Choir 101 for Band Directors!

Lou De La Rosa, Clinician!

Director of Choral & Vocal Studies!
West Valley College, Saratoga!
lou.delarosa@westvalley.edu!
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Auditions!
• Range: Listen for ease of singing as well as timbre for placement in choir!
• Scale: Major (most people know “Doe a deer…”); Chromatic for advanced groups!
• Chords: Arpeggiated major & minor triads; augmented & diminished for jazz!
• Tonal Memory: 8 short exercises ranging from 4-8 tones to be repeated after 1 hearing!
• Sight Reading: 12 measures which get progressively more difficult in pitch & rhythm!
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Warm-ups!
• Begin with physical stretching!
• Start phonating by humming lightly, sighing!
• Start in the middle of range and ascend in descending pattern: sol, fa, mi, re, do!
• Don’t go too high or too low until later in the warm-ups!
• Be sure to warm up all registers of the voice: chest, head and mix!
• Extend range by going up, but don’t tax the voice by staying high for long periods!
• Keep it simple: concentrate on posture, breath support and a relaxed throat!
• Keep after students: Don’t settle for bad posture or less than 100% participation…ever!
• Keep students involved: Remind them that this is THEIR time to figure out what is working!
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Voice Building!
• Breathe to relax and relax to breathe: Concentrate on the jaw, throat & abdominal muscles!
• The key to free singing is to trust the breath!
• Support the tone with abdominal muscles, not with throat muscles!
• Require your students to hydrate frequently by bringing water to rehearsals!
• Remember these axioms: !
If you feel that you have control of your voice, you’re probably singing wrong;!
If you feel that you have no control of your voice, you’re probably singing right.!
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If you want to sing free, you need to sing wet;!
If you want to sing wet, you need to pee clear.!
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Rehearsal Techniques!
• Begin with unison singing to achieve desired tone, unified vowels, and crisp consonants.
Keep students busy. When working with one section, the others should hum, count or tap
their part OR listen critically with paper and pencil. Keep them honest by calling on
individuals frequently.!
• To improve reading within rehearsal, have everyone sing each part successively in their own
range on a neutral syllable, first everyone on melody (usually soprano), then everyone on
bass for harmonic implications, finally tenor and alto. Once that is achieved, have women on
melody and men on bass line, then move to everyone on their own parts, on a different
neutral syllable each time. !
• To check for pitch accuracy and immediacy of sound (no followers), have everyone sing
staccatissimo, with ALL note values performed as short as possible so that only the initial
sound is heard. It will take time, but don’t allow anyone to sustain a tone AT ALL. This cleans
up pitch and rhythm without having to go over multiple times: EVERYONE hears problems.!
• Have choir sing, then at a given point have everyone silently THINK their pitches as you
conduct. On your command, everyone begins to sing again, either holding a given chord or
continuing to sing.!
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Repertoire!
• The music you sang in college is appropriate for a college choir, maybe an advanced high
school choir, but not the average high school choir and definitely not a middle school choir.!
• Choose music for the choir in front of you, not the choir you wish you had.!
• No one is enriched by singing hard literature badly, but everyone benefits by singing simple
music well. !
• Begin with unison and two-part music. Once your choir can handle part singing, expand to
three and four-part music.!
• Renaissance madrigals are excellent for young voices, since they have limited ranges
compared to today’s literature. Avoid the tendency to program only music from the past 20
years that the publishers are promoting.!
• Above all, choose music that makes your choir sound good. Don’t rewrite Bach, but do what
you need to do to to the music (within reason) to make it work for your group, i.e. double
vocal lines with instruments, write descants for cambiata voices, etc.!
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Finding Good Voice Teachers!
• There is no single way to support the breath, but all of the accepted techniques involve
expansion of the rib cage and the active use of the diaphragm.!
• Good voice teachers teach vocal technique. Those who don’t are either bad teachers or are
simply vocal coaches. You don’t need coaches at this level, you need teachers.!
• Anyone can hang out a shingle. Ask for credentials, BA Music at a minimum, and ask for the
private teacher to give a sample lesson to one of your students when you can observe. !
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Bottom Line!
• Teach music. Teach students to read music notation. Do not allow a student to leave your
class unable to read music, for that reflects poorly on YOU, not on the student.!
• Use solfege to reinforce melodic tendencies of pitches in the mind’s ear for audiation; !
• Test students in groups and individually to hold them accountable; !
• Teach students to interpret music; !
• Teach students to make a pleasing sound that is vibrant, resonant, and in tune; !
• Share your love of music.!
• Expect, encourage, and teach excellence. Do not settle for mediocrity. Get out from behind
the piano and LISTEN to your choir, then stop and fix what needs fixing. Remember that the
eminent Robert Shaw used to say, “The right note at the wrong time is the wrong note.”!
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Resources!
• California ACDA (American Choral Directors Association): www.acdacal.org!
• Choral Public Domain Library (Legally free music): www.cpdl.org!
• International Music Score Library Project (Free large works): www.imslp.org!
• Choral Net (Forum, Lists, Repertoire Ideas): www.choralnet.org!
• Classical Singer Magazine: www.classicalsinger.com!
• Vocal Health: www.vocalist.org.uk/vocal_health.html!
• Singing Technique: How to Avoid Vocal Trouble by Joseph Klein & Ole Schjeide!
• The Functional Unity of the Singing Voice by Barbara Doscher!
• The Diagnosis and Correction of Vocal Faults: A Manual for Teachers of Singing and for
Choir Directors by James C. McKinney