Those Pesky Middle-School Boys

Ah, junior high school. The time when we break open the chrysalis of childhood and emerge, fully formed, as autonomous adults, capable of calculated decision-making and entirely constructive life choices. Were it so! But alas, junior high students are expected to begin functioning as real adults, while they move through a tumultuous hormonal and social change. Nowhere is this more apparent than in choir, where choristers no longer sing the rinky-dink songs of childrens' choirs (apologies to all legitimate childrens' choirs), but full-fledged (if reduced from 4 to 3 parts) SAB choral music, while engaging new social situations, suddenly hyper-aware of every sound emerging from their mouth.

This brings us to the plight of Ms. Mitchell, as documented on choralnet this September:

"This is my 3rd year teaching at a middle school in Indianapolis and I'm facing a new challenge that I'm just 'stuck' on.  Student's are 'shutting down'- rather than rising to the challenge.

In my 8th grade choir I have 56 students, 42 are girls.  The girls work very hard for me, but the boys become a distraction.  The students have the ability to sing SAB/3-part music, getting them to understand section work is difficult, as well as getting them to even get along.   Talking is our biggest issue.   When I work in sections its great, but then another section will just start talking, and now students are begining to show their frustration that the choir is not advancing as quickly.  The class period is an hour 1/2, which does not help.  I'm looking for any kind of inspirational ideas to keep students motivated, and excited to sing because many of them are 'shutting down'.  If you have any activities, videos, group work suggestions! anything helps. 

 

Please & Thanks in Advance!"

 

The responses to this post were all very positive and intelligent. One poster mentioned showing inspirational videos on YouTube of choirs all over the world. A few people advocated "active listening" to varying degrees for sections that weren't rehearsing, such as asking the non-vocal section questions about how the vocal section was singing. My response included a few different ideas, presented here:

 

"Hi Shelley,

 

It sounds for sure like you're in a difficult situation. Junior high boys are definitely the scariest demographic for me to work with. I have a few recommendations, some of which you may find helpful:

 

- Working in sections can be dangerous, as it takes away focus from other sections of the choir. If you're addressing an issue in a section, try to productively include other parts of the choir in your discussion - this could include something like "Sopranos, we're not blending well in mm. 14. Men, what do you think about their vowel there? What could we change?" or "Men, we're going to sing from mm 4 to mm 30 for the women. Women, tell us what you think at the end". This helps involve all sections in sectional work, and adds peer pressure - the students care much more how they sound for each other (especially trying to impress the other gender) than they care how they sound for you.

 

- Minimize your own talking. Some of my best "focused" rehearsals were ones where I walked in, didn't say a word, and starting doing warm-ups using only singing and gesture. I would find a round that would work for a warm-up, and see if you can teach the round by rote, pointing at yourself and at them, cutting them off with your hands and singing the next part, putting it together by pointing at sections, etc. See how far you can get in a rehearsal without saying a word. This is a little extreme, but worth a shot. On a more moderate level, minimize your talking between takes to a maximum of ten seconds, and a maximum of asking for two changes at a time.

 

- An hour and a half is a very long rehearsal period - I think that is the absolute maximum that anyone of any age can be productive in a rehearsal environment. I would have a look at this website: http://secondaryfarm.blogspot.ca/2014/03/teaching-with-golden-ratio.html

The basic idea here is using segments of rehearsal time of increasing length (i.e. 1 min, 2 min, 3 min, 5 min, 8 min...) to ratchet up their attention and focus, and using different segments for different purposes: reviewing what they've done before (retention), rewarding their patience by singing things they enjoy the most (reward), and working on new, difficult material. Even if you don't take this route, tightening up your rehearsal plans and alternating pieces more quickly is bound to alleviate some of their frustrations.

 

 

Best of luck! Keep fighting the good fight.

 

AJ"

 

Hopefully we get a response from Shelley to see if any of these ideas worked for her!

 

Hamilton Children's Choir

Greetings traveler,

Tonight I post a presentation I've just finished - a presentation on the Hamilton Children's Choir of Ontario. The presentation talks about their tiered choir system, some of their repertoire choices (rated from easiest to hardest) and some of their unique resources! Enjoy.

Ted Talk - Itay Talgam

I recently watched a Ted Talk by conductor Itay Talgam, called “Lead like the Great Conductors”. The video distilled elements of leadership for non-musicians by examining the actions of great conductors on the podium.

One of the main themes in the video is the balance of power between the conductor and the ensemble – does the conductor relinquish power to the ensemble when he or she doesn’t dictate every moment? My philosophy has slowly shifted from musical dictation toward being as simple as possible, but no simpler. When you allow the ensemble breathing room, they learn to make intelligent musical decisions as individuals and as a group.

In May, I toured England and Scotland with the Frost Chorale. At one of our concerts, our English and Scottish pieces (Loch Lomond, some Rutter pieces, etc) resonated very well with the audience, so we pulled out a Hawaiian piece to bring an American flavour to the concert. Our conductor brought her hands up to begin, and then reconsidered and sat down in the first row, made a “go ahead!” gesture and smiled. We’d never done the piece by ourselves before, but she wanted to throw us for a loop. We nervously began, but we watched and smiled and danced at each other as we sang, and the piece was a great success. She later commented that she should do that every time.

On a practical level, some of my ideas for ensemble empowerment include:

-          Encourage communication within sections during rehearsal. If the tenors can’t get a phrase, give them a second to figure it out for themselves. Orchestras do this all the time, and it’s amazing to see how much people feel they can contribute when they can intercommunicate.

-          You’ll be tempted after a first run-through to fix everything at once. Let them have another sing-through! They’ll fix so many things by themselves. Even better, after the first sing-through, say “flip the pages of your score for 20 seconds. Make a mental note of what was just difficult for you and what you’d like to get this second time around”.

-          Ask questions about the text – hidden meanings, unfamiliar words.

If you can teach your singers to sing intelligently, you’ll save tons of time, not having to point out every diphthong and crescendo and cutoff to them. Give them control.

Choral Warm-ups

Video 1 - Physical Warm-up

 

My colleague Amanda and I recorded some of our favourite warm-ups to share with you online! We chose some warm-ups to address different areas of vocal production: the body, breathing, tone, flexibility, and diction. 

Here is our first warm-up, which focuses on warming up the body and becoming limber enough to sing healthfully. Using back stretches, shoulder and neck rolls, and knee bends, Amanda moves some of the areas where singers experience the most tension. It's important to remember that singing is a full-body activity, and from the neck down counts!

Video 2 - Breathing Warm-up

Our second warm-up focuses on breathing. Amanda emphasizes the fact that breath shouldn't be held - inhalation should be followed by a natural, controlled release. In this video, she demonstrates how an inhalation of constant duration can fuel exhalations of varied lengths, using proper breath control.

Video 3 - Resonance Warm-up

In this video, I work on maintaining a good inner mouth space for the [u] (ooo) vowel. [u] is a fantastic vowel for tuning because of its limited overtone series, resulting in an even, blended sound throughout the choir. The temptation, however, is to keep the molars close together. By switching to [u] from an [ɑ] vowel, the mouth space of the latter can be kept while singing the former. 

Video 4 - Flexibility Warm-up

This flexibility exercise sets the foundations of vocal flexibility, beginning with the two-note melisma. 

Video 5 - Diction Warm-up

A tongue-twister can be a fun way to introduce children to good diction. The speed and precision of a tongue-twister ensures that children will have to enunciate well and quickly just to "get the words out".

Welcome!

Welcome, choral scholars of the world. My name is Adam, and I'm a choral conductor and music-educator-in-training. This blog is for me to share various choral resources and reflections (hence the title), as well as being part of my work for course ED 2520, Voice Choral Methods.