Occasionally I have been asked to fill in for our ward choir director. I actually enjoy directing choirs, so that is not an imposition. But this week I wasn't sure if I could even get there on time. I lead the singing in our ward for Sacrament Meeting at 9:00, then drove 40 miles to get to my granddaughter's Primary Presentation by 11:00, then drove back to my town for choir practice at 1:00 pm. I got to my choir practice a few minutes late, but hardly anyone was there yet. We decided to start anyway even though we just had one Bass, 6 Altos, and two Sopranos. Eventually a few more men came.
We took a vote on which song we thought that our director was most likely to choose for us to perform in a few weeks. (None of us remembered exactly.) Our director has been having us read through many pieces just to get the feel of what she really wants us to do, so we have a lot of music in our folders. The one we decided to work on the most was a version of "This Is My Father's World." It has a lovely violin part as well as the SATB and piano parts.
This not my recommended way of trusting a substitute to run a rehearsal. Usually the substitute is given some instructions on what to work on at least. Unfortunately, I felt unprepared. I don't recommend sight-reading the parts you are supposed to be teaching.
Anyway, I decided that I would default to my usual choral conducting strategies. We began with a few vocal warm-ups. Then we dove into learning the piece. This was the first week during this Fall season we had so many altos there at the same time. It became evident right away that this particular group needed work on matching vowels and pitches. So, we worked to modify "ah" and "oh" sounds and the hard one -- the short "a" as in "cat." Soon, they were doing much better.
Another big part of this piece was the need to hold out notes for impossible lengths of time. We had to do a lesson on "Staggering Breaths 101." We practiced coming in and out of a line fading out the notes, sneakily snatching breaths at different times, and then quietly coming back in. Soon they were working as a team.
The last note of the piece suddenly becomes unison from a dissonant 4-note chord. That took some effort to realize that on a sudden unison soft note EVERYONE has to become even softer than the pianissimo they were positioned on in the previous measure.
It took some work, but we made some good progress. The problem will be that the next time we meet, we may have a completely different leader and voices, many who have never worked on these issues before. But at least our efforts were lending some consistency to get our ward choir into a groove this Fall season.
Comments from the accompanist, "You are quite the pistol," and "Do you have a lead foot?"
(He was referring to how fast I ran rehearsal and how I must have broken a few speed limits to get back in time for our rehearsal. Which I didn't, there just wasn't much traffic.)
We took a vote on which song we thought that our director was most likely to choose for us to perform in a few weeks. (None of us remembered exactly.) Our director has been having us read through many pieces just to get the feel of what she really wants us to do, so we have a lot of music in our folders. The one we decided to work on the most was a version of "This Is My Father's World." It has a lovely violin part as well as the SATB and piano parts.
This not my recommended way of trusting a substitute to run a rehearsal. Usually the substitute is given some instructions on what to work on at least. Unfortunately, I felt unprepared. I don't recommend sight-reading the parts you are supposed to be teaching.
Anyway, I decided that I would default to my usual choral conducting strategies. We began with a few vocal warm-ups. Then we dove into learning the piece. This was the first week during this Fall season we had so many altos there at the same time. It became evident right away that this particular group needed work on matching vowels and pitches. So, we worked to modify "ah" and "oh" sounds and the hard one -- the short "a" as in "cat." Soon, they were doing much better.
Another big part of this piece was the need to hold out notes for impossible lengths of time. We had to do a lesson on "Staggering Breaths 101." We practiced coming in and out of a line fading out the notes, sneakily snatching breaths at different times, and then quietly coming back in. Soon they were working as a team.
The last note of the piece suddenly becomes unison from a dissonant 4-note chord. That took some effort to realize that on a sudden unison soft note EVERYONE has to become even softer than the pianissimo they were positioned on in the previous measure.
It took some work, but we made some good progress. The problem will be that the next time we meet, we may have a completely different leader and voices, many who have never worked on these issues before. But at least our efforts were lending some consistency to get our ward choir into a groove this Fall season.
Comments from the accompanist, "You are quite the pistol," and "Do you have a lead foot?"
(He was referring to how fast I ran rehearsal and how I must have broken a few speed limits to get back in time for our rehearsal. Which I didn't, there just wasn't much traffic.)
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