How can I teach a choir to sing well when they know nothing about music?
I play the piano for this choir and I know a lot about music. I even sing myself. But I’ve never studied how to teach a group of people to sing before. I’m at a loss because these people don’t sound very good. Any suggestions?
If you’re willing to take on the task (and it won’t be easy!), you have to start with the basics. If they won’t learn to read music, you’ll have to teach them their parts by rote, playing each individual part over and over until they learn their part.
Once they’ve learned their parts individually, you need to get them to put it all together. Some of the best ways I know of to do this are
1. count singing — everybody sings the rhythm of the song by counting out "one two ti four / one-and two-and ti-and four-and", etc. "Ti" is used in place of "three" becaue it flows out more quickly in rhythm without that tripthong in the beginning. At the beginning, count-singing should be done without pitches so that the singers are concentrating on RHYTHM only.
2. Once the rhythm is properly set in their head, add count-singing with pitch (but still no lyrics). This will help set the melodies and harmonies in their heads.
3. Chanting — again, this is a rhythmic exercise, but helps set the lyrics straight with the rhythm. During this phase, work on setting and correcting diction, making sure consonants (especially final consonants of words and phrases) all fall together. Proper diction during singing is one of the most important aspects, and is almost universally ignored by church choir directors.
4. Put it all together.
One of the most useful things I have found for my own practice is the creation of rehearsal tapes. This is a tedious process, but is becoming more practical with the advent of sheet music scanning software. I can scan a song, convert it to midi, massage the midi file somewhat with a music notation program, and create usable rehearsal tapes reasonably quickly (about 15 – 20 minutes per page of music these days). The trick with such a process is to create a separate rehearsal tape for each voice part, isolating that voice part on one channel (let’s say the left channel for convenience) while mixing all of the rest of the voices to the right channel, and mixing the accompaniment equally. This way, each singer can hear their own part clearly without confusion from the other voices, but while still hearing the accompaniment.
Comments
I suggest listening to each one sing individually and take notes on their strong qualities. Try different pairings of singers to see what sounds you come up with!
Good luck
References :
Since you sing yourself, you’ve probably been in a choir before. Think back to what the director did in rehearsals to get the group to sound good and apply it to what you’re doing.
Lessons always help too if you have the opportunity to hold them – you can work parts in peices without taking up the rest of the group’s time. Just make sure you stick to keeping the lesson groups to one voice – all altos, basses etc. Only single people out if you absolutely have to – a lot of people are weird about being "called out".
References :
If you’re willing to take on the task (and it won’t be easy!), you have to start with the basics. If they won’t learn to read music, you’ll have to teach them their parts by rote, playing each individual part over and over until they learn their part.
Once they’ve learned their parts individually, you need to get them to put it all together. Some of the best ways I know of to do this are
1. count singing — everybody sings the rhythm of the song by counting out "one two ti four / one-and two-and ti-and four-and", etc. "Ti" is used in place of "three" becaue it flows out more quickly in rhythm without that tripthong in the beginning. At the beginning, count-singing should be done without pitches so that the singers are concentrating on RHYTHM only.
2. Once the rhythm is properly set in their head, add count-singing with pitch (but still no lyrics). This will help set the melodies and harmonies in their heads.
3. Chanting — again, this is a rhythmic exercise, but helps set the lyrics straight with the rhythm. During this phase, work on setting and correcting diction, making sure consonants (especially final consonants of words and phrases) all fall together. Proper diction during singing is one of the most important aspects, and is almost universally ignored by church choir directors.
4. Put it all together.
One of the most useful things I have found for my own practice is the creation of rehearsal tapes. This is a tedious process, but is becoming more practical with the advent of sheet music scanning software. I can scan a song, convert it to midi, massage the midi file somewhat with a music notation program, and create usable rehearsal tapes reasonably quickly (about 15 – 20 minutes per page of music these days). The trick with such a process is to create a separate rehearsal tape for each voice part, isolating that voice part on one channel (let’s say the left channel for convenience) while mixing all of the rest of the voices to the right channel, and mixing the accompaniment equally. This way, each singer can hear their own part clearly without confusion from the other voices, but while still hearing the accompaniment.
References :
Me — choral singer for 25 years.
The most important thing you can teach a choir is to listen to each other and try to blend. Even if they are singing in parts, they should try to listen to the other parts and make sure they are blending well together. That will help their overall sound a good deal.
References :
Vocal Coach/ Choir director 10+ years
This is a really good one … its in two parts so bear with me on this…
The best way to get them to sing in any kind of bearable manner (so you don’t go tone deaf from all the catterwalling) is to teach them the "ROW, ROW, ROW Your Boat" song.
Divide them up into 2 groups, then have the first group start to sing…row,row, row your boat, gently down the stream and at the pause have the second group chime in row, row, row your boat gently down the stream, while the first group finishes their part in singing merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream, and when the second group gets to the pause have the first group chime in again with the beginning of the song again, while the second finishes with merrily…repeat until the timing is bang on and sounds harmonious.
The second part is to teach them to carol with Cristmas songs, start with Jingle Bells, and break them into 3 or 4 groups and repeat as above for the Row Row Row your boat song. This will get them in an uplifting spirit so that their voices will soar, after all – who doesn’t know the Jingle Bell song and who can’t sing that?
The other suggestion I have is to listen to some of the old crooners like Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole or one of the many others on how they inflect their voices to the ups and downs of the music, not just doing that crazy whiny stuff everybody seems to think they sound good doing nowadays.
Teach them about Soprano, Tenor, Baritone, etc.., group them by their voices according to those categories and have them sing in those groups to various parts of songs, like higher pitched voices at the happier more elated parts, and lower, deeper voices, during the the more somber, sadder, dark parts, with the midrange voices singing the even keel stuff. Hope this helps.
References :
I use two methods… First I make them switch parts around enough so they are forced to listen to each other. Put especially your loudest voices that stick out on a different part, and keep a few decent but more subtle voices on their original parts. Make them actually learn to sing together that way, in spite of all the griping and whining that they may do.
Second, use some imagery as you speak to them about the sound that you want. I found that musical terms will usually confuse the common choir member. So I ask the altos to sound like Christmas fudge instead of telling them to support the sustained tones and passing tones.
References :
Break the choir up into their respective parts. Concentrate on each section learning what they have to sing. Only when each section knows their own parts can you try to put the whole lot together.
It’s like learning any music. Break it into sections. You may have learnt piano pieces similarly getting L/H and R/H familiarity separately.
Goof luck.
References :
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