Sing! Teacher's Guide, Teaching Students to Sing: Response

Comments/Observations:

1)

I have attached an excerpt from the book that I felt was really important, and that also reminded me of someone I know. I worked for a little while as a summer student in an industrial environment (trust me, not my personal forte). My coworkers were largely men, all of them tradesmen and most of them with little to no musical experience (to give you some context, a guy once asked me what "that man at the front of the choir wavin' his arms around" was doing). They often asked me questions about music, and I found it really interesting when they would tell me about their experiences with music growing up. The other students that I worked with also liked to sing, so we spent a lot of time around the workshop singing and dancing and listening to music. We used to tease the men a lot and ask them to sing with us. One of our coworkers, Joe, would always tell us (in a joking manner) "No, I can't sing. I got kicked out the choir in grade 3 and I haven't sung a note since!!" While I know Joe was joking, I think there was an ounce of truth to his story - it's amazing how one small comment like that can affect a person's musical confidence for the rest of his life!!

2) I also really liked when the author talked about how singing in a choir and learning proper vocal technique can build confidence. I once had a choir director who felt that they best way to find out if the choir knew the music was to have singers sing for him one on one, in his office, in a sort of "testing" situation. This was, predictably, a train-wreck. People often join choirs because they like to sing but don't like to sing alone, and the idea that they were being tested on their own individual singing ability made them self-conscious and worried. It builds confidence to know that, somewhere in that mass of beautiful sound is your own voice!!

Questions:

1) How do choral conductors handle dealing with boys with changing voices? There is a small section on that in this chapter, but logistically how do we make that work? If, for example, we are working in a junior high school, do we have sectionals so we can work on the boys voices alone? What do we do if there are some boys with changed voices and some in transition and some whose voices haven't even started changing yet? Also, how do we encourage boys to join choirs when they are already self-confident about the changes that are happening to their voices?

2) What are the three rules for singing "R"? I wish that had been explained a little more in the book.

Sing! Teacher's Guide
Doreen Rao
Intro, Chapters 1 & 2