Seven years ago, I was commissioned by my home church in my home city to start a choir. This church is a bit of an anomaly—they have an outstanding music program with possibly one of the lowest music budgets around. They employ no paid singers whatsoever. The church had two services per Sunday, one in the morning and one in the evening, featuring a regular choir that sang all the morning services and three evening choirs that rotated the evening services, with one Sunday evening per month having no choir. I was to fill that gap. As every other choir in the church was auditioned, I decided to make mine open to everyone. This suggestion was initially met with dismay from my higher-ups, but I insisted that it could work, and so we agreed.
I had my work cut out for me! Part of the concern about having a non-auditioned choir for an evening service lay in the rehearsal setup. The other three evening choirs each rehearsed for two hours on a Saturday, then sang the next day in the service. This was a place with high standards for choral music. The choirs all sang a capella at all times, and quality was expected. The choirs also tended to be small, ranging from about 15 at most to four or five at least. The concern was that a non-auditioned choir could never learn repertoire in such a short period of time.
Determination, however, goes a long way! It wasn’t my first conducting rodeo, but it was my longest-lasting so far. And let me tell you, I learned a ton. Since many singers often find themselves with a baton in hand, perhaps you can learn from my experiences.
1. Good loud singing comes before good quiet singing.
This was certainly true for me in my own singing and holds true for the majority of my voice students, whether adults or children. I talked to my choirs about muscle memory, which is built only by extending the muscle fully. I would compare it to teaching your leg to kick a football: you can’t do it by sauntering over and limply brushing the ball with your foot. Singing is the same: extending the vocal musculature fully means using a lot of volume, at least until your singers have found the cores of their voices. You won’t find it by singing under the support all of the time.
In my three decades of choral experience, I find that many conductors ask for under-supported tone. Help your singers find their voices—control will come later. This may mean avoiding repertoire that is especially precious or quiet, especially at the beginning. Palestrina may not be the most helpful vehicle initially. Or if you want to sing Palestrina, start by having them sing it fortissimo, then bring it down a little, but not too far—your singers aren’t the Tallis Scholars, so find repertoire they can sing with their bodies behind their voices.
2. Amateurs are always more comfortable singing in groups.
If you can create a dynamic in rehearsal where people don’t feel intimidated about singing alone, you’ve won the game. In most choral situations, I find there is a tremendous amount of importance associated with singing alone, even amongst seasoned singers. If you can find a way to just make that less important, less of a big deal, then everyone can relax.
We’ve all experienced that moment when the conductor isolates a section and has them sing alone. Every one of those singers shrinks into his shell and sings badly, quietly, and inaccurately, while the rest of the choir listens in some combination of sympathy and judgement and the tension in the room is thicker than jello. There are ways to reduce this significance and most of it will lie with you, in the approach you take in rehearsals.
3. Treat warm-up time like a group voice lesson.
Get your singers out of their comfort zones, but don’t push too far too fast or they won’t leave the box at all. Encourage choir members to push their own limits. One of my ex-choristers told me recently that one of the best things he learned in the seven years winging it with me was something I used to say routinely: “You don’t know where your limits are until you’ve gone past them.” I would encourage my singers to keep on trying for the next high note in the range-extending vocalises, to try until they actually didn’t hit the note. They always managed to sing far higher than they thought they could—and when I would tell him how high the last note was, they were always surprised and impressed with themselves.
4. Get choristers’ bodies and minds involved by changing things up both physically and mentally.
During one frustrating rehearsal a few years ago, the choir just wasn’t tuning and they were normally pretty good about that. I talked about the art of singing both a melodic line as well as a chord position. I called this “T-shaped singing,” where you have to look at the music both horizontally as well as vertically. I started quizzing them: “Who has the tonic? The third? Is it major or minor? Who’s on the fifth?” and so forth. Eventually, though, I had them all crowd into a small and resonant corner of the building to sing so that they could hear each other almost overwhelmingly. The tuning improved immensely.
On another occasion, I took their music away and made them sing a rather new piece from memory, so that they would be forced to listen to each other more instead of being buried in the scores. It was so much better that they performed it that way the next night, despite their initial panic about not having the music. For years the memory of this incident served as a fantastic threat for when they weren’t watching!
When rhythm or tempo was an issue, I would have choristers walk around in beats and sub-beat divisions. Sopranos would step on quarter notes, altos on eighth notes, tenors on half notes, etc., until they could feel it. Getting the rhythm into their bodies worked wonders.
5. Confident singers = good singers!
This may be my most important point. Do the work it takes to give your singers the impression that you feel they are talented and intelligent, and it will become true even if it wasn’t in the beginning! Part of this will also need to come from trust on your part. Don’t underestimate them just because they’re amateurs.
When they’re sight reading a new piece, always give them a second chance before you start critiquing. Let them read through it once, refrain from commenting, and then let them try again. You’ll be amazed at how much they’ll be able to fix on their own. It will save you enormous amounts of time and it will also subtly instill in your singers the sense that you trust them to figure things out on their own.
I’m a huge fan of the Socratic method of teaching, which means asking questions instead of giving answers. After a sing-through of something, I would often say, “OK, pretty good. What do you think I’m going to say?” I would get tons of suggestions, like, “Well, we [the basses] were off on the second page, but I think we found our way again by the third page.” Or “we really slowed down and weren’t following you.” Or “we were horribly flat!” This gives you the opportunity to affirm your choir again by confirming their abilities to diagnose the problems.
On occasion I would have the opportunity to let them know that the problem wasn’t actually as bad as they thought. For instance, if it was a pitch issue, I rarely cared as long as the choir was still in tune with itself. Either way, it saved me having to stand there and tell them that what they had done was wrong—a definite win for me!
6. Find a balance between asking for a lot and being merciful.
Don’t be afraid to set the bar high and require a lot from your singers. A common mistake made by conductors of amateur/volunteer choirs everywhere is not asking for enough. If the choir is behind the tempo, the solution doesn’t lie in slowing down to match them; it lies in asking your singers to keep up with you. I was merciless about snapping on my tactus when they were dragging. I would shout over their singing, “I’m winning! I’m going to get to the end before you!” and they would generally laugh and catch up. Don’t be a jerk about it, but keep asking for more. They’ll be happier with themselves and you if they’re making music they can feel proud of.
That said, don’t make it impossible for them to get it. Let them breathe if they need to. Teach them the subtle art of stagger breathing like the pros. This goes hand in hand with number two above about your general approach in rehearsals. Make it OK for them to make mistakes. Another regular saying of mine was “I don’t care if you make mistakes, but make them boldly!” I meant it. Singers who are singing with confidence are vastly more likely to sing with accuracy and good tone. And if they sang a C-sharp instead of a C? That can be fixed.
Lead by example and admit your own mistakes. I’m a singer, not a conductor, and my conducting is nothing fancy—just clear beats and clear cues. I would occasionally forget a cue. Admitting it won’t make your choir think less of you—whereas the opposite (not acknowledging it) will!
Give your singers the tools they need to figure out how to solve their problems. Don’t spoon feed unless it’s the last option possible. If they’re sight reading and making mistakes, don’t automatically turn to the piano and start plunking out individual lines. Don’t leave them in the cold, but help them through it. If your tenors just can’t figure out that one tricky interval, get them to analyze it. Is it a fourth? A fifth? Do we know what a fifth sounds like? What common songs begin with a fifth? Can we apply that and see if we can find it? Giving your singers training with this kind of skill will pay off vastly in the long run!
A long-time singer from my choir once told me that of the three conductors in the church, I was by far the most demanding, but that my rehearsals were also the most fun and that my choir was the one he enjoyed most. The level of commitment in my choir was rather higher than in the other choirs. But asking for a lot did not scare away my choristers, which dispelled the notion that you can’t be too demanding with volunteers.
These singers, who could barely read music in some cases, pulled off pieces like Rheinberger’s “Abendlied,” Viadana’s “Exultate justi in Domino,” Duruflé’s “Ubi caritas et amor,” reams of Renaissance work, world music, folk, gospel, and also a ton of my own arrangements—always with just two hours of prep time. I made them dance. I made them stand in weird arrangements. I made them walk around. And, if I may, they loved it.
I used to joke that my method of evangelism was to bully people into joining my church choir. And so I say to you, go forth and make choral disciples! You can do it—and so can they.
