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How to plan a singing workshop when you don’t know who’s coming

• don’t make assumptions – if you assume you’ll have an equal distribution of voice types or plenty of singers to tackle that complex five-part arrangement, then you risk ending up being disappointed and probably struggling.
• have a few simple songs – whatever the number of singers or how experienced they are, it’s always a good idea to have a few simple songs up your sleeve: rounds, two-part harmony, chants. Even with an experienced group there is plenty of work you can do around simple material.
• allow for alternative arrangements – when you’re planning your workshop, have an alternative in mind for each song. Can you drop a part if necessary? If you have no male tenors, can you change the key so women can sing the tenor part? If you end up with all women (or all men), can you adapt your arrangement easily?
• lower your expectations – since you’re heading into the unknown, it’s best to keep things simple and flexible. Don’t take all complex material or hard songs or songs with lots of parts. Maybe take one, but be prepared to let it go. Mixit up.
• don’t pander to the worst case – on the other hand, don’t assume the worst. If you just take simple stuff and you end up with an amazing group of singers who pick stuff up very quickly, you might be left with not enough material.
• try not to rely on handouts – if you’re going to use sheet music or printed lyrics, you might be in trouble if you don’t know how many singers will be coming. Try to avoid handouts entirely (I put A1 size sheets of paper on the wall with lyrics written on them) or make sure there is somewhere to copy more at the workshop venue.
• what’s the worst that can happen? – having no expectations is really, really hard. It’s very difficult to hide your disappointment if only a handful of people turn up. Imagine the worst possible case and then it’s bound to be better than that! I ran a workshop once with just three other people. In retrospect I used material that was too hard. With the experience I have now, I could make it work much better. The absolute worse case is that you might have to cancel or reschedule.

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Chris Rowbury

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Eden Summer & Arvon – Liz Flanagan

One evening in March, I found myself sitting in the guest reader’s chair at Lumb Bank, facing a...

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Choir committees and how to handle them 3: the advantages of a good committee

• chance give back to your choir – being on the committee gives choir members a chance to give back to the choir rather than simply being a passive member with no sense of control or destiny
• sense of ownership – the option of being on the committee and of having  a group of choir members to represent you can give a real sense of ownership of your choir and bring it together as a true team.
• frees up your choir leader – there are lots of niggling, but important, practical tasks that many choir leaders end up doing by themselves. With an effective committee, this workload is taken away giving your MD time to focus on what they’re good at: leading your choir.
• puts members’ skills to good use  – there is a huge reservoir of skill in any choir. Each choir member brings specific practical skills with them, often connected with their day job. Utilising this rich seam of talent can be really powerful.
• enables growth and development – it’s easy to have great ideas for your choir — foreign tour, commission a composer, get funding, buy new risers, put on a big concert — so it’s wonderful to have a small team of people who can actually get on the case and make it happen. Your committee doesn’t have to do all the work themselves but can set up different teams of choir members to be responsible for particular developments.
• gives choir members a voice – individual choir members can feel that they disappear in a large choir and are not being heard. If you have a committee you can have an informal chat with a committee member, write a formal letter, propose an agenda item at the AGM, suggest a project to be discussed at the next committee meeting and so on. In this way you can feel that your voice is being heard.

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Chris Rowbury

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Memories and Vulnerability at Lumb Bank

In the couple of weeks before my ‘Memoir: Shaping narratives’ week at Lumb Bank, I suddenly felt too...

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9 Steps to Begin Beautiful Patchwork – Your Free Guide

Considering starting patchwork? Or want to expand your knowledge of this great hobby? Then fill in the form below and download a copy of the booklet 9 Steps to Begin Beautiful Patchwork to discover just what you can achieve. Liza Thanks for signing up! FREE GUIDE : 9 Steps to begin beautiful patchwork Sign up […]

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Choir committees and how to handle them 2: when committees go bad

things that can go wrong

1. the bad apple – sometimes an apparently benign choir member turns ‘difficult’ when they get elected to the committee. They may be dictatorial or disruptive or make meetings long and complicated or simply be out of step with all the other committee members. You can seldom see this coming until the person gets elected!
    
2. committee as dictator – things may be going smoothly but then a new committee is elected and tries to take over the choir. They start making unpopular decisions, try to take control of creative decisions and tell the choir leader how to lead the choir.
    
3. lazy members – some people are desperate to get elected, but once there they don’t pull their weight. They may turn up to meetings but aren’t proactive and never volunteer for anything. Resentment gradually builds amongst those members who feel they’re doing all the work.
    
4. too many cooks – it is said that if you want to stand for office, then you’re probably the wrong person for the job! Sometimes those people who stand for election are precisely the wrong people to be on the committee. They are ego-driven and power-hungry. Get enough of those type of people together and there will never be any cohesion or consensus.
    

ideas to help thing go right

• get your constitution right – if you draft your constitution carefully you can often avoid many of the problems outlined above. For example, you can add a clause to say that a committee member can be voted off if a majority of other committee members vote against them or will lose their position if they don’t attend enough meetings. To keep relations good between choir leaders and committees, some constitutions allow choir leaders to attend meetings (but not to vote), but have the option of having part of the meeting without them.
   
• have clear boundaries – make sure that the committee’s roles and responsibilities are clearly defined. This doesn’t have to be in your constitution (although it’s helpful if they are written down somewhere). Then if any disputes arise about the committee straying into areas that aren’t theirs (e.g. repertoire choice), you can point to the relevant clause. It helps committee members do their job better if they have clear guidelines.
   
• head hunt – often there are choir members who you know would make excellent committee members. Maybe even a specific office, e.g. chair or treasurer. However, they may not think of coming forward or be a little reluctant at first. It’s a good idea to sound these people out before your AGM and persuade them to stand for election.
   
• get the size right – if your constitution requires too few committee members (e.g. the minimum of chair, secretary and treasurer), then it’s possible that it might become dictatorial. Conversely, if you don’t limit numbers you can end up with huge, unwieldy committees that can never get anything done.
   
• civic responsibility – it’s very easy for choir members to let the ‘usual suspects’ step forward when volunteers or committee members are needed. This means that the choir is only ever run by a small elite. The danger of this is that only one set of views are heard and that most members won’t feel any ownership of their choir. Try to instil a spirit of “don’t ask what your choir can do for you, but ask what you can do for your choir.” You can have a formal system whereby every choir member gets to be on the committee at some point, or just encourage every member to feel that they ought to contribute. It’s amazing how well this brings a group together.
   

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Chris Rowbury

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Choir committees and how to handle them 1: what is a committee for?

you don’t have to have a committee

committees can take different forms

how to form your committee?

make sure the committee knows its responsibilities

next week

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Chris Rowbury

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Jack’s Kitchen – Banana Cake

This is a really easy and delicious way to use up old bananas, I’ve served it here with...

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Front, back or side? The best place to stand in your choir

• you can’t see (or hear) the choir leader clearly;
• you can feel isolated and forgotten;
• you have to rely totally on yourself since you’ll be on the margins of your section;
• you won’t be able to hear the rest of the singers in your section clearly to know if you’re on track;
• it’s hard to get a sense of how it all fits together as everyone’s voice will be projected away from you.

• the other singers will be reinforcing your part by singing in your ear;
• you will feel supported and part of the team;
• you will be able to see (and hear) your musical director clearly;
• your musical director will be able to see (and hear) you so can help and support when needed;
• you will get a better sense of how all the harmony parts fit together;
• the closer you are to the other singers, the more accurate the harmonies will be.

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Chris Rowbury

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Annual Book Day at The Grange 25 June

Copperplate Course

Ever wanted to be able to write your Birthday cards in that nice fancy script writing - we have the course for you- if you are not available for the full course why not just pop along for a taster day. J321 Copperplate Wed – Fri 1 – 3 June 2016 Tutor Joy Daniels Shared bedroom occupancy: £266.00 Single bedroom...

Hornet Press: It all started at Totleigh

I’ve been working for Arvon for three years, and in that time I’ve been on two courses. My...

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Why learning songs with foreign lyrics need not be scary

why do singers want songs in English?

• familiarity – if English is your first language, then there’s an assumption that it’s going to be easier to sing English lyrics.
• fear – of the unknown, of not getting it ‘right’, of foreign words being unfamiliar and hard
• understanding– some people need to understand every word that they’re singing. If the lyrics are in a language they don’t understand, that can be an obstacle. See Song meanings lost in translation.
• language – many singers feel that they need to be able to speak the foreign language in order to be able to sing in it. Maybe a French song is OK, but Serbo-Croat is a non-starter.

the problems with English lyrics

• storytelling – songs with English lyrics, especially those from the English folk tradition, are usually ballads so there are lots of verses to learn (and remember). They also tell a story so are usually sung solo with often tricky and unpredictable rhythms. That’s hard when a group of singers are trying to sing such songs. See also Why choirs shouldn’t sing pop songs.
• paraphrasing – because we understand English lyrics, we tend to remember the overall meaning rather than the individual words. So we end up paraphrasing, using similar words to get the gist. But those words won’t fit the music and also we need everyone in the choir to be singing the same lyrics.
• mis-remembering – not only do people want to sing songs in English, they often want to sing something they already know, believing that this will make learning easier. Actually it usually makes it harder! There’s a very good chance that we’ve mis-remembered the lyrics over the years and we will have as many different version as there are singers. See It’s hard to teach songs that people already know.

the advantages of learning songs with foreign lyrics

• enjoy different sounds – you can really enjoy getting your mouth and tongue around the unfamiliar sounds of foreign lyrics. You can focus on individual syllables (rather than the meaning) which results in a tighter sound for the group.
• not many lyrics – many songs from countries with a strong harmony singing tradition focus on the sounds rather than the meaning, so the words are not as important. In many cases songs might have only one, two or three words.
• open vowels – English is a rather flat language which can almost be spoken without moving your mouth. Not very good for singing! Whereas many foreign languages have ‘open vowels’ (like Italian which is used a lot in opera and bel canto voice training). These vowels are a fantastic vehicle for singers and can help with blend and tone in a choir.
• level playing field – there’s a good chance that nobody in your choir will know any of these foreign songs in advance. In which case everybody is starting from the same place, unlike songs in English which many choir members might already know.
• sing in character – singing in a foreign language enables us to feel like we’re someone else. We can sing in character which can be enormously liberating. See Want to sing with more energy? – pretend to be someone else.
• learn about other cultures – singing songs from different countries allows us to find out more about unfamiliar cultures. It opens the world up to us and helps us to understand that human beings are all the same regardless of where they come from. We all fall in love, have children, get sad and die.
• focus on the music – since we usually won’t understand the language we’re singing in we won’t get sucked into the story but can focus on the music and harmonies – which is what a choir is about after all. See What do words add to music?
• rote learning stays longer – unless it’s a foreign language that we speak, the only way of learning is by rote, one syllable at a time. Since we have to drill this more than English lyrics and there’s no scope for paraphrasing, the lyrics tend to go into our long-term memory better. See How to sing a song in a foreign language.
• be a better singer – by having to focus on the sound of the words and being exposed to an unfamiliar language, you will develop your listening skills and become a better singer. See Singing is all about listening.

what puts you off singing foreign songs?

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Chris Rowbury

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How male singers can successfully pitch from a woman (and how women can pitch from a man)

men’s voices are (usually) lower than women’s voices

we make automatic adjustments

three problems when pitching from the opposite gender

1. a woman thinks she’s singing down with the bass men, but is actually singing an octave higher
2. the man or woman giving out the note can actually sing it at pitch which can confuse the singers
3. when there are men and women in the same part singing at the same pitches it can feel weird to the singers

1. singing different notes that sound the same

2. giving out a note “at pitch” to the opposite gender

3. men and women singing the same part

do you have problems pitching from a man (or woman)?

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Chris Rowbury

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Sarah Wise Twitter Takeover

  On Tuesday May 10th 2016 Sarah Wise will answer questions about writing non-fiction in a live Twitter Q&A....

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Unlocking the People’s Histories: Q&A with tutor Sarah Wise

In your experience, what is the most interesting thing about looking back in history to a particular social/cultural...

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Finding (and keeping) your starting note

why some singers find it hard to get started

keeping the note you’ve been given

• don’t panic – if you start to worry about keeping your note, you will get anxious and more likely to forget. Same thing if you try to block the other parts out.
• relax and open up – trust that you will remember your note. As  you listen to the other parts being given their notes, think of it as a starting chord and be aware of where your own note fits into the whole.
• keep it to yourself – some beginner singers are tempted to quietly hum or sing their starting note so they can hold on to it. Not only can this put the other singers off, but the opposite can easily happen. By singing out loud you’re focusing on yourself and not the starting chord plus you’re being anxious (see don’t panic above). The longer you sing the note, the more likely you are to drift off as you’re not paying attention to the whole. Then when you do start, you’ll probably be flat. If you hold the note silently within you and listen to how it fits in with all the others, you’re good to go when the song starts.
• sound the opening chord – some choir leaders do this all the time. Or maybe it’s something to do only in rehearsal whilst you’re learning. The idea is that once everyone has been given their note (and is singing it silently within), then the whole group sings the opening chord out loud to make sure it’s tuned perfectly. There’s a short pause, then the song sets off. If your musical director doesn’t do this, ask them if you can try it at one rehearsal to see if it helps.

your part might not come in at the start

men pitching from women, and women pitching from men

other useful stuff

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Chris Rowbury

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The Hurst Opens its Doors to the Public

Arvon would like to welcome you to The Hurst, our Shropshire centre, for an Open Afternoon on Sunday 8...

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