After having a few days to reflect on my first ever H.S. Choir warm up, along with the ever so helpful and completely needed review/critiques I received, my overall impression is that I'm on the right track but I need to guide myself better. What could I possibly mean?
Well one thing that jumped out at me (glaringly) was the fact that I separated men from women with the intention of using the voices from each gender in doing harmonic work, such as men sing "do" and women sing "me", or basses sing "do", tenors sing "so", altos sing "me", and sopranos sing "do". This probably would've went pretty well, however in my rush to make time, or probably my attempt at settling down nerves, I completely forgot to address this. DOH!
Another great critique that I got was the question "are you running a choir warm up or a mini vocal lesson?" This is such a great question! It's the one thing that I would never have noticed by myself. As I think back to things I did and spoke about, I saw myself turning the warm up into a series of vocal lessons and I will absolutely remember to think about things like this should I be in a similar position next time.
Lastly I will say that upon my own observations and reflections, one thing I would like to do better is know more warm up routines and have them become more musical. A choir could get bored easily warming up the same way every day and I would like to instill in them the ability to hear this portion of the rehearsal as another way for them to make music and not some silly game they play in the beginning of it.
I never imagined myself ever being a choral director (although the idea is starting to grow on me a little bit), but I certainly want to be efficient and good at what I do whether its warming up a band or choir, or rehearsing giant steps with an 8th grade quartet, I simply want to be an effective and motivating educator who can do his musical tasks well beyond any doubt. I know that more opportunities such as these will greatly benefit me and help me improve ever so much as time goes on.
Well one thing that jumped out at me (glaringly) was the fact that I separated men from women with the intention of using the voices from each gender in doing harmonic work, such as men sing "do" and women sing "me", or basses sing "do", tenors sing "so", altos sing "me", and sopranos sing "do". This probably would've went pretty well, however in my rush to make time, or probably my attempt at settling down nerves, I completely forgot to address this. DOH!
Another great critique that I got was the question "are you running a choir warm up or a mini vocal lesson?" This is such a great question! It's the one thing that I would never have noticed by myself. As I think back to things I did and spoke about, I saw myself turning the warm up into a series of vocal lessons and I will absolutely remember to think about things like this should I be in a similar position next time.
Lastly I will say that upon my own observations and reflections, one thing I would like to do better is know more warm up routines and have them become more musical. A choir could get bored easily warming up the same way every day and I would like to instill in them the ability to hear this portion of the rehearsal as another way for them to make music and not some silly game they play in the beginning of it.
I never imagined myself ever being a choral director (although the idea is starting to grow on me a little bit), but I certainly want to be efficient and good at what I do whether its warming up a band or choir, or rehearsing giant steps with an 8th grade quartet, I simply want to be an effective and motivating educator who can do his musical tasks well beyond any doubt. I know that more opportunities such as these will greatly benefit me and help me improve ever so much as time goes on.
Cool Joel. Harmonies woulda been nice. A warmup is a great time to teach and reinforce proper technique to be applied to repertoire, but like you said, it's not a time for a straight up vocal lesson.
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