Helping Your Choir Sound Better
How to get the most out of the choir you've got.
I cannot emphasize this enough. If you are not in tune, not much else matters. So what exactly is the difference between singing in tune and out of tune? The most basic version is singing the right note. The advanced version is singing the right part of the right note.
Try singing a note. Let your voice very slowly sink lower and lower until you have reached the next lower pitch. There is a space where you are singing "below" the correct pitch, but still haven't quite reached the next lower pitch. This is called singing "flat." Now sing the first pitch again and very slowly let your voice get higher and higher until you reach the next higher pitch. The place in between the pitches, where you were higher than the original pitch, but not quite to the next pitch up is called singing "sharp."
Most choirs have a tendency to sing "flat" and let the pitch gradually sink lower and lower. This is especially easy to do in a cappella (unaccompanied) singing or in descending passages (where the notes are getting lower). Have you ever tried singing something without accompaniment and ended up a note lower than where you started? That's "going flat" in action. It is not some mysterious thing that magically happens. If you listen carefully, there will always be a single note (or series of notes) that gets lower and lower until you end up in a different key.
The best remedy for "flat" singing is mental vigilance: the choir needs to always hear the pitch in their heads before they sing it and "baby-sit" the note- think about keeping it where it needs to be. It is also helpful if the director can practice the difference between singing flat and in tune and DEMONSTRATE the difference to the choir by singing it for them. It also can help for the choir to practice singing short sections without a piano, so they develop confidence in their own sense of pitch and don't always rely on the piano as a crutch.
Simply put, good "blend" means being together: singing the same thing at the same time. There are many different parts to good blend.
Consonants: The choir needs to sing the consonants at precisely the same time. If they aren't perfectly together, you will either hear several different iterations of the consonant (creating a stuttering sound) or they will mush together so you can't understand it. This is where it is important that the choir is following the director's beat. The choir needs to have clear cut-off gestures so they can be precisely together.
Vowels: There are subtle gradations in vowel sounds (i.e. "ah" like father or "ah" like apple). If there are even slight differences in the way choir members are singing the vowel, it distorts the sound. Also, the way that the vowels are sung can affect the desired sound of the choir. For choral singing, it is helpful to sing with "tall," "Nordstrom" vowels, instead of "K-Mart" or twangy, wide vowels. Think of having your mouth open "north/south" instead of "east/west." It also helps to create a richer sound if, in addition to having a "tall" mouth, you put your lips forward (as if you were puckering slightly or making "fish lips").
Diphthongs: Diphthongs are vowel sounds that have two (or more) sounds together. For instance, in the word "child," the "i" makes the sounds "ah" and "uh" ("chah-uhld"). In choral singing, you should sing the FIRST vowel sound of the diphthong. You add the second vowel sound just before you sing the consonant at the end. (i.e. For "child," you would sing, "chah" and then add "-uhld" at the last possible moment). This avoids having some people singing "ah" at the same time others are singing "uh."
Vibrato: Choir is not a good place for a large or wide vibrato. Singers should listen to those around them to make sure that their level of vibrato is appropriate. Singers need to learn to control their vibrato appropriately and rein it in or eliminate it completely when necessary.
Intonation: If your singers aren't singing the same pitch (or the same part of the same pitch) they aren't going to blend. Enough said.
Making it "musical" is something you can work on from the very beginning. There are several tools you can use to add musical interest: dynamics (loud/soft), shaping (getting louder or softer as a phrase progresses), articulation (smooth/choppy, breaking to take a breath or carrying over and NOT taking a breath), tempo (speed), and word emphasis (More important words or syllables are louder, less important words or syllables are softer).
Dynamics: You can create dramatic changes in the music by making it louder or softer. The key here is contrast: even a very loud forte won't sound that loud except in contrast to something softer.
Shaping a Phrase: I have an analogy I like to use. Pretend you have a cart and you are on a steep hill. You can either push the cart up the hill or it will roll down the hill, but it won't stay in one place. That is how you want a line of music to be: the notes can get louder or softer but THEY SHOULD NOT JUST STAY THE SAME. Every note has direction; it is either growing or diminishing.
Articulation: Take your cue from the style of the piece. Is it smooth and flowing (like "Where Can I Turn For Peace) or more detached and marcato [march-like] (like "For the Strength of the Hills")? Read the text carefully to find the natural places where you would take a breath (i.e. at the end of sentences, after some commas, etc.). Usually, if you are in the middle of a sentence, it doesn't make sense to breathe- even if you are at the end of a line on the page. On the other hand, making a short break where there is a comma (even in the middle of a line) can add emphasis to the words and make them more understandable.
For example: In the 3rd verse of "Our Savior's Love" on the first line: "Our Father, (quick breath) God (hold through) of all creation, (quick breath) Hear us pray." The typical tendency would be to just take a breath after "God," but this is far less interesting and less understandable.
Tempo: Choose your tempo carefully to be appropriate to the mood of the piece. When singing multiple verses of a hymn, you might consider a slight change in tempo for one verse to create a change of mood. For instance, the last verse of "Our Savior's Love" would sound good with a slightly slower tempo to emphasize the reverence of the words.
Word Emphasis: Another way to shape a phrase is to emphasize words that are more important and make less important words weaker. For example, if you are singing the line, "I Know that my Redeemer lives," the most important words are "know," "redeemer" and "lives." "I," "that," and "my" are less important. When you sing it, you would sing "I [weak] know [strong] that my[weak] redeemer [strong] lives [a little less strong]." It usually sounds good to taper the end of a phrase: make the very last note of a phrase slightly weaker, so it ends with "strong/weak." Remember, one of the goals of the music is to express the meaning of the text.
Rubato: Rubato is where you "borrow time" or are more free with the tempo, speeding up slightly in some places and slowing down slightly in others. The key here is slightly: you want the effect to be subtle, NOT like you can't decide whether to sing fast or slow. An example of a place where you could use rubato is the last verse of "Our Savior's Love." On the first line you could slow down slightly on the words "Father, God" and then speed up slightly on the words "of all creation," again slowing down slightly on the words, "hear us pray." This is also a good exercise for your choir to practice following your beat pattern exactly.
Work on improving the vocal quality of your singers. Your choir is only as good as their voices. You are their voice coach. If you are not a confident singer, bring in a guest teacher to help you occasionally and spend a few minutes working on different parts of good singing.
Copyright 2007