The Choir Director Corner Podcast
The Choir Director Corner Podcast
091. Episode Replay--What to Do When Your Singers Won't Sing Out!
I've run into numerous choir directors, just in the past couple of weeks, all describing the same problem--singers that won't sing out! The directors have tried everything, and are at their wits end. What do you do???
This episode is a replay of Episode 62--I feel like I have a fresh perspective on the problem, and there are choir directors that continue to struggle in diagnosing the true root of the problem. In this episode I discuss the five potential causes of this issue, and I provide practical solutions to tackle each one. At the end of the original episode, I also jump back into the discussion with some new quick tips that you might try as a way to get started diagnosing the true cause and solving the issue for good. By the end of this episode, you'll have a whole toolbox of strategies to encourage your singers to unlock their true vocal potential!
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Hey, there it's Matt from the Choir Dr Corner podcast, and this week on the podcast I am actually doing an episode replay because I have run into the question probably 15 times, maybe even 20 times just in the past couple of weeks. What do I do when my singers refuse to sing out? I've tried everything, I am at my wits end and I just don't know what to do. I keep running into this situation over and over and over, and I did an episode of the podcast a while back where I talk about the five reasons why your singers might not be singing out and what to do in each of those situations. So this episode is for all of you that might be struggling with this issue, and at the end of the replay of the original episode I also have a couple of extra quick tips for you to try in your rehearsals. So let's dive into it. Here we go, and hello, my friends, welcome to the Choir Dr Corner podcast. My name is Matt Walker. I am your host. Thanks so much for stopping by and joining me for today's episode. Well, today on the podcast, we're talking about a question that I have seen a lot from Choir Directors recently and really over the past year, the past two years, I think it's always been an issue, but because of COVID and the lack of singing experience from many of our singers in the past couple of years, you know, many of them haven't sung for a year, maybe even two, and now we're finally just starting to get back into it and we're realizing our singers don't sing out, they are afraid to sing out. That's the statement that I hear from Choir Directors, and so you see this question well, how do I get my singers to sing out? So the quick fix to this problem is simply demonstrating for your singers the sound that you want. So demonstrating that big, boisterous sound and then seeing if they can replicate that and putting them in an environment where everybody's doing it. So no one's going to stick out, right? But I hear from Choir Directors where they say you know, I've demonstrated for them, I've tried all of these different things and still nothing has worked. So if you've tried demonstrating for your singers and you still can't get the volume, the sound that you want, that tells me that there are possibly greater things at play here, and in my experience there are often five different reasons why singers in an ensemble aren't singing out. I'm going to discuss those five reasons today and then give you some suggestions, some possible solutions for how you might sort of overcome these obstacles, these challenges that you're facing with your singers.
Speaker 1:So reason number one why your singers might not be singing out is that they aren't confident in their vocal part, and it seems kind of straightforward, right, but we have to really take this into consideration. Maybe they aren't as confident on their vocal part as we think they are, right. Well, how do we combat this? There's only so much time in rehearsal, so what's something that we could do to help them game a higher level of comfort with their vocal part, and that's creating practice tracks. Now, there's lots of different ways that you can go about doing this. It can be as simple as playing a singer's part on your voice memos app on your phone. You can get into garage band and audacity and do multi-part tracks where singers can hear their track over the other parts. Right Now, for some choir directors, they aren't comfortable playing the piano and playing those tracks, so maybe you could go and hire someone out if you have an accompanist that plays for your concerts, or maybe there's someone local in your community that you know that does play piano that would be willing to make these even just the basic single part tracks for you that you could then and use that with your singers.
Speaker 1:You could do something where, a couple of episodes ago on the podcast, we talked to the Kinnison Choral Company with Charlie Kinnison, where their business is creating practice tracks for choir directors for different pieces. So going that route as well, if you have the budget to do that. Speaking of singing the tracks, something else you could do is if you have section leaders that can learn their part and then have them record their part for the rest of the section. Again, this could be done very simply on, you know, any number of apps on a phone where you can share that mp3 then with the other singers in the section. So having those section leaders take some responsibility as well Lots of different ways that you can do it.
Speaker 1:The big thing is keep it simple and try to delegate that work if you possibly can. You'll find a way where you can delegate that to someone else, to take this off of your plate and, at the same time, helping our singers with these tracks is something that they can use outside of rehearsal to gain confidence in their vocal part. That may be the reason why they're not singing out. But if it's not that, then another reason that it could be is that they are self-conscious about their voice, self-conscious about their own singing, and sometimes this is just they feel like there's a lack of technique there. So it's really about giving our singers the basic technique skills that they are going to need to be successful. Again, we can keep it simple, but we need to give them that background need to give them some knowledge and some basic training in vocal technique so that they feel like they have the tools that they need to not only be successful but to continue to work on growing their voice, making progress on their own. So there's a number of ways that we can do this.
Speaker 1:And again, if you are a choir director, that is not comfortable with your own singing voice and that's okay, it's just like some choir directors, you know, we're not comfortable playing piano. Some of us don't feel like we are natural singers, so that we have that experience of studying vocal technique. Well, how do we get around that? One thing that you can do is reach out again into your community. Is there a local college or university where you can ask a local voice professor to come in for just maybe a couple of rehearsals and just briefly talk about some of the basics of vocal technique and, you know, giving sort of many lessons about. You know, one day it's about breath, another day it might be about just basic phonation, right Another day it might be about resonance. So asking someone that has that training, having them come in and just doing some many lessons or sort of a workshop with your singers. So that's one idea.
Speaker 1:Another idea, if you yourself are comfortable with singing and teaching the different aspects of vocal technique, is having you at the beginning of your rehearsal and maybe you break it up in a small chunks. You know five or six minutes for a number of rehearsals and each day you take a different topic, a different aspect of vocal technique and just using some basic exercises and doing a demonstration, you know a description of that particular topic or concept for the day and just having your singers explore their voice and try some things together. Now, if you're again, if you're someone that you're not really comfortable in teaching the different aspects of vocal technique, one of the resources that I have created is a teaching unit. I call it Vocal Technique 101. It's broken up into eight video lessons and each video lesson is about a different aspect of vocal technique and this is something that you could watch in your choir rehearsals together as a group, or it's something that you could share with your singers and then have them come back the next day and then have a discussion about the concept that was discussed in that particular video and if you want to have sort of an assessment piece of that, there are some suggestions for that as well. There's also some basic Google forms which sort of walk the singers through the different concepts, the different ideas, the different questions that are in each video, and so it helps them to kind of follow along with what are the really the important points in each video. If that sounds like something that might be beneficial to your singers, you can find that teaching unit over on the shop over at the ChoirDritterCornercom home page, or you can also get access to that as a member of our membership. That's one of the free resources inside the resource library.
Speaker 1:So that's number two singers being self conscious about their voice. What? Maybe it's the third reason singers are not wanting to sing out? It's because maybe they don't feel supported in their environment. Singing can be a very personal thing and it's one of the reasons why singers are self conscious. They feel like they're sharing a piece of themselves, and if I sing and somebody doesn't like it or someone makes fun of me, well then I take that as I take that very personally as a singer. And so it's trying to create an environment and a community where singers are supporting one another and really rooting for each other.
Speaker 1:Well, what are some of the ways that you can work on creating a supportive, a positive choral community within your ensembles? One of the things that you can do is doing some team building activities, and this can be something that's done during rehearsal or maybe it's done outside of your rehearsal time. It's especially important to find activities where collaboration, cooperation, where they're really having to interact with each other, and everybody's input, everybody's participation, is valued and is important. So, trying some team building activities sometimes we don't want to take the time and rehearsal to do activities like that, but it is well worth it. It really pays off in the end because it's helping again to create that choral community. One way that you can build those team building activities into the experience is through a choir retreat.
Speaker 1:So at the beginning of your year, carving out time at the beginning of your season, at the beginning of your school year, where your singers can get together and just socialize and play games and, yes, have some team building activities and just get to know each other a little bit better and start to make personal connections and doing some things where they realize I'm not so different than all of these other people, like there are so many more similarities that they are sharing than differences. And you can also get into the music rehearsal part of it too. You can even start rehearsing whatever music that it is that you have planned for that first concert in your season and in your school year. You can do that as well. But the big thing is just getting them to interact and to socialize and just get to know each other. And the more they do that, the more they will realize you know we are all here to support each other in this wonderful thing called choir, this wonderful thing that we can do together and make music that we all love. So, having a choir retreat, if you can carve out some time to do that.
Speaker 1:Another idea is to, over the course of your season, over the course of your school year, to build in social events over the course of the year. So doing things like, maybe, watching a movie together, maybe it's having a board game night you know there's lots of different things that you could plan Maybe it's just going and sharing a meal together, right, lots of different events that you could plan. And often your singers are the ones that have the great ideas, right? Simply ask them what they think the people in the group might want to do. But doing those things over the course of the year. It continues to sort of maintain that interaction, that support amongst your singers. So building in some events, as well as doing a choir retreat, which is a great time to build in some of those team building activities, so creating a choral community. That's the third suggestion for you. Now.
Speaker 1:The fourth reason singers might not be singing out is they're just afraid to make a mistake. I talked about this a little bit in the previous reason. You know, no one wants to make a mistake, especially if they feel like they're going to be criticized or made fun of by others in the ensemble, right? So how you can combat this is trying to really emphasize a growth mindset, and how I do that is I always watch the language that I use. I watch it sort of, in the time that I spend in rehearsal and making sure I'm always emphasizing process over product. And that's really hard because as choir directors, we often have that product that we are working towards, right, we have that concert, that performance that we are working towards. But always, you know, talking with them, that it is about the process. Yes, it is about the ensemble objective, about the performance, but it's also about growing as an ensemble and continuing to get better every single day, as well as the individual progress that they are making as singers. I mentioned that to them as well, because sometimes they think, oh well, yes, it's about, it's about the concert, it's about the ensemble's performance and how we sing, but if we focus on that individual progress, well, that can only make the ensemble stronger as well. They're all thinking about making that progress as an individual singer, and that all comes down to growth mindset.
Speaker 1:And we used to have a poster up in my room. It was a quote from I believe it was from the great runner, steve Prefontaine, who said something to the effect of it's not about comparing yourself to others, it's about comparing yourself to your previous self. So comparing yourself to how you were yesterday and did I get better today? Right? That's always the question we want our singers to be asking at the end of rehearsals, not worrying about what other groups are doing, whether it's other you know, other schools or even other groups in our school it's about our ensemble and even myself as a singer. Did I get better today? What did I do today to get better? What did I do today to help my ensemble get better?
Speaker 1:If we can focus on that growth mindset and just really making sure that our singers understand it's okay to make mistakes, right, I will make mistakes all the time in rehearsal and you know what I do. I laugh at myself, you know we have a good laugh and then we move on and I do it again and I try and do it better. That next time and that's really how we want our singers to treat their mistakes is that you know what. It's okay to make a mistake, totally fine. We laugh about it and we move on and just making sure that our singers always know no one's laughing at you, we're laughing with you, yeah, and even you don't even have to laugh at it. You can simply just not even make a big deal about it. It's like, yep, it's a mistake, it happens. That's how we learn and that's how we get back to the growth mindset Emphasizing to our singers you know what Making mistakes. That is how we learn, that is how we get better, every single day, every single rehearsal. So just make it a part of rehearsal where you know what Mistakes are going to happen. That's okay, try it again. That's all we do, right, emphasizing that growth mindset. So that's suggestion number four.
Speaker 1:And finally, the fifth reason why singers might not be singing out is because maybe they aren't invested in the music, right? Yes, have we all performed music that we didn't necessarily love? Yes, yes, we have. Were we 100% invested in that music as much as, maybe, the piece that we really loved? No, we probably weren't, if we're really honest with each other, right? So how can we get our singers to really be invested in the music that our ensemble is working on? Well, one suggestion for you and you may not like this, you may think I'm crazy Allow singers to have input on the music that your ensemble is singing.
Speaker 1:Now you might just Matt, matt, you're crazy, matt, you're crazy. This is what. This is why I get paid the big bucks. Matt Like this is why I spent all that money on degrees, it's because I am the one in the room that's the expert, and I will be choosing the music. And you know what? I totally get it. I love choosing music. I'm a huge control freak, so I totally get that perspective. But hear me out, right, because what happens when choir directors get in trouble with allowing their singers having input is because they just give their singers free reign to pick music. Right, and that's not what I'm talking about here. Right, there are some very specific parameters that you should use when allowing your singers to have input.
Speaker 1:So here's a couple of things. Number one say you're doing three pieces on your concert and you're like you know what? I'm going to give my singers the opportunity to give input on one of those pieces, not all three. One one of those pieces, right. And so here is how you do that. You select multiple options. Maybe it's two, maybe it's three. I like to usually do three. I probably want to do more than that for times sake, because of this activity, because what you're going to do is, if possible, if there's a recording, you're going to play a recording of each of those pieces. If you have the sheet music that they can follow along with even better right To give them as much as a full experience of the piece as possible, and then you're going to allow them to give written feedback as far as which piece they liked the most and why. Okay, so here's why you're doing it this way.
Speaker 1:Number one this is not a vote, right? I say often in my choir rehearsal room this is not a democracy, this is a benevolent dictatorship, right? So this is not them choosing the piece, this is them having the opportunity to give feedback, and I do it written feedback, because we don't need to get into a situation where people are shouting down other people because someone prefers this piece and another person prefers this piece and this piece is better than that, and it becomes a big argument, right? Not to mention, people can often be influenced by other people's opinions, and I don't want any sort of influenced opinion. I want everybody's own personal opinion and I also want to hear from every single person. So this gives every single person the opportunity to have input, rather than just asking them in class, because some people might not want to share their opinion in front of others. Right, and this also gets the specific reasons why I think that's very important.
Speaker 1:A person that says, well, I just like that better. Well, that doesn't give you really a lot of feedback on why they wanted that piece, but someone that says, well, I selected this one because it's in a different language and it's upbeat, and I like how it kind of switched from major to minor and I looked at the translation of the piece and it just looks like a really cool story. That's really specific feedback. Yeah, so this can be an assessment piece as well, helping you to meet some of those standards in your curriculum or the national standards, if that's what you're working on. Yeah, this is the way to do that as well. So having written feedback.
Speaker 1:Now here's the other key to this is that those three pieces that you play for them, that you show them, that you give them the opportunity to listen to and have input on, you need to be okay programming all three of those pieces, all three of those pieces you need to really like so that, no matter what decision, what input, what the overwhelming opinion is, no matter what it is, you feel good about the piece that you are choosing, that you are choosing, not your singers. They're giving the input, they're giving their opinions, they're giving their feedback. You still make the final choice and they got very clear with your singers, right. But where choir directors get in trouble again with this is they give two or three options and then they say, well, I really wanted this option, but the majority of them selected this other one. So I'm going to do it, but I'm not really happy with it. Well, the problem is is that you didn't love all three of your options, right? We really need to make sure that the repertoire options we're giving them we're, we all we love all of them, right? And if you don't, then I would highly suggest you don't do this activity, because there's a very good chance you won't be happy with the outcome.
Speaker 1:Now say this whole activity is just too much. You're like Matt, this is just a bridge too far. I'm not ready to give my singers sort of the keys to the car here, right? I'm not willing to give up so much freedom. What you could do is have them do a programming project, and this is a project that I do every single year. I like to do it at the end of the year, oftentimes, when you know we're kind of running out of things to do.
Speaker 1:It's a great time to do this, where I have them with a series of very specific parameters. I have them program a concert. They select the repertoire for one ensemble for a concert, and again, it's very specific repertoire. I show them a number of websites, like JW Pepper, graphite Publishing, santa Barbara Music Publishing, where they can very easily get on these websites. I go through the search engines in each of those websites to show them how all of this works, and so really it's pretty straightforward for them. All they have to do is dive in and spend some time immersing themselves in this choral repertoire, because I give them the specific parameters about what they can choose. So they have to have a wide variety of composers, they have to have a wide variety of music from different time periods, right? Stylistically it must be varying, but they also have to make sure that the difficulty level is appropriate as well, right? So I build all of these different parameters into this activity, so it's really straightforward for them.
Speaker 1:As far as the learning objectives for them, what they're trying to accomplish and what they will find is they start to learn a lot about how choir directors program concerts. They find that there's a lot more involved in it than what they think, and sometimes this will help you with this problem, because they will have a better understanding by having gone through this process themselves, have a better understanding of why it is you choose the music that you choose, and so when you do get to that piece that maybe they aren't totally in love with it, you can still get some investment because they understand the why. They understand why it is that you chose that specific piece of music for them to sing. They understand some of the learning objectives that are being accomplished by singing that piece. So that's suggestion number five allowing singers to have input in your repertoire. So let's summarize us. Go through those five suggestions one more time.
Speaker 1:If you feel like they're not confident in their vocal part, thinking about practice tracks, if they are self-conscious about their voice or they feel like they don't have the background in vocal technique, bringing someone in or finding a resource like the Vocal Technique 101 teaching unit that can give them the training, the background, the experience that they need and the opportunity to sort of learn more about how the voice works. They're feeling like they're maybe not supported in their environment. Working on creating a choral community, team building activities, social events, thinking about planning. Acquire retreat If you've got some singers that are really afraid to make a mistake in front of their peers, really diving into that growth mindset, emphasizing that process over product. And can you add some things to your rehearsal environment? Maybe some classroom posters sharing some quotes with them that really emphasizes that growth mindset and just saying to them it's okay to make a mistake, because that's how we learn. And then, finally, if you're struggling to get them invested in the music, maybe consider allowing them to have some input in your repertoire and if that's too far, do a programming project. And that project is also included in our resource library inside of our Carderick Corner Community Membership, so you don't have to reinvent the wheel. It's one of those resources that is available to all of our members.
Speaker 1:Well, I hope you're enjoying the replay of this episode. I'm hopping back in here because I have a couple of extra quick tips for you If you happen to be suffering with this issue of singers that won't sing out. So tip number one is to just try to get your singers to make any sort of sound. It can be noise, really right, getting away from the idea of singing, but just getting them to make sound. So doing sorts of sirens we do all sorts of sirens in different configurations and just getting them to really like I said, just really to produce some sound. You know you can have fun with it. Have them do like cartoon character voices or movie character voices or even like animal sounds, anything that sort of gets them to relax a little bit and not stress out about making the most beautiful sound or again get some away from sort of thinking about making a mistake and just letting them have fun making sound. It's something that when you go to an elementary playground for recess that's what kids do, right, and so in a way it's just getting them to be a kid again and just having fun using their voices and making sound. So once they can do that, then you can start to build off of that. So that's number one. Quick tip.
Speaker 1:Number two is trying to engage them in conversation. This is usually not difficult with singers, right. Engaging them in conversation and boisterous conversation, yeah, like doing a question of the day and picking out something that you know is a good thing. It's going to be very controversial and you know, sometimes we might shy away from doing things. That's going to get our singers riled up, right, because we want to make sure that we keep order and all of this stuff, right? Well, in this case, I think getting them riled up again is a good thing, get the energy level rising, get the blood flowing a little bit and, if you know, and if the sound level, the volume level, starts to increase, you can use that in their singing.
Speaker 1:You know, if they're having this loud, boisterous conversation and then you go to sing and it's this meek and mild sound again, well you can say, hey, we were just having this loud, boisterous, energetic conversation. I need you to sing, just like this conversation that we were having, right, you can sort of play off of that. I've said this a number of times in rehearsal, where I say, hey, I heard you guys make a noise at the football game on Friday night. I know you can be loud. Or you know, I heard you at the PEP assembly. Or I heard you guys make a noise all the way down the hall. Like you can use that to your advantage and it kind of makes a point to them too.
Speaker 1:Again, singing, all really it is is just controlled noise in many ways. Right, I know they can make noise, so now I just need you to make a noise that's a little bit more manageable and a little bit more specific, right. That's really all it is. So that's number two, and number three kind of building off of these things and also building on off to some of the other ideas I talked about in this episode is see if you can get them to laugh, right, laughing it does a number of things. Number one it's usually going to be pretty loud, but number two, it gets them to relax and have fun and, in some ways, getting them to be more themselves. And when they are more, feel like they are more able to be themselves, they're going to be more willing to be vulnerable and more willing to step outside of their comfort zone. And when they do that, that is when you really start to see them build upon the types of sounds that they are making. So, number one just really focusing on any type of sound, right, and you can kind of again talking about number three getting them to laugh. You can make that fun, right, getting them to have fun with that. So making sound, yeah, getting them to laugh and using some of these loud, boisterous, energetic conversations that our singers can very much have on their own, usually without any prodding, use that to your advantage.
Speaker 1:Well, I hope this episode, this replay of this original episode, has given you some ideas, my friends. Number one I hope it's maybe giving you some ideas as far as the reasons behind why your singers might not be singing out some things to sort of explore and investigate. And then, once you do that, now you've got some tools, you've got some strategies in your toolbox, depending on what you decide might be the root of the problem. Now you've got some tools and some strategies in your toolbox to really attack it and really start to get that more bold, adventurous sound that you want out of your ensemble. Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode.
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