Demand the Best from Yourself and Your Singers: Achieving New Heights in Choral Rehearsals and Performances

Notes to an interest session presented by David N. Childs, DMA ICDA Summer Symposium Central College, Pella, IA

July 25-28, 2016 Key Focus Areas:

• 1. Planning and Score Analysis • 2. Pacing of rehearsal • 3. Interpretation • 4. Vocal Issues, and the Adolescent Voice • 5. Diction • 6. Error Recognition and Correction • 7. Humor and Imagery

Why be involved in vocal/choral education? Socially 1. To meet people; 2. It is a forum for sharing; 3. It brings people together and encourages a sense of community; 4. It offers opportunity for giving and receiving positive feedback; 5. It is a forum for fun & laughter; 6. It can provide support; 7. It can provide a safe environment to try new skills; 8. It brings people together. Give it a try! Physically 1. Singing exercises our lungs. It tones up our intercostal muscles and our diaphragm; 2. It can improve our sleep; 3. We benefit our hearts and circulation by improving our aerobic capacity and we decrease muscle tension.; 4. Our facial muscles get toned; 5. Our posture improves; 6. We can become more mentally alert; 7. Sinuses and respiratory tubes are opened up more; 8. With careful training recent evidence suggests that it can help decrease the problem of snoring; 9. There is a release of pain relieving endorphins; 10. Our immune system is given a boost enabling us to fight disease; 11. It can help reduce anger and depression and anxiety; 12. Use of music can help people to regain balance if affected by illness such as Parkinson’s disease Emotionally 1. Increase in self-esteem and confidence; 2. It increases feelings of wellbeing; 3. It enhances mood; 4. Useful as a stress reducer; 5. It is uplifting spiritually; 6. It can increase positive feelings; 7. Encourages creativity; 8. It can be energizing; 9. It evokes emotions; 10. Promotes bonding; 11. Increases understanding and empathy between cultures.; 12. It is healing Singing Changes Your Brain: Journal of Behavioral Medicine, December 20014, volume 27, Issue 6 A study that investigates the effects of choir music on secretory immunoglobulin A (S-IgA), cortisol, and emotional states in members of a mixed amateur choir. August 16, 2013 TIME magazine article: When you sing, musical vibrations move through you, altering your physical and emotional landscape. Group singing, for those who have done it, is the most exhilarating and transformative of all. It takes something incredibly intimate, a sound that begins inside you, shares it with a roomful of people and it comes back as something even more thrilling: harmony. So it’s not surprising that group singing is on the rise. According to Chorus America, 32.5 million adults sing in choirs, up by almost 10 million over the past six years. Many people think of church music when you bring up group singing, but there are over 270,000 choruses across the country and they include gospel groups to show choirs like the ones depicted in Glee to strictly amateur groups like Choir! Choir! Choir! Singing David Bowie’s ‘The Man Who Sold the World’.

1. Planning and Score Analysis

• Know the score • Translate the text • Identify difficult passages • Understand meter relationships

Structural Analysis is the core of score study: Understand how harmony, melody, rhythm, texture, and instrumentation reveal the total design of a composition and the details that order its architecture. All these elements interact with text, and to what degree words inspire or affect these structural building blocks is a particularly important question to ask. Music always transcends the text: it amplifies and gives greater meaning to the affect, the mood, the individual concepts, and even the specificity of a single word. 1. Text. Analyze:

• the relationship of the text to the overall form of the composition, and the relationship of the text to the primary structures that provide structural coherence for the form

• the influence of the text on forming the principal cadences that articulate the primary structures within the form

• the influence of the text on sub-structures – the smaller cadential units that occur within the principal one

II. Harmony. Understand:

• the influence of the text on mode (major, minor, modal) and key • the specific influence of the text on passing events: chromaticism, dissonance, harmonic progression,

specific chord choice; modulation III. Melody. Analyze:

• the relationship of text expression to melodic shape and contour • the influence of the text on the tessitura and range of the vocal parts • the influence the text may have on long line; or on short line

IV. Rhythm. Understand:

• if there is a relationship of the text to the meter • the specific relationship of the text and the rhythm • the specific choice of note combinations (long, short, symmetric, asymmetric), that may be related to

text V. Texture. Analyze:

• how high, low, open, closed, dense, opaque textures may reflect some aspect of the text • how the number of parts and the changes in texture may be influenced by the text • how texture – polyphonic, homophonic, linear, chordal - may relate to text affect

VI. Instrumentation. Understand:

• how text influences the composer’s choice of instruments • how text may relate to changes in instrumentation • how text may relate to a composer’s decisions regarding contrasting or complementing instrumental

colors

VI. Style, Performance Practice, Interpretive Considerations Understand how the text may be related to:

• tempo; tempo fluctuation; tempo markings; meter • phrasing (long note groups; short note groups); linear direction • articulation • pitch level, temperament, tuning • dynamicsß • instrumentation, timbre • rubato • ornamentation, improvisation • musica ficta • basso-continuo • balance, size, make-up of performing forces

2. Pacing of Rehearsal

• How should I plan? • Vocal limitations • Save the hard work for the middle • The Golden Mean

Know how you wish to pace your rehearsal. Be cognizant of vocal abilities and limitations. The human voice cannot sustain hours upon hours of typical choral singing without fatigue and possible harm. Start easy; do the bulk of the hard work in the middle; end with something the ensemble knows or does well (leaving them with a sense of confidence). The Golden Mean 1.618 The Golden ratio is a special number found by dividing a line into two parts so that the longer part divided by the smaller part is also equal to the whole length divided by the longer part. It is often symbolized using phi, after the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet. In an equation form, it looks like this: a/b = (a+b)/a = 1.6180339887498948420 … In the golden ratio, a + b is to a as a is to b. The Fibonacci Sequence 3. Interpretation

• Identify text painting • Where is the melodic interest? • Approach to the specific genre/style • Consider the acoustics of the performance venue • Choose a form of the language

4. Vocal Issues, and the Adolescent Voice

• Resonance • Vowels • Tone • Physiology of voice production

1. Classification of Vocal Faults There are several ways to classify: (i) According to elements of a musical sound; (ii) According to the physical processes involved in singing; (iii) Classification of the vocal mechanism; (iv) By the area of vocal technique involved Three questions teachers should ask:

• 1.What is wrong with the sound I am hearing? • 2.What is causing the sound to be that way? • 3.What am I going to do about it?

Recognize the symptoms: evaluate visible and audible clues (i) Visible: postural rigidity, collapsed chest, tight jaw, furrowed brow, raised shoulders, tilted head, white knuckles, knees locked, shaking legs, heaving chest (ii) Audible: breathiness, nasality, vibrato, intonation, hoarseness and volume level; Faults related to posture:

• 1. Head tilted to right or left, front or back • 2. Chin too high or too low • 3. Raised shoulders, or one higher than other • 4. Slumping posture with collapsed chest • 5. Protruding abdomen and/or buttocks • 6. Too much curvature in small of back • 7. One hip more prominent than the other • 8. Knees pulled too far back • 9. Feet too far apart or too close together

Summary of Breathing Concepts:

• 1. Good posture precedes good breathing • 2. Breathe in as if smelling a rose • 3. Breathe in as if beginning a yawn • 4. Feel the expansion as the air enters your body: in-down-out around the middle • 5. Inhalation, suspension, controlled exhalation, recovery • 6. Breathe in as if drinking a glass of water • 7. Breathing is effortless and noiseless • 8. For a ‘catch breath’ drop the jaw and breathe as if surprised • 9. The chest is comfortably high before, during, and after taking a breath

Addressing the vocal tremor and aging voice

• Reassign to lower voice part • Sing intellectually stimulating music that is less taxing • Focus on breathing exercises/work agility and flexibility • Limit music containing melismatic passages (coloratura)

Belting

• High degree of glottal closure • Larynx elevated • Possibility of vocal pathology

Choral Implications of Belting

• Avoid singing in low registers • Teach a legitimate, healthy, classically-based vocal technique, without belting

• Incorporate head voice and bel canto styles of singing into warm ups and vocal exercises • Avoid/eliminate popular music if possible; if this is unavoidable, then theater repertoire should be sung

in a ‘legit’ style Adolescent Voice Change

• Laryngeal enlargement, in males by approximately 60%. The increase in testosterone leads to a lengthening of the laryngeal cartilage, as well as to an increase in the length and thickness of the vocal folds

• Voice “cracking” or “breaking” is not literal-there is no damage that occurs. • The process begins at the same time as other physical changes • The average age for the start of the voice change is 12 ½. It can occur at any time from 10 to 15 years of

age. Normal transition takes approximately 2 years. • The speaking and singing voice will gradually drop in pitch with a decrease in vocal range overall • Determine the stage of vocal development so that the singer can be appropriately situated in the choir • The changing voice cannot (and should not be expected to) attain similar dynamics, ranges, or levels of

coloratura that adult singers can • Develop both head and chest registers as well as the ‘mix’ of both; accept that breathiness naturally

occurs in the changing voice • Avoid SAB music; explore UNT’s Cambiata Institute and similar organizations dedicated to the

changing voice

5. Diction The Basics: mouth, lips, tip of the tongue, (teeth, eyes, and ears) Although at first appearance this list of articulators may appear somewhat ridiculous, the reason I include the eyes, is because they can, and should be, an important facet of articulation. What words/syllables are important? Which consonants are often overlooked? Use of the schwa? British (generally) avoid it; the Italians refuse to acknowledge it. Ease up on the ‘s’ and ‘t’ consonants unless they really aren’t being articulated. Use imagery to enhance tone production Descriptive colors – how might we use instructions such as: sing this phrase with a white tone; now sing it with a crimson tone (rich);

Can a variation of chest or head voice affect diction? Absolutely! Use this for effect. Is one single element—beautiful tone or intelligible diction—more important? Good singing can only occur when beautiful sounds are produced from the singer’s throat (i.e. vowels), but those beautiful sounds must be accompanied by articulation to give meaning to such sounds. Yet the consonants that help accomplish the meaning often pose a real threat to a beautifully produced tone. The singer’s quest for a higher level of expression defines the basic elements of singing. It is very easy to have what is known as good diction while singing poorly; the real trick is to have good diction while not letting it interfere with good singing. Singing is not like speaking. For one thing, studies have shown that the consonants [b, d, f, h, s, t, v, m, z] average in duration .058 seconds each in speech and .108 in song. The consonants [l, m, n, r] average .145 in speech and .354 in song. Vowels average .280 seconds in speech and .797 in song. We must allow consonants to sound in order to have intelligible words, one of our singing objectives.... What is the answer? SHORT but ENERGIZED! The consonantal movement must be short and rapid, not tentative and extended. In addition, the gesture must be energized, not lackadaisical—in sum, a fast, energized movement of the tongue or lips or any combination thereof. 6. Error Recognition and Correction

• Repetition can be an important tool • Have you considered recording rehearsals and performances? • Try quartets if you do not already do so • The merits (and pitfalls) of the Individual Quiz

7. Humor and Imagery

• Sarcasm is not humor • While keeping the overall tone serious, a lighthearted and humorous approach to rehearsal can prove

very beneficial • Excite your singers’ imaginations with imagery as much as possible

8. Improving the Musical Imagination

• The Mind’s Ear by Bruce Adolphe • Develop the ability to ‘see’ music

9. Continue to Develop Your Own Keyboard Skills • Obtain copies of keyboard exercises such as C. S. Lang’s Score Reading Exercises