I've talked about the difficulty of bootstrapping your own singing group before. Bootstrapping any new organization takes faith, courage, planning and some luck. Once you've bootstrapped your singing group however, getting guys to join is not that hard. Every time you sing out, you are rock-stars. People swoon over you, women eye you. Being bold enough to stand and deliver in front of an audience is an exciting thing, electrifying singers and listeners alike. Not everyone wants to sing a cappella, but believe me, you'll have no trouble finding folks who want to try.
All you need is a guitar and a hairdo
You can sing easy stuff and people will dig it. You can try more challenging material and many folks won't realize you don't quite succeed. Your choir can go flat and still be entertaining; only singers, musicians and those with perfect pitch will know for sure. Everyone else will feel the sag in energy but not be able to tell you much more. You can intone your vowels like yokels, belabor your consonants, make ragged entrances and cuts and basically do all manner of no-no's and still people will love you. Hey, you're singing for them, right? That's not a bad thing right there. Frank Zappa used to say if you have a guitar and a hairdo, you can be a rock star.
And if that's what you want to do, then go do it and have a ball.
Singing beautifully together
But to take a bunch of wanna-be rock stars and teach them how to sing bel canto might be one of the hardest things in the world. I studied photography, and my teachers taught me the rules as well as how to break them. Word: you are a master when you break the rules to a purpose, but you're a fool if you don't know the rules to begin with. And you're really not a singer if you can't control your body to produce sounds to a desired effect.
In choral singing, the buzzword is blend - sounding as one. Primarily, that means vowels, pure vowels, as in Latin or Italian. It also means producing a clear tone by supporting your air flow, controlling your vocal mechanism through your range and engaging your resonators. You learn to sing around problems caused by the breaks in your registers and keep a mostly consistent sound. I think in our lifetime and maybe a few generations, only Pavoratti was born without a pessagio. "Singing on the pessagio is something akin to the feeling of holding two oppositely poled magnates together, constantly adjusting toward a point of balance under the threat that at any moment the two ends will slip apart." (Christian Huebner). Pavoratti apparently did not have to endure this, but the rest of us do. Less eloquently said, singing on the pessagio hurts.
Blend also means managing your consonants, to produce a sound with as little noise messing up those lovely vowels. The dreaded 's' must not hiss endlessly, dipthongs which just aren't pure vowels and constrict your sound can be moderated to something easier on the ear (and easier on the vocal mechanism), and those 'er' sounds can be opened up to 'ah' to sound appealing and ultimately, more natural.
As a group, you've really got to start and stop together or else it's just campfire singing. Get louder and softer as one to express highs and lows to impart emotional power or delicacy. Color your voices darkly or brightly together to express gravity or lightness. Do all of these things and stay on pitch, and you will move people. That's what you want to do and this is basically what is called bel canto. It requires more than a guitar and a hairdo. If you can cover these fine points, follow these rules, something "beyond the norm" will happen to your audience. You will get under their skin and move them more deeply. You will evoke tears, laughter and goosebumps.
Listen to your favorite performers and you will hear them breaking the rules, no question. But you will also begin to notice how they break the rules to a purpose, and how they honor those rules more often than not.
Mantras for the new year
How do you achieve this? As a director, you can rant and rave. To some extent, you need to do this to demonstrate that you are serious about your requirements. But the primary problem is breaking years of habituation. You will only get so far ranting and raving. I realized two things, and they have become my joint mantras for the new year:
1) Old habits die hard, but die they must!
2) The way you practice is the way you play.
Both points are quite obvious, as they should be. The first goes to the heart of setting standards and insisting that your singers adhere to them. This means using every trick in the book to bring the need for re-habituation to the fore. And where do you do this? Well, in rehearsal, of course. Why wait until you sing a concert recording and then point out the flaws? It's a useless way to learn.
Here's my new approach. Listen to those concert recordings and choose several aspects that need improvement or development. Don't choose too many - pick only 2 or 3. Notice how I only have 2 mantras for myself? Then find pieces in your repertoire that afford a rich opportunity to drill on those aspects, and work those repeatedly, getting the standards in the mouths of your singers. Yes, it has to be learned in the body - that's where habituation exists. You can't tell your folks they have to do this or that and simply expect it to happen. You can ask them what you want and they will parrot what you said. Then they'll go and sing it the way they always do. Their habituation is a more powerful force than your feeble rants. You have to re-habituate them in their mouths and in their bodies.
If you ever quit smoking or started an exercise regimen, you will know this is going to take a while. As the first mantra clearly states, old habits die hard. Habits take 6 weeks to break or to make. Write it down and put it on your 'fridge.
Translating to the playing field
In New England this year, we saw Matt Cassel take over for the injured Tom Brady. As Matt emerged as a first rate NFL QB in the early part of the season, he began to talk about adjusting to "game speed". Your singers face the same issue of "game speed" in performance as an NFL quarterback on Sunday afternoon. Cassel's skills and practice standards were always high; every coach he ever had has said so. When he had to take the field and lead the Pat's his practice discipline was sorely tested. He was able to do what you need your singers to do - translate good habits at practice into solid performance at game time. Look at my mantras again. Translate those into your way of doing business.
1) Old habits die hard, but die they must!
2) The way you practice is the way you play.
Both points are quite obvious, as they should be. The first goes to the heart of setting standards and insisting that your singers adhere to them. This means using every trick in the book to bring the need for re-habituation to the fore. And where do you do this? Well, in rehearsal, of course. Why wait until you sing a concert recording and then point out the flaws? It's a useless way to learn.
Here's my new approach. Listen to those concert recordings and choose several aspects that need improvement or development. Don't choose too many - pick only 2 or 3. Notice how I only have 2 mantras for myself? Then find pieces in your repertoire that afford a rich opportunity to drill on those aspects, and work those repeatedly, getting the standards in the mouths of your singers. Yes, it has to be learned in the body - that's where habituation exists. You can't tell your folks they have to do this or that and simply expect it to happen. You can ask them what you want and they will parrot what you said. Then they'll go and sing it the way they always do. Their habituation is a more powerful force than your feeble rants. You have to re-habituate them in their mouths and in their bodies.
If you ever quit smoking or started an exercise regimen, you will know this is going to take a while. As the first mantra clearly states, old habits die hard. Habits take 6 weeks to break or to make. Write it down and put it on your 'fridge.
Translating to the playing field
In New England this year, we saw Matt Cassel take over for the injured Tom Brady. As Matt emerged as a first rate NFL QB in the early part of the season, he began to talk about adjusting to "game speed". Your singers face the same issue of "game speed" in performance as an NFL quarterback on Sunday afternoon. Cassel's skills and practice standards were always high; every coach he ever had has said so. When he had to take the field and lead the Pat's his practice discipline was sorely tested. He was able to do what you need your singers to do - translate good habits at practice into solid performance at game time. Look at my mantras again. Translate those into your way of doing business.
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