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Fitting into the right musical box

I regularly get emails out of the blue from various singing groups scattered across the globe. Only yesterday I had one from a Russian ensemble, and a few weeks ago I had one from a women’s group in the US. They all ask if I can help them to set up a tour in the UK. I’m afraid that I almost always turn down their offer. I’m not a producer, I don’t have any particular connection with any venues, and besides which, I really don’t know whether this kind of stuff goes down well in the UK.

The US has several well-known “world music” singing groups, for instance Kitka, Northern Harmony and Libana. They regularly gig in the US, have a large following and release CDs on a frequent basis. Northern Harmony has toured the UK several times, but even though their gigs are well-attended, they’re usually off the beaten track, often in churches and small village halls. I was once told by a local rural touring producer that “acappella just doesn’t sell”. So not only is it hard for groups such as Artisan and Coope, Boyes and Simpson from the folk world to get gigs, but virtually impossible for any groups who sing so-called “world music”.

There may well be audiences in London for specialist groups like the London Bulgarian Choir and Maspindzeli, but elsewhere groups like this are few and far between and seldom seen at gigs or festivals. I once approached a big summer festival only to be told that they want “music that people can dance to”. i.e. loud and boppy. So is there no room for those gorgeous unaccompanied harmonies from Georgia, Bulgaria, Russia and beyond? Do African songs always need big dances and accompaniment, or can we do the occasional Zimbabwean lullaby?

How come there are more groups in the US and they get regular audiences? Is it because they have a bigger imigrant populations from harmony singing countries like Croatia and Macedonia, for example?

I always used to think that the sort of choirs that I run are unique in their repertoire, and hence something special and different. That may well be the case, but instead of that being a selling point, it seems to be a drawback because nobody knows exactly which ‘box’ we fit into. I use the tag “world music choir”, but either people don’t know what the phrase “world music” is or think it has to involve guitar playing from Mali. I get loads of requests from people wanting a choir for their wedding and I think we offer a really interesting alternative: South African wedding songs, church songs from Georgia – all to make your day special and unique. But when I write back, I never get a reply because most people want the standard Ave Maria or the gospel singers that they saw in the movie Sister Act. (We are, however, doing a wedding in the near future for a choir member who really appreciates what we do!).

Hence I say that I can’t help these groups from abroad looking for gigs. I simply don’t know who to approach, which venues or producers may be interested. It’s taken WorldSong 10 long years to build up a half-way decent following in our own back yard, I just hope that there are enough similar groups out there that we can build awareness across the whole UK and get to see more “world music” singing. Spread the word!

Of course, this presupposes that we can clearly describe exactly what it is that we do do. Many people aren't familiar with terms such as “world music” or “roots music”. This was the subject of an earlier post: What is it that you do exactly?

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Hidden culture

I’ve just spent the last two weeks travelling through the Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. I was really looking forward to catching some traditional singing since I had been told that all three countries have a rich and well-preserved history of song.

The Lonely Planet Guide said: “Song is the soul of the Balts. And nowhere is this expressed more eloquently than in the national song festivals that unite Estonia, Latvia and Lithuanians worldwide in a spellbinding performance of song. The crescendo is a choir of up to 30,000 voices, singing its heart out to an audience of 100,000 or more, while scores of folk dancers in traditional dress throw a bewitching kaleidoscope of patterns across the vast, open-air stage”.

And the Rough Guide said: “The characteristic Baltic singing festivals – hugely popular events – played a major role in expressing the national identities of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania during their move to independence.”

Unfortunately most of the big folk song festivals had already happened earlier in the year!

In the 19^th century, great collections of folk lyrics and tunes were made: over 1.4 million folk lyrics and 30,000 tunes have been written down in Latvia and the largest archive in Lithuanian folklore alone contains over 400,000 collected songs.

I also read in a local guide book that if you ask a Lithuanian about his country’s traditional culture, you would most likely hear about Lithuanian songs and love of singing. Apparently, only a few decades ago, most women of the Dzukija region still knew a hundred songs; the most accomplished singers remembered as many as four hundred. Often, people sang more than they spoke!

The choral folk and runo-song arrangements of Estonian composer Veljo Tormis are very popular, having influence as far away as the Estonian community in Australia! And it’s not just old, dyed-in-the-wool folk fans who follow the traditional songs, the annual Viljandi folk festival in Estonia each July attracts a young audience to see a variety of roots bands.

So how come in the restaurants and shops the music was Russian pop or Bob Marley or classical muzak, and the new Baltic MTV was full of Baltic rock of the bad 1970s kind? Where was this vibrant traditional culture that I’d been reading so much about?

I was also yearning to see some kind of authentic folk craft in the shops rather than the usual watered-down tourist rubbish (is that what people really want, or do we buy it because it’s the only thing on offer?).

It got me thinking about how visible so-called traditional culture is in any particular society. There is clearly a rich and vibrant folk tradition in the Baltics in both music and applied arts, yet on an everyday level it is invisible. What happens to all those thousands of people who join in the song festivals the rest of the year? Do they simply stop singing? What is a culture’s folk tradition any way? I guess you could say that the derivative Baltic pop music on the radio, and the buying of cheap Russian clothes imports in the markets is an expression of today’s traditional culture. Yet my background reading suggests that there is a lively, current interest in songs and music that has been handed down over generations – songs for every occasion: weddings, rye harvest, summer solstice, funerals. It is an integral part of Baltic society and runs deep. So why did I have to go hunting in modern record shops to try and find recordings of folk music hidden amongst the stacks of death metal and American pop?

What would a foreigner’s impression of our folk traditions be if she arrived at Heathrow, took the tube into London and wandered down Oxford Street? Sure we have many lively and well-attended folk clubs throughout the country, but they’re not that visible at first glance.

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Holiday time!

No blog this week as I'm off sunning myself in 30°C temperatures in the Baltic states! Stay tuned for more next week.

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It does exactly what it says in the blurb – or not!

Just a quick one this week as I’m just about to leave for two weeks travelling in the Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. It’s supposed to be a holiday, but I’m hoping to pick up some songs for future use! I won’t be posting next week as I will be somewhere in the middle of a Latvian national park and I’m not taking any technology with me. Normal service will be resumed on Sunday 19^th August.

Last week I ran an open workshop for the Warwick Folk Festival. It was billed as “World Songs” with a sub-heading “community choirs”. Rather an odd way of describing what I do, but nevertheless we had a healthy 40+ people turn up and they seemed to enjoy themselves. I’m always very nervous before a workshop, no matter how many times I’ve done them, especially when there are no advance bookings. I had absolutely no idea how many people would turn up, and convinced myself I would be happy with just six or so. Hence I was very pleasantly surprised by the turnout, even attracting about eight blokes.

As is often the case, the first few people through the door were a bit hesitant as they too did not know what to expect. I always try to put people at ease and usually ask: “Have you come to sing?” (just in case they had expected to attend a ceramics class and had wandered into the wrong room by mistake). I get many responses to this question. Often: “Oh, no, I’m just here with my friend. I can’t sing”. More often than not I persuade them to join in and they end up having a good sing by the end of the workshop. This time a couple of women looked especially hesitant and said something like: “Yes, I think so, but it depends what it’s going to be like”. They went on to say that the day before they had been on a ballad workshop and had been made to feel rather inferior and left out as they didn’t know all 30 verses of a particular song!

I tried to put their minds at ease, and very soon they were smiling and joining in wholeheartedly with the African songs. It made me realise that there were still people out there who somehow managed to put people off singing, even when those people had made the effort to turn up to a workshop and were looking forward to sing. I wonder what would have happened to those two women’s confidence if they had not come to my workshop, but just left the festival with their first experience to take away with them.

It also made me think that it’s very important to try and explain exactly what a workshop is going to be. To try and give it an appropriate name and a bit of blurb so that people know what to expect. Sometimes that’s hard as people perhaps don’t have any reference points to the subject you’re going to be covering, but you should at least make the attempt to be clear.

I ran a Beatles workshop a while ago. I advertised it as Beatles acappella and had some blurb explaining that I would be teaching some well-known Beatles songs in three and four part harmony. A couple of young women came along, but only stayed for the morning. They explained that they had quite enjoyed themselves, but it wasn’t really what they had expected! I really don’t know how to be any clearer with that one!!

On another occasion I ran a workshop called The Paul Simon Songbook. Again, explaining that I would be teaching well-known Paul Simon songs in three and four part harmony. During the warm-up I made a joke that Paul Simon was stuck on the M6 and he had phoned me to ask me to carry on with the workshop until he arrived. Everyone laughed. Except – I later realised – for two women who thought I was serious and complained to the box office when Mr. Simon hadn’t arrived by lunchtime! So we can always try to describe what to expect, but we’ll never get it exactly right!

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Where does the music reside?

I met a painter in a gallery today and he asked me if I was an artist or had any interest in fine art. I told him that I didn’t paint, but that I worked with music and that I was also fascinated by the creative process. He then asked me: “Where do you think the music resides? Is it in the written score?”. I was rather lost for words at that moment and didn’t really understand the question. Finally I answered: “I believe that music resides in the humanity of the people creating it”.

We went on to talk about how some people are attracted to the purity of the written score and the idea of the perfect realisation of it in practice. Of course, one can never perfectly realise a written piece of music (not least because music notation is not an exact system) because the people who create the music are error-prone and not perfect creatures. But even if we could do that, wouldn’t that be rather like machine-produced music? I for one don’t really enjoy choral concerts where the singing is so, so, ever so precise. The enunciation is perfect, as is the blend of voices – so much so that it can sometimes sound like a single voice singing. No! Give me some humanity! I love the different textures of all the individuals in the choir, I appreciate everyone’s unique contribution to the overall sound. I enjoy it when not everyone is singing exactly the same pitch – that is where the harmonics, overtones and fullness of the sound come from. I adore it when each person’s timing is slightly different, when small errors are made. In short, I love it when all the imperfections that we human beings are made up of are fully expressed through the singing.

I have heard singers who have ‘beautiful’ voices, who sing perfectly in tune, whose technique and talent are remarkable, and yet they leave me unmoved. However, I can hear some rusty old recording of a group of elderly villagers in the Balkans giving voice to an age-old traditional song, and I can be almost moved to tears. They are communicating with me, they are telling me the story, they are working as one to express their humanity and their joy, and I in turn am moved.

This weekend I was in the rare position of running three entirely different workshops in three different places with three different sets of participants. It reinforced for me what happens in workshops. All three were open access, no experience necessary, no musical scores in sight, no real expectations (except to have fun!), and yet they all produced the most wonderful, magical sounds. The whole experience was uplifting both for me and the participants. It reminded me how universal singing is, and how egalitarian and levelling singing harmony together can be. I had no idea who these people were, what they did for a living, or if they had had any singing training or experience. The only instruction was to sing a part that they felt was comfortably within their own range. People ended up standing next to strangers who they had only just met, and yet they worked as a team helping to create an overall sound. Nobody was really worried about whether they had a ‘beautiful’ voice or not as they were soon taken over by the music itself. And I just stood back and listened to the most beautiful harmony singing and was moved once more by the power of the music. And where did the music reside at that moment? In the hearts and souls of every single person who made up the group.

Yet still – unfortunately – people believe that they can’t ‘sing’ or that music-making is not meant for them. One of the workshop participants wrote to me: “I’m completely new to this kind of thing, having believed all my life that singing in choirs was something that ‘other people’ do.” Luckily he realised that singing is open to all of us and has now joined a local choir.

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Who is our audience?

WorldSong’s 10^th anniversary concert last Saturday was a triumph — even if I do say so myself! At least in our terms it was a huge success and a big leap forward.

• we had an audience three times our normal size (which made our 650-seat theatre look comfortably full)
• we ended up with the biggest choir we’ve ever had on stage (all but two of the choir managed to be at the concert: two members volunteered to help front of house, whilst two others had already booked holidays)
• we had a wide range of different configurations on stage (solos, men-only, women-only, conductorless, small groups, a big group filling the stage)
• the vast majority of choir members had risen to the challenge and learnt the words to pretty much all of the 33 songs that we sang (the Welsh one was quite hard!)
• we pulled off several challenging moves (entering from the back of the auditorium whilst singing, dancing to South African songs, being accompanied by drums)
• several songs were sung without me having to conduct them

We had a varied and mixed audience including quite a few ex-choir members, and a few singers from our sister choirs Woven Chords and Global Harmony. In the interval I met some people from Swaziland, Slovakia and Uganda, and I know there were audience members from Poland, Lithuania and South Africa.

However, the most noticeable thing for me when the house lights went up at the end of the concert (I taught the audience a song as usual) was that the vast majority of the audience seemed to be well over 60 and mostly women! This is quite common and is often reflected in the choir itself and in the workshops that I run. Several of the choir had managed to persuade their children to come along, and almost without exception, they thoroughly enjoyed themselves. So why can’t we attract a younger audience? There’s nothing wrong, of course, with having an older audience, but it would be nice to have a wide spread of ages, genders and nationalities. (This also applies to the choir and workshops: we sing songs from many different countries and cultures, and yet we attract mainly white, British singers).

Is it perhaps the words “choir” or “concert” which put younger people off? Do they simply have something better to do on a Saturday night? Is the make-up of our audience simply a reflection of the make-up of the choir? In which case, why can’t the choir attract younger people and people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds?

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It's just a bit of hand waving

Sometimes I describe my job as simply being the guy who stands at the front of the choir and waves his arms about. “I point, you sing” is what I often tell the choir. That is basically what the job entails when we’re performing for the public, but it can all too often go wrong. There was a point in our concert last Saturday when I made a gesture which was misinterpreted and suddenly only one part was singing! We managed to recover quite well, and I’m sure the audience didn’t notice anything amiss, but it reminded me how important it is that the choir know exactly what I mean at any point.

Sometimes after a whole bunch of new people have joined the choir, I run through some of my basic hand gestures and tell them what they mean. When I first began conducting choirs, I thought that all my gestures were self-evident and that most conductors would use similar hand movements. How wrong I was! So since then I have regularly double-checked that the choir know what I intend.

As choral directors, we all do things differently, but the common point is that we need to be clearly understood by our choir. I use one gesture which I have been told is a real no-no, but which seems to work for me and the choirs that I lead. It is to raise my two index fingers vertically (as if pointing to the sky) which is a signal that something is about to happen. It’s a kind of “heads up” to people that they should pay attention because we’ll be doing something significant in a moment like coming to the end of the song, or repeating the last section, or speeding up. I have been told that this gesture is too subtle and vague to be useful. However I find it to be very effective, but only after you have rehearsed the song properly so that the choir know what to expect. It means that I can often dispense with counting in a performance (“how many times do we repeat that section?”) so everyone can really be in the moment, repeating parts as many times as it feels right to do them in any given concert.

I now realise that when I began this work I used to assume quite a lot. Now I work very hard to try and be aware of when I’m making assumptions. For example, when I’m teaching a song by ear I signal where the tune goes up and down by raising and lowering my horizontal hand. This is just a rough map of course, but it helps people when they’re learning. I can be slightly more subtle too by indicating big jumps in notes, and sometimes angling my hand slightly to indicate semi-tones.

Once I was running a workshop and a French guy asked my why I was moving my hand up and down in the air whilst teaching the song. I explained that as my hand moved higher it meant the notes were higher, and when I moved it lower it meant that the notes were lower. Then he asked what “higher” and “lower” meant! It was then that I realised that this is not innate knowledge but just a convention. If someone is familiar with a piano, then we could equally well describe notes as being more “left” or more “right”. It has become a convention (related to sound frequency) to talk about “higher” and “lower”, but we cannot assume that everyone knows what this means!

It’s good then to re-assess every now and then and to make sure that you are communicating with your choir members as clearly and accurately as you can. Do not assume that they always know what you mean!

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Order, order!

It’s that time of year when summer concerts come around and I have to think of a programme of songs. Selecting the songs is not too difficult as I always include all the new songs we’ve learnt this term (so new people can join in the performance), several that are relatively new to the choir (songs that we’ve learnt over the last year or so), some golden oldies which I revive from the past, and some choir and audience favourites.

However, I try and keep in mind audience members who perhaps have been to our last few concerts or maybe come just once a year to our summer concert. I don’t ever want an audience to feel that they come to the same concert each time so I try and keep ‘repeats’ to a minimum, but also balance that with the fact that it’s always nice to hear a few familiar songs. I like to think that I’ve got the balance right, but I haven’t ever had any specific feedback from audience members. I reckon that as long as there’s sufficient variety (and we do have lots of songs to choose from!) then there should be something to please everybody.

Also, WorldSong are about to release a new live CD so I’ve had to choose the songs for that. That wasn’t too difficult either as I was limited mainly by the quality of any recordings that we had (and, of course, whether we were singing in tune on that day!).

What I find harder though, having chosen the songs, is to find a suitable running order. There are many schools of thought: some people group songs from the same country or style, whilst others sprinkle the different genres throughout the concert or CD and focus on aspects such as the dynamics of a particular song, whether it is anthemic or gentle, smooth or rhythmic. I am of this latter school, although I do sometimes put two songs together if they are from the same part of the world, and maybe stick in a song with English lyrics if I feel there’s been a run of foreign ones.

I often wonder how much this matters. I spend a long time thinking of the running order for each of our concerts, and I’ve spent even longer on the new CD. But does it really matter to audiences? Do they notice the ‘journey’ through a concert, or do they just take the songs one at a time? And with the CD, people can jump about and play tracks in any order they choose, so is the running order of any importance at all? I guess I hang on to the fact that nobody has ever commented on the running order, and being the optimist that I am, I assume that means that I’m doing it right since it’s not noticeable!

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What a performance!

None of the choirs or singing groups that I run were formed as performing groups. I’ve always made it clear that our main priority is simply to have fun and to sing together. However, life being what it is, performance opportunities arise and people like to perform! I make sure that everyone understands that performance is an added bonus and is totally optional and in no way compulsory. Yet almost all choir members always want to perform! That is the way of the world. I guess having put all that hard work into learning and perfecting songs, it’s inevitable that people want to share them with others.

So we perform. And we do – even if I do say it myself – perform to a high standard. We often sell out many of our regular local gigs, and have a strong following amongst our audience. But this brings its own problems. Whilst each week the emphasis is on learning new songs and having fun singing them, plus reviving a few “oldies”, there has to come a time when we “rehearse” for our upcoming concert.

Many other choirs are performing choirs and can have a dozen or more concerts each year. This means that their emphasis is very different from ours: each week’s session is a rehearsal for the next concert, always brushing up performance skills and honing songs drawn from a relatively small repertoire. We, however, have a repertoire well in excess of 150 songs to draw upon (not all of which are up to speed at any given time) and we perform usually only three times a year.

The skill then is to balance fun singing sessions with the more serious business of getting songs ready for the next concert. The usual plan is to introduce a bunch of new songs at the beginning of each term (roughly 12 weeks), whilst going over some golden oldies at the end of each session. As the concert approaches, I stop introducing new material and just focus on polishing the old stuff up. Two weeks before the concert we spend one session running through the first half of the concert and the next weekly session running the second half. On the day of the concert we have a full rehearsal in the afternoon running the whole concert in order.

Since many of our songs are relatively short (between one and three minutes long) it means we use up a lot of repertoire in a concert! Our usual concerts are two halves of 45 minutes each, which may mean we get through up to 30 songs – most of which are in foreign languages. That’s a lot of material to get through in a term whilst still trying to have fun!

There is always a slight frustration that if only we had a little more time to work on the songs, then the concert would be even better. And if we were a proper performance choir then we could work on performance skills each week and really get good! But I think we’ve got the balance right.

If we never performed, there would never be a need to really hone in on a song, get the subtleties right, play with the dynamics, find the right voice for it, really get to grips with the strange words, find the joy of actually singing the song rather than feeling that you never quite know it properly.

Yet if we performed all the time we would lose a lot of the fun from our weekly sessions, there would be more pressure to “get it right”, our performances might end up just that little bit too slick (our audiences really like our laid-back informal approach coupled with accomplished singing ability), we wouldn’t be able to keep adding fabulous songs to our repertoire, we couldn’t afford to experiment and play around with songs or to try to learn something really complex without the pressure of having to deliver at a certain time.

Why not come along to one of our gigs and see for yourself? Woven Chords annual summer concert at Grimsthorpe Castle on 14th July is sold out I’m afraid, but you can come and celebrate WorldSong’s 10^th anniversary by helping us to fill a 650-seat theatre in Coventry on 21^st July!

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Making a song and dance of it

From my experience with choirs and singing groups it appears on the face of it that we are a rhythmically challenged nation!

I often try to introduce a bit of clapping or steps or syncopation into our warm-ups and songs and am always amazed at the apparent lack of co-ordination and body-awareness amongst the group. As soon as I begin teaching some simple dance steps, or try to clap a simple rhythm that is not on the beat, several people just sit out and don’t even bother to try because they “know” they can’t do it. And some people sit out because “I’ve come here to sing, not dance!”

But of course, we do all have a good sense of rhythm, it’s just that we don’t practice it very often. Rather like people who think they can’t “sing” because they can’t immediately pick up a tune – they are simply out of practice with their listening skills.

It seems to me that this is a cultural phenomenon. Ours has become a very visual and rational/ mental culture. We use our eyes and thinking brains far more than our ears and bodies. Once people have sung in a choir for some time, they get in contact again with their innate listening abilities. They learn to trust their ears and not just their eyes. Similarly, given time and patience, I believe that people can re-discover their innate sense of rhythm and body-awareness.

In this culture we tend to compartmentalise different activities. So, for example, when we’re singing we’re singing, we’re not dancing, so we don’t need to pay any attention to our bodies. And when we’re dancing or clapping out a rhythm, we don’t need our voices. I came across this time and time again when I used to teach at drama school. The lessons themselves were compartmentalised: a movement class followed by a voice class followed by a tap class. When I arrived and tried to teach everything at the same time, there were a lot of confused students!

However, in many other cultures – notably many African cultures – there is very little if any separation between dance, vocal melody and rhythm. You only have to see a group of South Africans for instance singing a song and you cannot see where the dance ends and the song begins – it is all the same thing. So when teaching songs from these cultures, we often find it difficult. It is no good trying to count some complex off-beat rhythm in your head using your conscious brain, it’s just too hard. You have to let your body “dance” the rhythm and then the song’s timing will come automatically. Similarly with the complex 7/8 rhythms common in the Balkans – just learn the dance at the same time and it comes easy!

Often we have found ourselves carrying out a complex task such as patting our head whilst rubbing our tummy and find that sweet moment when it all falls into place. But then as soon as we begin to think (“great, it’s working” or “I hope I’m getting it right”) it all goes disastrously wrong! We need to trust our intuition, our body intelligence, our non-rational brain which is just getting on with the task quite nicely thank you.

The Natural Voice approach to singing which I follow places the relationship between breath, body and voice at its heart. We believe that you simply can’t separate these components to be fully in the song. And it’s no coincidence that much of our repertoire comes from cultures which don’t make these separations.

I once met an instrumentalist who wouldn’t even begin to learn tunes from another culture until she’d been to a few dance classes from that culture. She needed to embed the culture’s “dance” into her body before she even picked up her instrument.

A few years back I was taught an amazing Ysaye Barnwell gospel-like song called Lawd it’s midnight. This is an amazing song with some quite tricky rhythms. We learnt it by having the sheet music in our hands and it took a long time to get it right. Most of the difficulties were to do with the cross rhythms. It occurred to me afterwards that we probably would have learnt it a lot faster if we had put the music down and simply let the rhythms into our bodies!

So next time somebody asks you to move or dance at the same time as you're singing, they're not trying to make life difficult for you, they're actually making it easier for you to learn the song. Just go with it!

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What is it that you do exactly?

Sometimes it’s easier to say what we don’t do!

This is what we DON'T DO
We don’t sing classical music (well, actually, we do sing the occasional “classical” song – like Plaisir d’Amour – but the bulk of our repertoire is not the typical Western classical canon).

We don’t sing pop songs (well, actually, I recently taught Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t worry, be happy”, and I have tried versions of U2 and the Beatles, but it doesn’t make up the bulk of our repertoire).

We don’t sing folk songs (well, actually, we do sing some English folk songs, although not many – and usually the arrangements are a little unusual – and most of our foreign songs could be said to be “folk” or traditional).

We are not a gospel choir (well, actually, we do sing quite a few gospel and spiritual numbers although we are not a church choir).

We don’t sing close harmony or barbershop (I’m not even sure what “close harmony” means! But as soon as you use words like acappella – which simply means singing without instrumental accompaniment – people immediately assume we sing barbershop).

We aren’t a religious choir (well, actually, we do sing many religious songs – who said the devil has all the best tunes! – but we are definitely a secular choir).

We aren’t like the local choral society or parish singers (now that is true, especially in the sense that we don’t stand in neat rows identically dressed with books in our hands).

We don’t do songs from the shows or easy listening music (that’s true too – mainly because I don’t like musicals!).

And this is what we DO do
So what is it that we do do, and why is it important?

We sing unaccompanied songs in harmony. That is, we don’t involve musical instruments, and most of the time we’re not all singing the tune in unison.

We sing songs from all around the world (in the original foreign language!), usually from cultures and traditions where there is a strong harmony tradition like Eastern Europe, New Zealand, USA, South Africa. That is why we hardly ever do songs from Asia or South America: they simply don’t have a harmony singing tradition. That’s also why we don’t often do British or Irish folk songs. Although there is a harmony singing tradition in this country, songs are often delicate and story-driven so don’t really work (in my opinion) with a large choir. Same with pop songs.

Now we know what we do, the trouble is it’s hard to explain it to potential audience members for our concerts, or participants in our workshops. I’ve tried many different ways over the years, but we still get audience members saying things like: “Oh, that’s what you do ! I really enjoyed it”. How come they were surprised? Hadn't we explained what we do before they came? We know by now that if we just get people along to our workshops or concerts that (usually) they really enjoy themselves. The hard bit is just getting them through the door.

Most people just don’t have the reference points for phrases like world music or acappella or unaccompanied harmony singing. There was a point when we could refer to adverts on television. At one point Ladysmith Black Mambazo (male South African singers, sung with Paul Simon) were used to advertise Heinz baked beans, and the Bulgarian state women’s choir (made a famous CD called Les Mysteres des Voix Bulgares) were used on a car advert. But it’s not happened recently.

So for concerts we rely a lot on word of mouth and friends bringing people along. For workshops, I went through a period of designing several more popular, accessible workshops just to get people singing in harmony (e.g. ABBA, Beatles, gospel, Paul Simon – see our workshops page for more details. Shameless plug: I will be running a residential weekend version of my Paul Simon Songbook workshop in September in the Cotswolds). Having got people along and introduced them to the joys of harmony singing, I can then slip in the odd Balkan song without them noticing!

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Playing catch up PART THREE

Following on from the last two posts, Playing catch up PART ONE and PART TWO, here are some more mundane mumblings looking back at my earlier posts from April and May. Now we’re up to date!

Sounds of silence
Rehearsals for our specially composed piece RUHE are proceeding apace. We are very grateful to Paul in Germany for his help with some of the pronunciation. Although the Koblenz accent is noticeable, at least the whole choir is speaking with one voice as it were. Also, at Fi’s suggestion (many thanks Fi for pointing us towards Sible’s 1999 restoration) we have added the percussion parts for single clave and empty maraca. We toyed with the idea of using Steve Reich’s recent addition of the sound of one hand clapping, but realised that we were simply taking too much on. So, stay tuned, and we look forward to your attendance at the premiere in July. (PS I promise to send the score out to the many of you who wrote in to request it. Unfortunately there has been a run on invisible ink recently, hence the delay).

Coach tour sing-a-long
I pointed out in Singing from the same hymn sheet that one of the reasons I had originally started a choir was that people would at least have some songs in common that they could sing together. So I was extremely heartened by our journey back from the Royal Festival Hall last Saturday. I was sitting in the middle of the coach and there was pretty much non-stop singing from the back half of the bus. Admittedly a few of the songs petered out or deteriorated into unison singing, but I was mightily impressed by the number of songs in harmony that the choir were able to sing without start notes and in full harmony! I could tell by the sound that people were really enjoying themselves and were really giving full voice to the songs. Yes, we had a few “Roll out the barrel” equivalents, but also loads of Georgian, Maori, gospel, African – and even Bosnian Sephardic songs. I was proud as proud could be!

Being in the moment
Many times things just go totally wrong in a rehearsal or at a performance. Often times it’s just not clear what the reason is so I’ve often blamed it on the weather in the past (well, you have to blame it on something!). Thinking about the phenomenon has made me believe more and more in the principle of “living in the now” or “being in the moment”. If you’ve done all your preparation and you come to the rehearsal or performance without expectation, you will always be rewarded – often in unexpected ways. But if you come to the warm-up or concert with a particular outcome in mind, you will almost always be disappointed. A hard skill to practice perhaps, but a very worthwhile one.

Different strokes for different folks
Undoubtedly the “flavour” of the three choirs Woven Chords, WorldSong and Global Harmony is very different (Vive la différence). So it was fascinating last Saturday to combine these three choirs into one large one and to see that the whole functioned as a completely different, fourth flavour of group. The only thing the singers had in common was that they had all learn the same songs (and many, not all, of them had been conducted by me at some point). I was worried that it would be hard to blend three disparate groups together, but it was as if we had been singing together for years! The audience on the South Bank couldn’t believe that we hadn’t really rehearsed together.

The other big difference for me in London on Saturday was the dynamics and make-up of the audience. It made me realise that so often we play to a white, middle class audience, and yet here was an audience made up of people with a much wider range of ages, races and cultures, all enjoying our varied programme. I do wish that the membership of the choirs reflected better the make-up of the community in which we work. Coventry for example is a multi-racial and multi-cultural city, and yet the vast majority of the choir are white. I really don’t know how to change this.

All those silent years
I still don’t know why so many people stop singing between school and their 30s and 40s, but I had another phone call this week from a bloke who wants to come to one of my workshops and said he hasn’t sung for 25 years!

Youth is wasted on the young
I got my copy of Sound Sense’s magazine today and almost all of the articles were about youth singing and music initiatives, or special interest groups like the disabled or the elderly. I know I might sound like some dyed-in-the-wool Tory, but I really wonder why the vast majority of people are seemingly ignored by the funding bodies. Or is it just me?

Mapping the song
I am still persisting with using a musical map to teach a version of La Bamba. I was rather wary when I first unveiled my attempt, but most people seemed to find it useful. We did seem to go faster after I started using the wall charts. Trouble is there are so many of them and it takes ages to put them up on the wall! I just hope that at some point the song will sink in and I can stop using the things. I have found though that since I’ve started putting song lyrics on wall charts, people learn the words much more quickly, even if I do end up handing out the lyrics.

Well, that’s the end of my trawl through my past posts. I hope it’s given you some food for thought and perhaps a greater overview of the topics that I’ve covered since last December. I do appreciate all of you who read this blog, even if you’re not moved to add comments.

However … do try to post a comment now and again, even if it’s just a one liner. I hope to create more of a dialogue and am always looking for new ideas and suggestions. Thanks for reading!

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Playing catch up PART TWO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Playing catch up PART ONE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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How many conductors does it take to lead a choir?

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

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

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

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

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

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

go to Chris Rowbury's website