Growing and maintaining a good chorus can be challenging, whether you’re taking over a choir from an outgoing director or starting one from scratch. Some choir directors struggle to persuade people to join, while others struggle to keep members around after the first or second rehearsal. Choirs that are poorly run, lack true structure, or have unenthusiastic directors will inevitably disintegrate. Regardless of your unique circumstances, using these suggestions should help you cultivate a choir that lasts longer and sounds better.
Recruit, Recruit, Recruit
A choir that performs excellent music, goes on tour, and has a welcoming membership shouldn’t have any trouble bringing in new members, which is essential. Your choir won’t survive past the next year or so if it isn’t consistently expanding. It’s inevitable that members will change schools, move to a different state, or decide they no longer want to sing in a chorus. You should actively urge current members to actively recruit new members in addition to individually inviting potential recruits to see a few practices. Recruiting new members is important, whether you trust members to do it on their own or entice them with the prospect of a cash incentive or gift card. If you teach at a school or church, keep an eye out for those who seem to enjoy singing and approach them.
Establish Regular Practices
Do some preliminary study before deciding on a time for the main rehearsal. Avoid scheduling choir rehearsals at the same time as marching band or orchestra if choir is offered as an extracurricular activity. Students participating in marching band or orchestra obviously like music and may be interested in joining choir. They won’t even attempt to try out if there is a conflict with the audition time. Decide on the optimal time for your rehearsal and stick to it. You’ll annoy students, parents, and group members who value structure if you frequently change the practice date to accommodate your erratic schedule. If you’re replacing an existing choir director, ask the choir members if they want to change the time and date of practices.
Keep Existing Members
Both recruiting new choir members and keeping the ones you have is crucial. For instance, if you get two new members each month but lose three, your choir will swiftly disintegrate. Fortunately, there are a few strategies for preventing choir members from departing. The choir members who are most likely to leave are those who have ordinary musical skill and don’t believe their presence matters much. You should therefore frequently let your choir members know how significant each voice is to the overall goal. Everyone wants to feel valued, whether you do this by sending “thank you” notes, emails, or scheduling monthly one-on-one meetings. And lastly, get to know your team. Ask about their day, remember their birthdays, and do whatever you can to make them feel special.
Set a realistic workload goal
Finding the ideal ratio between the workload, performance dates, learning opportunities, and pleasure is crucial when running a choir. For instance, you risk overwhelming your choir if you present all-new songs to them just before a performance. Alternatively, your members will get bored and may leave if you never add new music to the mix and never schedule live performances. Maintaining a realistic workload shouldn’t be a problem with careful preparation. Consider the new and existing repertoire carefully, estimate the length of the rehearsal process, and make your plans accordingly. Don’t be overly optimistic either. Your choir will suffer if you underestimate them.
How to be a good choir member
These characteristics, listed in no particular order, are what I think form an excellent choir member:
Responsibility
It’s far too simple to delegate all the effort to your choir director or other part players. It’s a simple way out. Yes, the director is in charge, but every choir member contributes to the outcome. It’s useless to assume that your other singers will support you and guide you through the passages you are less familiar with. There wouldn’t be a choir if every member of it believed that!
You must accept responsibility for attending regularly (and punctually), knowing your lines, keeping track of practice times, paying attention to the director’s instructions, etc.
Punctuality
A safe, productive environment can be created over time, but it just takes a moment to ruin it. People coming in midway through some targeted warm-up exercises is not what we want!
I understand that some people are stopped in traffic or have to leave work early, but persistently arriving late doesn’t respect their fellow choir members, the work, or the choir, and they frequently stand to gain the most from the voice training and stress-relieving warm-up!
Trust
Being in the midst of a learning process can be really uncomfortable for some people. It can be discouraging when you first start learning a new song since you can’t quite get the tune right. Even after singing a song for some time, you can still be stumbling over certain lines.
Try not to lose patience, but surrender to the process and have faith that all will work out in the end. Similar to this, if the director introduces a new structure for a song that appears strange, trust that she understands what she’s doing and isn’t trying to make the choir or you anticipate the change.
Give these procedures your all and have faith in them. Wait until the procedure is complete (i.e., after the concert or at the conclusion of the term) if you want to analyze or ask a question. You can always leave and join a better choir if you discover that your faith was misplaced.
Commitment
One way to demonstrate commitment to the choir is to be on time, but there are other ways as well. However, the most crucial commitment for the majority of community choirs is simply to show up each week.
Many people pay for the entire semester but just attend once or twice. Once more, this reveals a lack of regard for the choir and its participants. Additionally, it implies that the weekly labor we put into practicing and learning songs is not all that important and that anyone may simply show up for the concert.
Self-awareness
Many individuals bumble through life without paying any attention. Or, even if they do pay attention, it’s usually in the incorrect place! How often do you run into someone in the grocery store who is focused on the cereal packet they are about to buy rather than the crowd of shoppers around them?
Being present, engaged, and in the moment with whatever is happening at that specific time is frequently all that is required. This can be made easier by concentrating on the warm-up exercises at the beginning of each practice, which help you move from your busy everyday life to your role as a choir member.
You can learn and get better by paying attention to what you’re doing. When the director calls your attention to the fact that your head is cocked back, notice how it feels in your own body. Check in with yourself and write down how it feels right then and what you can do to improve the situation the next time your fellow alto complains that you are singing too loudly in their ear.
Listening skills
You might be surprised to learn that this list of prerequisites for being a good choir member doesn’t include singing ability. Everyone can sing, in my opinion, and with practice, the choir as a whole can improve to the same high standard.
To get there, though, you must pay more attention to what you are hearing and less attention to how the voice is produced. You can learn to tell when you are hitting the notes correctly and when you are not by using your self-awareness. You’ll be able to keep time, fit in better, and perform as a team if you pay attention to others during your portion. It will be easier for you to stay in tune, appreciate, and have a better grasp of how harmony functions if you try to hear the other parts. And finally, it can only be a good thing to pay attention to what the filmmaker has to say!
Attentiveness
This relates to being aware of oneself and the bigger picture. Individual choir members frequently lose track of where they are and begin speaking with their neighbors, for example. They’ve finished studying their part, after all, and are actually discussing crucial aspects of singing. However, they are unaware that they are missing what is happening all around them.
You must pay close attention to the conductor or you risk missing your cue, the singers around you or you risk breathing in the wrong place at the wrong time, the overall sound of the choir or you risk having your part sound louder than everyone else’s, and what your own responsibilities are or you risk missing your solo.
Consideration for others
Respect is at the center of everything here: respect for other people, respect for what you and other choir members are doing, and respect for the choir as a whole.
Be a team player; choirs are all about collaboration. Help the newcomers and keep in mind how it was when you first joined the choir. Don’t feel superior because you nailed it if someone in your part is having trouble; rather, stand next to them and politely assist them.
Sense of the whole
It’s useless to constantly rely on the director to provide you with input. Just concentrating on the singers in your immediate vicinity won’t help either. Reaching out and attempting to grasp a sense of the whole choir is much more enjoyable. Feel a member of a creative team—a living organism—as you hear the harmonies working, check the blend, adjust the volume balance of each section, and wait for the choir to take a single inhalation to begin the next song.
Sense of humour
This might be the most crucial factor of all. When everyone else is having trouble, keep your smile on. When the director corrects you on a term for the nth time, just laugh it off. Find humor in the neighbor who loudly and consistently sings the wrong note. Unwind, have fun, and relax. Even if you take your involvement in the choir very seriously, singing is just singing!