Vocal Training
One of the great difficulties of directing an amateur choir is creating a good choral sound with voices that have little to no vocal training. In a volunteer ward choir you will usually have a mix of a few people who are good singers, lots who are average and few who are just plain awful. Your job is to create the best choral sound you can with what you have, encouraging good singers to become better and "less proficient" singers to develop good habits and skills. There is a lot that a choir director can do to train his/her choir to have better vocal technique. If this is not a strong area for you as a director, find someone who is a good singer to help with this.
There is an excellent DVD on vocal technique by Clayne Robison (a BYU voice professor), called "Beautiful Singing: Not Just For the Chosen." In this DVD, he outlines basic principles of vocal technique and demonstrates them in master classes with normal singers (not voice majors or opera singers). It is available on the website http://beautifulsinging.com. It also shows occasionally on BYUTV if you have cable or satellite.
Correct posture is crucial to good vocal production. Begin by stretching, rolling your arms and shoulders and shaking out your abdomen. Try to eliminate any muscle tension. Stretch up high and raise your arms and chest. Then drop and relax your arms and shoulders, but keep your chest lifted. Your whole body should be straight and tall and your head should be aligned with the rest of the body as if you were up against a wall. Be careful to not let your chin or head jut out forward or be pulled too far back.
It is easier to sing well standing up, but it isn't reasonable to expect a choir to stand for an entire rehearsal. When your choir sits, have them maintain their tall, erect posture and sit forward on the front of their chairs. Most people when they sit immediately slouch back against the backrest of the chair. Try to keep your choir sitting forward and tall with feet flat on the floor for support (no leg crossing).
The trick is to get tall erect posture without getting tense and tight. Dr. Robison's term for it is "flexibly erect" posture.
Good breathing is the foundation of good singing. Inexperienced singers often breathe high in their chest so their chest and shoulders rise and fall as the breathe. High or chest breathing gives you less air and less control than low breathing from the diaphragm. Singers often use this term, "breathing from the diaphragm," but it is usually more confusing than helpful because the diaphragm is not a muscle that a typical person is consciously aware of. Instead, think of your lower abdomen as a balloon. When you inhale, you fill the balloon with air and it gets bigger. When you exhale, you release air from the balloon and it gets smaller. While sitting (or if you have room, while laying down), have the choir place their hands on their lower abdomen and close their eyes. Have them observe the natural in and out motion of the abdomen as they inhale and exhale.
Then have them stand and practice taking a large, low breath, filling up their lower abdomen and then blowing it out. Have them make their arms wider as they inhale and the smaller as they exhale (fat as you inhale, skinny as you exhale). Try exhaling on a "shhh" or "ssss" and seeing how long you can make it last. Another good exercise is to sing 1-3-5-3-1 on "ha or he," taking a breath on every single note. Each note will require a "bounce" of the abdomen as they inhale and exhale.
Correct breathing takes time to develop and become habitual, but is fundamental to good singing.
To create a good sound, a singer needs to create space for the sound to resonate within his body. Think of yourself as a human organ pipe: the air comes in at the bottom (lower abdomen) and comes out the top of the head. You want everything in between as open as possible.
Most Americans speak with a closed pharynx or throat- the back of their throat is low. Because of this, they tend to sing this way as well. Instead, when singing the back of the throat should be lifted and open. The easiest way to feel this is to yawn. It helps to warm up by yawning and then "sighing" or letting your voice slide (with a light and airy sound) from high to low. Think of opening and creating space inside your head. Be careful as you do this to keep the jaw relaxed.
Vocal sound can have "dark" or "bright" qualities depending on where it is "placed" or resonating in your body. At the extremes, an extremely bright sound would be a nasal whine centered in your nose; an extremely dark sound would come from the back of the throat or chest. An ideal vocal sound has a combination of "dark" and "bright" elements: richness from chest resonance and brightness from "forward" placement or resonance in the front of your face, although what sound is "ideal" depends on the style of piece you are singing.
Many people have a harder time creating the "bright" resonance, since most of us talk using a "chest resonance" voice. To work on bright resonance, first, try making an exaggerated nasal sound: sing a phrase on "nee, " with your nose scrunched up, trying to make the sound come out your nose-- as whiny and nasal as possible. Next try it again, but instead of making the sound come out your nose, center it in the front of your cheeks. Now try singing scrunched up and nasally and while keeping the "buzzing" feeling, relax and drop your jaw. The idea is to keep the resonance in the front of your face but lose the whiny, nasally part of the sound.
There are many good courses on singing offered at community colleges and universities. It also can be helpful to take voice lessons from a qualified teacher (please be choosy- there are a lot of unqualified teachers out there).
BYU Professor Clayne Robison has an excellent dvd and book entitled, "Beautiful Singing." The dvd discusses and demonstrates some good basic principles of singing. There is also more information at his website "Beautiful Singing." Dr. Robison also teaches a summer workshop at BYU, entitled "Vocal Beauty Boot Camp."