Here’s a tongue twister exercise. In form it’s really simple, but in practice it’s trickier than it looks. Take a look!

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Again you can go up or down the keyboard, whichever you feel like doing. Starting slow and then ramping up the speed as you go is a good way to lead the exercise. When you’ve reached the extreme end of your singers’ range you start going back toward the center to continue working on annunciation at higher tempos. (Don’t forget to remind them to remain relaxed as the tempo increases!) Solfege syllables are a bit easier to annunciate at faster speeds than numbers, although numbers tend to be easier to remember. Either will work for this exercise, and you could even experiment with changing between the two to keep your singers on their toes. ^_^

This is a great exercise for when your singers seem a bit listless because it gets them to concentrate on what they’re singing and it moves quickly. Plus it’s good practice for singing at high tempos. Very fun!

Here’s the second part of Getting Started on Recorder.

Should I get private lessons?

I’m of the opinion that it’s better to teach yourself first rather than starting out with private lessons because by teaching yourself you by definition have to be an active learner. Going to a teacher, having him/her give you exercises to do, and brainlessly practicing them at home isn’t really good for you as a person, and it’s really tempting to do during your first lessons since you’re a novice and he/she presumably isn’t. Besides passive education not being a good thing in general I’ve also found that it’s not nearly as motivating as taking control of my education.

And then there’s the fact that there aren’t very many private teachers for recorder anyway. Kind of like with buying a high quality wooden recorder, it’s probably better to wait to get private lessons until you’ve realized you can’t make any more significant progress on your own. By that point you’ll know what you’re looking for in a teacher and will get a lot more out of your lessons. Where to look for lessons is something I’ll cover in more detail in another post, but as a general rule, if you know someone locally whose recorder playing you admire you should talk to him/her and see if he/she would be willing to give you lessons or answer your questions. While not foolproof since not all practitioners are good teachers, it’s certainly better than just picking someone out at random.

I’ve finished the Method Book. Now What?

Now it’s time to start playing music. If there’s a music organization in your local SCA group you can probably join that. Talk to the person in charge and explain where your ability is right now and see what he/she has to say. Chances are you’ll be allowed to play with them and they’ll point you to the music they use.

If there is a European Dance group, but no music group you can approach the Dance Master/Mistress and see if he/she is interested in having live music at practice. If there’s interest you can get a list of their usual songs and play for them. You can find arrangements for most SCA dance tunes here. To get an idea for the tempo of the songs attend a few dance practices. Chances are the songs move quite a bit faster than you’d expect. Once you start playing regularly for dancers more musicians will likely come out of the woodwork to play too.

If there isn’t a dance group or a music group you could just start a music group directly. Find out if any of the fighters or artisans or whoever are also musicians and see if they’d like to meet once a month to play some medieval or renaissance music. You can still use the dance music site listed above to get started.

I’m not in the SCA, but I still want to play!

If you aren’t a part of the SCA, but would like to play the recorder with other people find out if there’s a beginner friendly recorder consort in your area. The American Recorder Society has information on Recorder Consorts throughout the US, although I’m not sure how up-to-date those links are. Still it doesn’t hurt to call and find out. Just because a group hasn’t updated their website doesn’t mean the group doesn’t exist! You can also google “recorder your_city” or “recorder consort your_city” and see what comes up. For instance when I a search for “ann arbor recorder”, the fourth listing is for the Ann Arbor Recorder Society.

Summary

So, getting started on the recorder is fairly straightforward. Buy an inexpensive high-quality plastic recorder and a method book, play through the method book, look for others to play music with, and start playing. I especially like playing for dancers because it makes the music feel less abstract and it’s less nerve-wracking than a straight-up performance. Dancers appreciate the music but tend to concentrate more on doing the right steps than listening for errors in my playing. Also I’ve had some really great music highs when playing for dancers. ^_^

So you want to join your local SCA dance band, but don’t play an instrument… or the instrument you do a play is a piano. You also don’t have a lot of money or time to spend on a new instrument and training. Really you want to get right into the thick of it as fast as possible. This is basically where I was 2 years ago. I’d played piano for 10 or so years, never played in a band (unless you count the digital piano band I was a part of during a summer workshop), and wanted to play along with Cynnabar’s dance band, Ritornello. I noticed one of the girls in the band was playing a plastic recorder and I remember that one was sitting in my parents basement. So the next time I visited them I dug it out and got to work.

What Kind of Recorder?

Plastic recorders are, in my opinion, the best entry-level instrument for renaissance dance music. A plastic Yamaha baroque soprano recorder costs less than $20 and many times you can even get it bundled with an instruction book. If want to play on a renaissance style recorder, the Susato brand plastic recorders may be a good choice for you. I’ve yet to try one myself, but I’ve heard good things about them. At $46 for a soprano, they’re about twice as expensive as the Yamaha recorders, but even then it’s still way under the price of a nice wooden one, which tend to start at around $400. Given the high quality of plastic recorders there’s no reason to rush into buying a wooden one until you know what you want.

Which Method Book Should I Buy?

If you already can read music, I don’t think it matters what method book you get. All you really need is an explanation of the fingering and some exercises gradual enough to get the fingering into your muscle memory. I used a book called Recorder Fun, which came bundled with my recorder back in 1991. True, the book was a bit on the juvenile side with songs like “Buzz, Buzz, Buzz, Buzz”, but it got the job done. I later got a more mature book called Basic Recorder Technique, by Hugh Orr, which did have some useful advice on how to hold the recorder and how to generally articulate the notes, but aside from the first few pages I didn’t feel it had much more to offer. So, in the beginning I suggest that you just get a method book. Whatever method book you get doesn’t really matter.

How Do I Avoid Developing Bad Habits?

You may be wondering how you’d go about avoiding bad habits if you’re using any old method book. The truth is that recorder technique is something that every experience level works on. Both the beginner and the advanced player works on improving his/her posture, hand position, you name it. There’s no getting around relearning and refining how you handle and play your instrument. Sometimes you have to learn something wrong before you can learn it right. Your number one goal when you start learning is to get the basic fingering into your memory so you can start playing with others. After that you can clean up your playing.

Having said that, here are a couple general rules that you can apply right from the start that should help you avoid the common pitfalls.

Avoid Tension
If you notice your hands stiffening as you play faster runs relax them. Dexterity is executed through relaxation not stiffness. Similarly you want to hold your recorder in a relaxed manner. Just don’t collapse the wrists as this will also impede movement. If you’re having trouble positioning your right hand, a little trick to help with that is you can rotate the bottom part of the recorder to accommodate your pinky finger. This only works if it’s a 3 piece recorder, though.

Below is a picture of me holding the recorder in what I believe to be proper hand position. (It feels relaxed to me anyway.)

Avoid Staccato Articulation
It’s pretty easy to play the recorder when you separate each note by tonguing because you don’t have to develop good finger coordination to do it. The problem comes when you want to play music legato–connected–because that requires perfect coordination. So, I suggest using minimal tonguing to develop proper coordination right from the start. In fact it isn’t a bad idea to use no tonguing as an exercise to see if you can get the music to sound musical.

Explaining with words is one thing, but it’s much easier to understand if you can hear what I’m talking about. Here’s a recording of me first playing staccato (major tonguing) then no articulation legato (no tonguing) and then articulated legato (minor tonguing.)

Part 2 will be posted on Friday where I’ll discuss private lessons and what to do after you’ve finished the method book.

Here’s a variation on last week’s arpeggio exercise. It’s essentially the same thing except that it’s in minor instead of major and it’s sung on “Ha” instead of “Hi” for the staccato exercise. They’re both interchangeable so do whichever you’d like. ^_^ The other thing to note is the solfege version starts on La instead of Do. This is because the key signature is the same as Eb Major and I believe it’s easier to figure out the right names when you stick with one set of solfege syllables for each key signature.

Enjoy!

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Here are 10 ways to break the monotony of singing rehearsals, many of which can be implemented without prior preparation.

1. Change Seating Orientation

This can mean any number of things. Below are some examples:

• Face different side of the room
• Sit it in a circle
• Sit in two rows
• Intermix parts (i.e. sopranos sit by non sopranos)
• Have parts face each other

2. Change Location

If you normally practice indoors, try practicing outside on a nice day. Have rehearsal at someone’s home. Change rooms. This will not only break the monotony but has the benefit of exposing the choir different acoustic settings too.

3. Change Instrumentation

Do you normally direct with a keyboard? Why not use a different instrument like a recorder or a guitar? How about just using a pitch-pipe? That’ll add some challenge.

4. Sing in Quartets

What I mean by that is sing one person on a part. (SATB would be a quartet; SSATB a quintent… etc.) This can be useful for testing how well the singers actually know their parts. The only drawback is that it can be a bit nerve-wracking for the singers since they’re being put on the spot. Bring it up with your singers to see if they’d be interested in trying such an arrangement. (If they’re a bit hesitant you could first try part intermixing mentioned above. Your singers will still have to sing by themselves but at least they aren’t put on the spot quite as much.)

5. Change the Order of the Rehearsal Schedule

Do you normally start sight-singing and then work on perfecting old music? Why not do it the other way around? Obviously don’t go overboard and sing the most straining song before doing any warm-ups, but where it doesn’t explicitly matter make a change.

6. Sing Songs with a Specific Theme

You can have a day of singing songs by one composer or one era, and give a little historical background on what you’re singing. It could be all sight-singing or a mix of sight-singing and review. You could also have a day dedicated to singing a certain type of piece, like all rounds, or all bawdy love madrigals, or all chants. Or how about singing everything on solfege syllables? Any of these will add some spice to the rehearsal. (Of course it could also annoy your choir so play it by ear.)

7. Bring in a Guest

By bringing in a guest, I mean bring in an expert of some kind, be it another choir director or a performer or whatever, to listen to and give advice to you and to the choir. Undoubtedly the choir will pay more attention to the new person than it does to you, and all of you will probably get a lot out of the advice. You could also bring in a non-expert to act as an audeince, but while it would probably increase the attentiveness of the choir, you’re more likely to learn a lot more from an expert.

8. Use Alternate Lyrics

Have your choir members make up new lyrics to some of the songs you sing, and then sing some of them at practice. This is bound to lighten things up.

9. Have a Choir member Co-direct

This depends on how formal your choir is and whether or not you’re getting paid to direct. Assuming that it’s a volunteer gig, inviting choir members to take major artistic direction on certain songs can be an empowering thing for both you and the singers. It invites them to do research, think critically about the music, and figure out how to verbalize their ideas. While being a passive singer can be nice and relaxing, there’s something really cool about getting a chance to do more once in a while. It’s empowering for you too because you get to know more about your singers and about the music. Not to mention that since your singers will be more knowledgeable, they will probably expect more of you, which while more difficult is ultimately a good thing.

10. Go Caroling

This is similar to the changing environment suggestion, except that in this case you’re performing not practicing. Caroling doesn’t have to be limited to Christmas-time either. There’s nothing wrong with going out on a street corner and singing with all or a subset of your choir in the middle of June. What’s nice is that caroling isn’t nearly as formal as an official performance, so prep work is minimal. Just go out and sing!

I’ve tested out a lot of these techniques on my choir and they do tend to have a positive impact on rehearsals. So, if you’re finding your rehearsals to be a bit of drag try one of them out.

To compliment the previous article on designing a weekly rehearsal agenda, here’s a list of things you can do to prepare yourself for directing your next rehearsal.

Practice the Music

The number one thing I do before rehearsal is make sure I know how to play the individual parts on the keyboard. Chances are high I’ll be expected to play the different voice parts on the piano, so knowing them beforehand reduces the likelihood that I’ll screw up playing them at rehearsal. Also, getting the parts in my head makes it that much easier to tell which parts are on or off pitch. If I don’t have that much time to prepare, I’ll use what prep time I have to do this.

If you already how to play and/or sing all of the parts, try practicing two or more parts together. This is useful because it gives you a better idea of how the parts fit together, and playing multiple parts at a time at rehearsal can help your choir out tremendously.

Practice Conducting

As I’ve said before, conducting is both important and nontrivial, so practicing it home is a very good thing to do since it’s so important. I’ve certainly found doing so to be helpful for me. I’ve been able to work out tricky areas in music pre-rehearsal and determine an appropriate tempo. I’ve also used that time to overcome my self-consciousness with regard to conducting. Conducting in front of a mirror and realizing that I don’t look like a total idiot is actually really helpful.

Practice the Vocalizes

This is something I know I have to do more of because by not practicing them beforehand I’m limited in the number of exercises I can have the choir sing. Trickier exercise for intonation are right out since if I can’t play them accurately on the keyboard, the singers can’t trust me for their intonation. So I’d definitely suggest you take a little bit of time to play the exercises you want to have your choir do beforehand.

Visualize the end Result

What I mean by this is that you should visualize what you want to get out of the rehearsal and what you want to accomplish with each song. By visualizing the end result you get an idea of what to look for with each song and can come up in advance with ways to describe what you’re want from your choir. The few rehearsals in which I employed this technique have been really successful.

How much time should I spend preparing for rehearsal?

There are several answers to this question. If it’s a run of the mill rehearsal I give myself about an hour. That gives me time to go over the parts, practice conducting, practice the vocalizes, and think about what I want to get out of the rehearsal. I tend to rehearse a few hours before the choir rehearsal so everything is fresh in my mind.

If I have a lot of new music to learn a may take an afternoon to plow through it all. If I’m preparing for a performance I may take some time to determine a plan of attack for mastering everything in the weeks leading up to the performance.

By taking some time to practice for rehearsals I’ve found that I’ve had much more fun and effective rehearsals than when I made it up as I went along. I’m also a lot less stressed out because I feel prepared and I know what I want to do next. I can spend more time reacting to the choir and less time worrying about executing parts, conducting, and figuring out what I want to do with any given song. As a side effect the choir also has more confidence in me too.

Here’s an easy little vocalize that can help your singers work on engaging the diaphragm, connectedness, and smoothing their break.

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The arpeggio is of a broken major triad, with the root as the highest and the lowest note.

“Hi Hi Hi” is supposed to be pronounced like the vowel in “heat”, not like “Hi, how are you.” You could have them sing on the “Hi, how are you” type “hi”, but that vowel is not a pure vowel. It’s made up up of the sounds “ah” as in “father” and “i” as in “heat”. So, it’s not the best vowel to use when trying to encourage the production of pure resonant vowels.

When singing on “hi” as in “heat” the goal should be to sing the notes staccato or disconnected. The action should come from the diaphragm, so make sure to inform your singers of this. The stops should not come from the throat because that creates unwanted tension.

You can also have your singers work on singing legato or connected. For this I suggest singing on “Ah.” This will expose the break in the voice because the phrase covers a fairly wide range… an entire octave. In order to work on smoothing the break tell your choir to try to not change the way any notes are sung within the phrase. Try to stay in either the lower or upper register. At the same time don’t use a lot of force to do it because you don’t want to create any undue muscle tension.

The exercise can also be used to work on dynamics. You can have your choir crescendo up to the fourth note and the decrescendo down to the last note. You can also vary the level of dynamic change with each repetition. Some could start really soft (pp) to really loud (ff), others medium loud (mf) to really loud (ff). You get the idea. Dynamics can be incorporated into either the staccato or legato variations.

You could also mix the legato and staccato components. Legato on the way up and staccato and the way down or vice versa. Or you could do the entire exercise in marcato, where each note is accented but there isn’t a break in the sound.

The exercise can move up or down the keyboard. It’s up to you.

As you can see, there are lots of options for this basic vocalize. Enjoy!

The easiest, most intuitive way to have a focused choir rehearsal is to know what you’re going to be singing in advance. In this post I’ll go into some detail about how I plan my rehearsals.

The Beginning of the Quarter

Before the new quarter starts I determine which songs from our current overall repertoire we’ll be singing and enter it into an outlining tool called Action Outline. (You can also do this in Microsoft Word or any other outlining tool or word-processor. I like Action Outline because it’s simple, but some of the keyboard shortcuts leave something to be desired. I’m still hunting for better outlining software, so my recommendation of the product comes with reservations.) Then every Friday, the day after our weekly Thursday rehearsal, I decide which songs we’ll be singing at our next meeting and send out an email to the choir with the agenda so they can prepare at home if so inclined. The first two weeks of a quarter are spent going through individual parts and determining which songs need the most work.

The Rehearsal Subsections

Once we’ve gone through the two week review, a normal rehearsal is divided into six subsections:

1. Vocal Warm-ups and Vocalizes (~10 minutes)
2. Warm-up / Review Songs(~20 minutes)
3. Sight-Reading(~30 minutes)
4. Songs to Work on(~45 minutes)
5. Extra Songs to Work
6. Request Time(~15 minutes)

The warm-up / review songs are songs within the quarter repertoire that don’t require that much extra prep, but do need review. They work as a confidence booster and get people excited about singing.

After that we jump into sight-reading, which tends to be the most taxing part of the rehearsal. We’ve been using new, easier, music for sight-reading material, some of which has been “solfeggified” meaning the lyrics have been replaced with solfege syllables. Soon I’ll be adding short sight reading exercises more targeted at reading certain intervals and rhythms.

After sight-reading we move onto the “Songs to Work on” section where we examine songs we already have some grasp on in more detail. We play with performance techniques, work on blend, dynamics, incorporate neat historical aspects, etc. If we finish with those songs before the last fifteen minutes of rehearsal we work on the extra songs, which like the warm-up songs are less technically challenging. These are good to have on hand because sometimes between the sight-singing and songs being worked on the choir can get mentally fatigued. Transitioning to these easier songs is a good way to keep the rehearsal productive and fun instead of just draining.

During the last fifteen minutes the choir gets to request which songs to sing. It can be anything in the entire repertoire, not just current quarter. Not only is it a relaxing way to end the rehearsal, it enables us to practice some of our other repertoire too.

I’ve found this structure works really well because it flows well with people’s energy and attention span. At the beginning of rehearsal we first have to overcome inertia, which is what the review songs are for. After that we have the most energy and and it gradually falls from there, so more challenging material goes at the beginning and the easier stuff goes at the end.

Changes in Rehearsal Structure

If there’s a performance coming up I’ll usually cut the sight-reading section and we’ll spend the entire period working on performance issues. I’m also planning to experiment with having a rehearsal dedicated to singing rounds or singing music by a certain composer or some other theme to spice things up. Since the Collegium is largely about education in addition to making great music, changing the rehearsals like is an OK thing to do.

Planning Songs in Advance

I only plan what we’re going to be singing at any given rehearsal a week in advance. I do this for several reasons. One is that during a quarter I’m manging a fairly small number of pieces, so it’s not very hard to make sure that each of them gets enough attention. Another is that at the beginning of a quarter I only have a vague idea of which songs are going to need more work than others. Each week I could find new reasons for why a certain song should get more rehearsal time or less. Also I like being flexible with adding songs to the repertoire. If a sight-reading song gets added to the rep it’ll get bumped to the “work-on” section, which is something I can’t plan for at the beginning of a quarter. Planning at the beginning and sticking to the plan would make me a lot less flexible, and that loss of flexibility is not something I’m willing to deal with.

Benefits to Planning Rehearsals

Knowing in advance what I want to get out of the next rehearsal has been an integral part of my improvement as a choir director. With that comes knowing which songs we’re going to sing and in what order. Having this understood in advance means that I can spend all of my energy on interpreting how the choir sounds and none on figuring out what we’ll work on next. And by letting the choir know what we’ll be working on ahead of time they have the opportunity to practice at home. All good things.

Here’s a simple vocalize designed to help your choir concentrate on proper breathing.

Have them breathe in using their diaphragm and let out the air on an “s”. Exhaling on “s” slows down the rate of expiration enable your choir to experience just how long they can hold a note, and it gives the singers a chance to really feel the diaphragm at work. Also, exhaling on “s” doesn’t strain the vocal chords in the way singing on a pitch does. After some amount of time (say 5 seconds) have them exhale the rest out.

Check to make sure that the singers aren’t raising their shoulders while inhaling. Doing so is an indication that their diaphragm isn’t really at work. Another thing to look out for is tension in the abdomen muscles while exhaling. This tends to happen when singers are trying to create the sensation of “breath support”, and ends up increasing pressure on the vocal chords. Not a good thing.

I found this technique in a few books and have had a director use it as a warm-up exercise. I like the exercise a lot because I can really concentrate on one thing, proper breathing, without having to also think about things like pitch or dynamics. In my opinion it’s good to have some exercises like this which isolate a certain aspect of singing for study and some exercises that challenge the singer to execute several complicated tasks at once. The “Now Wolde I Fayne” exercises fall into the latter category.

Enjoy!