In the school I am student teaching, there are six different music classes; chamber singers (SATB), concert choir (SATB), opera, women’s ensemble, women’s choir, and chorale(SATB). The number of students depends on the class, about 10 to 50 people. I have spent this week observing how the teacher rehearses for each class and at the same time I helped her by accompanying for the pieces they were working and rehearsing in small groups to practice their parts. Students are working on almost all the pieces to prepare for the upcoming concerts, which are scheduled for Oct through Dec. The teacher already chose the pieces including classical music, a cappella, opera aria, and Broadway musical pieces. My cooperating teacher majored in voice and she also was able to play the piano when dealing with each part practice. In each class, she spent time checking attendance, doing warm-ups, and rehearsing one or two pieces. Some concerts are only offered for those who pass the held auditions, which will occur in about 2 weeks. For that reason, students had to work on their part individually.
I don’t have much experience with working for a choir as a director even though I have been playing the piano for the choir for a while. As I am going to direct different choirs as a student teacher, I have thought of how to deal with them in terms of needs, levels of each choir, number of students, creative but efficient way of rehearsing and so on. Recent choir experiences I had were the NYU women’s choir and the Kodaly program where I sang in the choir. Through both of these classes I have learned how to teach choir and make the choir sound good. I enjoyed the classes a lot and worked hard but I realized how I neglected to learn how well they were taught. I always thought that I had a sense of understanding music and teaching choir is something I could do because I could play any music at the same time.
One day the teacher asked me to have the choir warm-ups and part practice. Even though I wasn’t prepared very well, I wanted them to have fun in a way and bring something different than what they were doing. I tried to be confident, bold, and at the same time loud. As warm-ups, I asked them to stretch out their bodies and massage their neighbors. They really liked it and it helped each other to be relaxed. Then I went on vocal practice. At the time I didn’t know which warm-ups were going to help when singing the different pieces, so I just did some easy ones and then I asked them if they have particular warm-ups they wanted to do. One girl suggested an exercise and we had fun while warming up our voices.
I have been thinking about different kinds of warm-up that can be used for the choir and also that can connect to the actual pieces they are working on, instead of seeking routine. In one of the classes that I am taking, we talked about this topic a little bit and if we do the same warm up every day, it might not be a warm up anymore. I am still figuring out what the best way of warming up might be by reading books and searching articles. In most classes I have watched the teacher playing the piano in order to get the pitch or melody and if students do not get it right, she played the piano while singing the part. Even though the students are holding music sheets, they kind of figured out the melody by only listening to what the teacher played or sang. Sometimes they seemed to be confused about the melody because she played a bit differently every time or because she made many mistakes. I am still debating on which way would be better for them, playing the piano whenever I need to or not relying on the piano too much while letting them look at the music sheets and helping them to get the right pitch. After observing many classes, I had many questions.
- Is repetition the best way to get their lines?
- How am I going to stop the chatting, especially when I am working on one part?
- If their voices and sounds are not strong enough, how am I going to encourage them to sing out loud? More energy, is that it ?
- Use appropriate words or terms according to the situation
- For beginning singers, what can I ask them to do? Something not too difficult to understand
- Posture; I think good posture definitely makes better sounds.
- What I could use while I observed from the classes
- Have them at times sing while seated or standing (alternation refrains to get bored I think
- Have them sing by row sometimes not everyone is singing correct
- Give an example that might help them understand about singing
- Not all the time but speaking works with rhythms rather than singing right after they get new music
- Let one part hum while I work with the other part
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