The Choir Director Corner Podcast
The Choir Director Corner Podcast
092. Dealing with Talkative Singers in Choir Rehearsal
One of the questions I most often get from choir directors is, "My singers are so chatty--how do I get them to stop talking?" Granted, I'm not someone that expects total silence in my rehearsal. But at the same time, in order for there to be as few distractions as possible, and have rehearsal be as productive as possible, it's a good idea to limit any unnecessary chatting by our singers.
So in Episode 92 of the podcast, I'm sharing 11 proven strategies that will not only reduce unnecessary chatting and distractions, but also instill a sense of personal responsibility in your singers. From setting clear expectations to the nitty-gritty of best practices, you'll learn how to turn those "Chatty Cathies" into focused and engaged choir members!
Resources discussed in this episode:
Blog Post: How to Run a Silent Rehearsal with Your Choir
Blog Post: 12 Strategies for Using Audiation with Your Choir
FREE Training: 10 Rehearsal Strategies to Engage and Empower Your Singers
If you want to dive deeper into topics just like this one, then you should really check out the Choir Director Corner Community Membership! Inside the membership there are Online Courses, a Resource Library with over 50 PDF's and Google Docs, and "Monthly Missions" Trainings where we focus on a specific topic, and you can ask questions and get feedback on how to tackle your biggest teaching challenges. And, as a member, you'll get access to our brand new CDC Searchie Hub, the AI tool created specifically for choir directors!
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One of the questions I see a lot from Choir Directors is how do I stop all of the talking in my choir rehearsal? My singers are driving me crazy. Well, in today's episode of the podcast I have 11 things that you can be doing in your choir rehearsals to curb that talking and, who knows, you might actually get rid of all of that extra talking altogether. Let's dive into it. Here we go and hello, my friends. Welcome to the Choir Director Corner podcast. My name is Matt Walker. I am your host. Thanks so much for stopping by and joining me for today's episode.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't know about you, but the past few weeks have just been a little bit crazy around here. We've had fall concert, which thankfully went very well, and we're starting our repertoire for our Masterworks concert coming up in December. A couple of weeks ago I of course had my yearly fall bout with sickness, but thankfully I am on the downhill from that and starting to feel better, got my voice back and so, so that's good news. I got that done and out of the way and just lots of different things going on. We've got all state auditions coming up. Of course, show choir is really starting to ramp up. So probably, like you, right, you probably have a lot of irons in the fire, and that's just kind of part of what we do, right? We always have lots of different things going on and in the midst of all of that then you get to the rehearsal and you're maybe a little bit stressed out and you're just like you know, I just want to have a really good rehearsal today. And you get to rehearsal and they just won't stop talking, like maybe it's a full moon, maybe someone fed them sugar before they came to you. Who knows what the reasoning is. Right, I'm telling you, the full moon is absolutely a thing, it's absolutely a thing, for whatever reason. Right, they just won't stop talking, and I see it from choir directors all the time, where it's absolutely just driving them crazy.
Speaker 1:Well, I've put together a list of 11 things that I am going to share with you today in this episode of the podcast that you can and I guess I would say you should be doing, certainly if talking is an issue in rehearsal. Now, I will say I am not someone that expects it to be 100% silent in my rehearsals, right, I like to have some banter and certainly some conversation, and I think sometimes that helps to keep the energy up a little bit, right, if you can sort of keep that going, and certainly as you're building relationships with your singers, that's going to help you as well. But and there's a big but there right, but our singers need to know when it's appropriate to do that and when it's time to get focused and get to work right. And so I've had some directors, conductors in the past where it's just 100%, it must be silent through the whole thing, and most of those folks, you know I would kind of consider our quote unquote old school. I don't know if that's something that we can really do in today's day and age in education, just with sort of the collaborative nature. And you know, I think a lot of times we're fighting whatever our colleagues are doing in their classroom, and I don't see that happening in most of the other classrooms in our school. Probably, I don't know, maybe you do in your school where you are at. It's really hard sort of fighting, that being the only one like that, right.
Speaker 1:So one of the big things and this is the first point I want to make here is we really have to establish clear expectations, right, and you got to try and take the subjectivity out of it and making sure that there's really no gray area. And so make it clear to the singers okay, here we go, you're diving in, you need to turn your focus caps on and you need to pay attention, right? So maybe, after you know your warmups, after your announcement, maybe there is a little bit of interactive time, but then, once we dive into music or whatever that first activity is need to be very clear with them that, okay, we are entering that rehearsal mode, here we go, right. So, no matter what your perspective is, no matter what your process is, you know how you like to do things in rehearsal. The idea that we really need to establish those clear expectations, here's what I expect of you in rehearsal and when. Right, and to a certain extent this can also include exploring that idea of our singers needing to have some personal responsibility inside of rehearsal. Right, it should not be us having to dictate, to mandate from the podium at every second of the rehearsal what you should be doing.
Speaker 1:You know, once you set that expectation and you demonstrate it or however you communicate it which we can talk a little bit about in today's episode as well they need to take on that personal responsibility, right. They need to be in charge of their own learning and in many ways, they're a way of conducting themselves in rehearsal right. So as long as you're establishing those clear expectations, you're setting yourself up for success there. Everybody needs to know and understand very clearly what they are expected of and when. And going along with that personal responsibility, you know talking to them where you know just saying hey when you are talking. That is not only a distraction to me as the director and prevents me from doing my very best. If you're talking, then you are distracting someone else from learning as well, and so that's why we have these clear expectations and that's why we have these expectations to begin with right, because these are best practices. How do we get the most done? How can we be the most successful and productive in rehearsal? That is the reason for these expectations right Can approach it from this way.
Speaker 1:It's not me just making these rules just to make rules right. It's because of my experience singing in choir, my experience of conducting choir. You know the collaboration that I have gotten working with other choir directors and their experiences right. There's decades of best practice that goes into. Here are my expectations right, and so sometimes it's good to have that conversation, just so your singers know it's just not you making things up on the fly. Or you know, as I've even said to my bass choir, it's like I'm not trying to be a jerk here. Here are the expectations and here are the reasons why we have those right. This is so incredibly important. So I'm spending a little bit of extra time on this one.
Speaker 1:But if you don't establish those clear expectations early on, a lot of these other things aren't going to work right. So that's number one. Number two this is a little bit of a logistical thing, but it can be a little bit of a mind shift thing as well. Never let singers talk over you, right? I had a mentor say very early on in my teaching career say students will do whatever you allow, and so this goes into that big time. Right? If you allow your singers to talk over you, then really what you are telling them is it's not important for them to stop talking and to listen to you. Right, and maybe even further than that, what you have to say is really not that important, really not that important.
Speaker 1:So there are days where you're just like boy, if I stop every time they are talking, we are never going to get anything done, and I have been there. I have totally, totally been there and I totally understand that. But you have to start somewhere, right? And so now, when this episode is coming out we're mid-fall, yeah, so we're a number of weeks into our choir year if things aren't going well, now is the time to stop and do a reset, right? And after you do that, you may have to spend some time really stopping and sort of resetting that expectation.
Speaker 1:Clearly, if you haven't already, and you might have a few days where you don't have, you aren't able to get as much done because you have to stop so often, right? But by doing that now or by doing that at the very beginning of the year if you happen to be listening to this episode later on it's going to save you so much time in the long run, right? So it's like a lot of other things If you invest the time upfront, that's gonna pay you back many times over, right? Not only in how much time you have in rehearsal, how much you get done, but in the reduced amount of frustration that you are going to feel, right, because you're not stopping all of the time to get them to stop talking, right. So will it cost you some time? Upfront, yes, is it totally worth it? Absolutely, yeah. So do not ever let those singers talk over you.
Speaker 1:And again, this goes into a lot of things Students will do whatever you allow. Wherever you draw that line, they will meet you at that line, right. So that goes into establishing those clear expectations. So that is number two. Number three this gets into classroom management and this goes for all discipline, not just music, but the idea that proximity is your friend, right? I know, directors, that they basically stay either at the piano or they stay sort of at their conducting area quote unquote at the podium, the whole rehearsal, right. And so there's really no sense of proximity. And so simply by proximity, what I mean is simply being in their physical space and close to them eventually.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it takes a little bit, yeah, if our singers are a little bit inexperienced, they may not quite understand right off what you're doing. But if you come and stand close to them in their space as you're working, chances are that's gonna curb that talking, right. And if it doesn't, then you combine the, you stop and you look at them until they finally stop talking. But being in that space, just in that general vicinity, yeah, a lot of times that can take care of it for you. Now, if it's something that is sort of consistently an issue, like you can't always be walking back and forth into that space, yeah, but this is definitely something that can help and definitely something that I do a lot. I am constantly moving around in my rehearsal space, even behind the rose of the choir. If you can have space to get back in there, yeah. So the singers in the back, they know at any time I'm not just gonna be standing up front but I'm gonna be moving around. Yeah, and just the idea that you can be moving into their space at any time that can serve as a deterrent right. So that's number three proximity is your friend.
Speaker 1:Number four the power of silent rehearsals. I've done a podcast episode. I've done a blog post on this. I'll put the link in the show notes to the blog post so that you can read about this and see some of the pictures of sort of the prep work that I do for this. But dive into the concept of holding a silent rehearsal just to show them how effective of a teaching tool that it can be right and also there are some ways that you can make this more beneficial for singers and just more productive in getting things done, and I alluded to the prep work. A lot of it goes, a lot of the success from these goes into the prep work and how much prep work that you do, and it's probably more prep work for this than for a normal rehearsal. But here's the payback is that the last five minutes of class you have a discussion with singers and you can discuss with them, and every time that I've done this, the feedback that I get from singers is we got so much more done.
Speaker 1:Today I said, yeah, absolutely. Why do you think that was Because you didn't have to stop all the time for people that are talking. Exactly, I've even had singers that have said you know, can we do these where you are talking but everybody else is silent? Cause I do these with a silent rehearsal. No one talks, and that includes the director. Yeah, that includes the conductor. So zero talking from anyone inside of that rehearsal, yeah. And so I said no, I don't think that's really fair. Like, if you guys can't talk, I really don't think I should be able to either. And you know what it helps me to get rid of any unnecessary talking that I am doing as well, man, which can sometimes for me be a problem. So if you want to learn more about how I've done silent rehearsals in the past and how these might help you, might benefit you and your singers, I'll have a link to that blog post in the show notes. So that's number four the power of silent rehearsals.
Speaker 1:Here's number five, and this goes for the learning process when you are learning your concert repertoire, and I think out of all of these, this is maybe the easiest one that you can do, but this is also what I call the low hanging fruit. Yeah, this is something where, as easy as this is to do in your rehearsal process, it can also have the biggest effect. Yeah, maybe other than the establishing clear expectations, like that is absolutely number one. But if you were to do anything else after that, all of these are important, but this one could have the biggest impact tomorrow on your rehearsal process. You know you want to know what it is.
Speaker 1:Here's number five when you're teaching a piece of music, all singers sing all parts when they are learning their music. So if I have an SATB ensemble basses, here is measure 14. You are practicing your part. You're basically sight reading it, yeah, so it's going through it the first time. Everyone else sings along with the basses in their own octave, right, and so we go through that section, yeah, and we go through it. And then, once we're through that line, then we go back to the tenor line. Everyone sings through the tenor, everyone sings through the other, everyone sings through the alto, everyone sings through the soprano. Once you've sunk through all those parts, then we go back and then everyone's on their own part. Yeah, and so that is part of the learning process.
Speaker 1:So this does a number of things. Number one they're talking less because they should be singing more, right, that's just kind of makes sense, right? So if they're singing, they really shouldn't be, shouldn't be talking. There is a greater engagement. Yeah, no one's just sitting in their chair, no one's sitting on their hands, you know, just. You know dozen off or daydreaming, whatever. Everyone is engaged, yeah, which I think is a big positive. The other thing, too, is that they gain a better understanding of the structure of the piece, and I say to them all the time it's not enough for them to just know their own part, they need to know what everybody else is doing as well.
Speaker 1:They need to know how their part fits in with everybody else. Well, what better way to do that than to have them sing through all the parts, right? So, again, this is something if you're learning new music, you could start this Tomorrow, right? Another thing that this does this gives them more practice Sight-reading. So if you're doing this on soulfish Wow, they got a sight. Read Somebody else's part on the soulfish. How about those sopranos who think they have it easy all that's a sorry Sopranos who think they have it easy all the time Singing the melody? Oh, make them do the bass part, make them read bass clef. Yeah, see what they say about that. So add that to that as well is this is an opportunity to work on music literacy and to have them sight-reading. Get it, they're gonna be so much better by the end of the year Reading music.
Speaker 1:If they've had, you know, if there's four parts in, in, in in the piece, right, and they sing every everybody else's part, well, that's four times the practice. Think about how good they could be at reading music with four times the practice, other than against just Reading their own part. Yeah, simply by making this one little switch, all singers sing all parts in their own octave. Obviously, when learning music. That's number five. Number six is Engaging singers through Audiation. Now, this is another technique that can go along with the rehearsal process and learning parts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sometimes, instead of having everyone Learn as sing everyone's part, I say, for instance, tenors, we are singing your part, sopranos, altos and bases. Yeah, I want you to audit your part. And so I don't give just the tenors are starting pitch, I give all four starting pitches. So as the tenors are singing their part, the other three parts are also Audiating. Yeah, and sometimes I'll do certain things where I will say you know, one, two, everybody's in now, yeah, and so I will bring the other parts in at random times and so they better be ready to come in If they're auditing. They should be ready If they're just zoning out and uh, and you know it's, it's a huge dumpster fire when those others see parts come in, we'll have a good laugh about it, and then I'll also give them the stink guy, yeah. Or, as my singers say, ooh, he just gave us the dad face, we're in trouble. Yeah, darn right, I gave you the, I gave you the dad face. Yeah, you guys better be ready. Yeah, you should be auditing and obviously, if they are talking, they are not auditing in rehearsals.
Speaker 1:So, um, audiation, a really powerful uh rehearsal technique, rehearsal strategy. And I've got another resource, uh, related to Audiation. I'm going to put a link in the show notes to that as well, if that's something that you want to start to incorporate into your rehearsals. And, yes, it's also a great strategy to curb that talking in rehearsal. So that is number six.
Speaker 1:Number seven, talking a little bit about the importance of efficient rehearsal pace. Right, and oftentimes, if there is too much talking in my rehearsal, one of the first things that I will go back to as I'm reflecting on the rehearsal is the rehearsal pace and thinking about, um, how quickly I was moving through things and am I moving, uh, with a certain level of pace from one thing to the next. And a lot of times, if there was too much chatting, it's really because of me and because my rehearsal pace was lacking, right? So, um, this would be another very easy thing to try is, um, you know, tomorrow, when you go into rehearsal, think about speeding up. Yeah, it's like when you um listen to uh audio like a podcast, or uh, you watch a video and instead of you like on regular speed. You listen to it on one and a half times the speed or two times the speed, right, Just to save yourself some time thinking about it that way, taking what you're doing but upping your speed to 1.5 instead of 1.0, right, and just really going more briskly through rehearsal. Now, the first couple of times you try this, they're going to be dragging right Because they're not expecting it, especially if this is significantly more moving, more quickly than what you normally do. But again, after a few days of doing this, they're going to understand that this is the expectation, is that we are going to pick up the pace, and the expectation is that they move with you, right? So, thinking about that rehearsal pace and how can I sort of bump that up, and again, it's just taking that dead time out of rehearsal.
Speaker 1:Now, this also does require maybe a little extra pre-planning on your part, because one of the tricks to being a little bit more brisk as far as your rehearsal pace goes is you need to make sure that you've got everything planned out as far as the different activities or the different things that you want to cover and moving from one thing to next. Right, you need to make sure that you've got those things planned out. Are there going to be some days where you diverge from your lesson plan based on what you're hearing? Absolutely yeah. But if you've got that plan in place, I'm going to do this, and then I want to go here and then I want to do this, and then we're going to finish with this, right, and you've got those things all lined up. Well, as soon as you end that first portion of rehearsal, you know exactly where you're going to go, right, and there is no downtime, right. It's like, okay, that's significantly better than what that was yesterday. Now we're moving to this piece, this page, this measure, number, right, and there's no downtime. Yeah, they get into their music and I am right, ready to go. And again, if they aren't ready when I am, I'm giving them the stink guy, I'm digging in a little bit. It's like, hey, this is the expectation, you need to be with me, let's go Right. But after you do that a couple of times, then it just becomes habit, right, and so it's creating these positive habits within rehearsals with our singers. So, all starting with that importance of that efficient rehearsal pace, looking at your pacing, yeah, so really, like I said, a really easy thing to do and it's the thing that you can start to change tomorrow and it's going to have a really a significant impact.
Speaker 1:Segment number eight is engaging interactive rehearsal techniques. So I just did a training inside of our Choir Director Corner Community membership. I'm doing monthly trainings with our members on different topics. Yeah, there's a specific topic with each one, but for months to months the topic changes, and last month it was on rehearsal techniques and so the training shared ideas for different engaging interactive rehearsal techniques. Now, with some of these, there's actually going to be some talking, right, because some of these are designed to increase the collaboration between students yeah, and you as well, and there's also gonna be some group discussion in some of these.
Speaker 1:But the thing is is that it's collaboration and it's discussion and in its basic form, it's talking that is on task and it's directly related to what you are doing and directly encouraging student leadership, student learning, student independence, all of those things. It's not about where Billy and Sally are going for dinner, for homecoming, or who's taking who to the dance or whatever. Yeah, it's not all of the silly stuff that should be conversation out in the hall and not in your rehearsal room. It's stuff directly related to the activity that you're doing and to student learning. So you know, and it's true, you know, we all can get into a rut I'm raising my hand as I say this.
Speaker 1:Where the rehearsal is, singers come in, they sit in the chair, we go through music whether it's using some sort of music literacy tool with soulfish, or I'm playing parts on the piano or whatever it is we learn our parts. You leave, and from my perspective as a singer, okay, maybe some days are like that, but, boy, if it's that same thing day after day after day after day, that can get kind of tiring and kind of monotonous. Yeah, and sometimes you know myself certainly, and I'm sure my singers as well I start to lose interest. So what are some of the rehearsal strategies and techniques that you know that you can use to sort of up that engagement and up that collaboration? And in the end, it's those types of things that foster this deeper level of learning, right?
Speaker 1:You know they say, well, the best way for students to learn something is to have them teach it. Would you have any strategies that you use inside of rehearsal where students are teaching others? That would be a great place to start. Right, you're gonna get a deeper level of learning. Like I said, yeah, there's gonna be a high level of energy with some of the things that I do and, yes, some of that, there is gonna be some talking involved with those, but it's all collaborative, yeah, and it's all driving the learning. It's not talking that's off task typically in any sort of way. So, thinking about some strategies that you can use to up that engagement and that collaboration in rehearsal, yeah, and you know, if you need some more ideas, please make sure that you check out my website because there's tons of resources involving rehearsal strategies and techniques. It's just kind of one of those things that I kind of geek out a little bit and I really enjoy talking about that with other choir directors. So check out the website if you need some more ideas.
Speaker 1:So that's number eight. Number nine using positivity as motivation and reinforcement. So, instead of making note of or, you know, taking notice of the people that maybe aren't doing what we would like them to do in rehearsal yeah, talking to the people that are off task and talking in rehearsal what if you instead started to highlight and praise in public the students that are doing exactly what you want them to do? Yeah, the students that are paying attention, the students that are really working, engaged, that are on task. Yeah, I think sometimes and again I've raised my hand sometimes we focus too much on the singers that maybe aren't doing what we would like them to do to be productive, instead of really highlighting and praising the ones that really are doing all the right things right. It's kind of like when we make calls home to parents. Yeah, how many times are we making calls home to parents when there's an issue? And how many times do we call home to parents to just say your kids awesome, right? Most parents, they really dread hearing phone calls from teachers because of just that reason. Most of the time it's because there's an issue right, and so it's taking that same idea.
Speaker 1:Instead of bringing up the negativity and the issues, what if we really focus on the positive and we really, like I said, highlight and praise in public and really reinforce the singers that are really doing well and doing all the things that they need to do to be successful and be productive right and be responsible choir members? So just by doing that, chances are you're going to start to motivate some of those other students, right, and some of those other singers. Maybe they're off task and doing all these other things because they want the attention. Well, if you start giving your attention to the singers that are doing all the right things, they start to see ooh, that's how I get attention right. So, using that positivity as motivation and always reinforcement and this is just something that I turn to in a lot of different things, where I would always rather use positive reinforcement than negative reinforcement I just think it's a healthier way to teach and a healthier way to live.
Speaker 1:Right Now are there some times where we have to stop and crack down on some things, absolutely. Yeah, that doesn't mean everything is rainbows and bunny rabbits and puppy dogs, right, but if that's your general default setting is to use positivity you're going to start to see a change in your rehearsal space. So that's number nine. Two more. Here we go. Here's number 10, using self-assessment as part of the learning process.
Speaker 1:So having singers assessing themselves on their performance in rehearsal and I use that word specifically performance. Yeah, this is about their performance in rehearsal. Every rehearsal is a performance. You are performing, you are doing right. So are you performing well or are there some things that you need to work on?
Speaker 1:So I have a rehearsal rubric that I use with my singers, and so then they have to go in every so often and Assess themselves. Now I Sort of have veto power on this, yeah, and I tell them this we have a little bit of a discussion. I say, look, if I think you've Scored yourself too high on this, I have the right to change that, and then we're gonna have a conversation as far as where I see your, your, your things that you're doing well, and then where I see things that you need to work on right, and sort of Having that part of the conversation sort of is a deterrent for Singers to go in and just give themselves a hundred percent Right, because they don't really want to have that conversation anymore than I do. But I am certainly willing to have it. But I also say, if I think you've been too hard on yourself, I reserve the right to to bump up your scores as well. And, honestly, rarely do I have any singers where I have to sort of Lower their scores from what they've given themselves.
Speaker 1:It's always Increasing. Like 99% of the time it's singers that have not scored themselves high enough because they have such high expectations for themselves. So so that's kind of where that lands, because I have people ask well, self-assessment, Does that really work? Like, are the scores really accurate? And you know, for the most part they really are. If anything, they're too low instead of too high. And then when, if, if and when I have to have a conversation with a parent about it, just like, look, they scored themselves right. So if they're, you know, concerned that the score is too low is like well, they scored themselves. I actually raised it a little bit because I felt like they were doing better than than what they thought.
Speaker 1:But you know, communicating to the students as well as the parents, that this is a learning process, right? And it's all the things that students need to learn about just basically being a Good choir member, a productive, a successful choir member, because when they go into Ensembles in the future, these are the things that they're going to need to know and they're going to be expected of them, right? So I see it as rehearsal skills. There are some people that look at some of the things on there and they say, oh well, that's behavior. You can't grade on behavior like, well, no, it's not actually behavior. Having your music and a pencil on your folder every day, like that's just an expectation, that's just being a good, productive, successful choir member and it's going to be expected of them in the future. So if I don't teach them that, then it that's on me, right? So that isn't a behavior thing, those are rehearsal skills and that's how, that's how I, that's the term that I use and that's how I Describe that in all of our our standards and rubrics, and so it's a really powerful thing to have that piece of Self-assessment. And if singers know that that's coming and that they will be doing that and that, yes, it is a significant portion of their, of their grade, then that can serve as Motivation, absolutely. So that's number 10, using self-assessment as part of the learning process. And finally, number 11 recognizing outstanding student leaders. So this is sort of geared towards.
Speaker 1:You know we've talked about Recognizing leaders sort of inside of rehearsal, but what are some ways that you could recognize your outstanding student leaders outside of rehearsal? Something that I am going to start incorporating is Most valuable singer or singer of the week. I haven't decided on the final term yet, right, but in my ensembles I'm going to choose again someone who was a great leader by Example and thinking about some ways that I can then share that, like coming up with like a little certificate in Canva and Then taking their picture and maybe posting those pictures, pictures outside on our walls, that ever choir room. We could even use them. If you've got Social media channels, yeah, blasting that, those out on social media.
Speaker 1:We have something at our school where we Are supposed to write postcards every week to a couple of students and send them home and, just you know, recognizing them for their positive contributions or their hard work or whatever it is. So adding that to it hey, thanks so much for being awesome and congratulations on your most valuable singer Award, yeah, and sending those home as well, so that the parents see it as well and see that they're being recognized for being a leader by example. So that's just one idea. What are some of the ways that you can Recognize those students? Because again, other singers, other students are going to see the, the positive Reception to those students, yeah, and sort of that positive attention that they get and that again can serve as positive motivation and Reinforcements.
Speaker 1:Like, ooh, that would be kind of cool, I'd kind of like to win that award. Maybe I can start doing a or B or C in rehearsal to be a better choir member. Yeah and again positive reinforcement, positive motivation, right? Well, my friends, those are the 11 ideas that you could start using really tomorrow to start curbing that Unnecessary talking from your singers in rehearsal. And, who knows, maybe you'll get rid of it all together. If you've enjoyed this episode, I would really appreciate it if you would go into your podcast app of choice and give the podcast a five star rating and review, because that helps other choir directors Just like you to find the podcast and really helps me in my goal of helping as many choir directors as possible. So I would really appreciate it. Thanks so much for listing my friends and until next time, keep being awesome. Are you looking for resources that will save you time and frustration? Want to dive deeper into topics related to your teaching? Then check out the choir director corner. Community membership. Over at choir director corner comm forward slash membership.