<![CDATA[Metropolitan United Church Choir School - Choir Training 101]]>Mon, 18 Mar 2024 13:27:16 -0400Weebly<![CDATA[All you need is love ... well, it's a good start.]]>Thu, 16 Jan 2020 03:08:29 GMThttp://metropolitanchoirschool.com/choir-training-101/all-you-need-is-love-well-its-a-good-startYou've likely heard it before but we'll say it again. The most important factor in the success of any choir is the relationship you build with your singers.Each person in the choir knows that we genuinely care about them as people, not just as sound-producers. We take time at every rehearsal to talk to each singer and single them out in a positive way. When you model this kind of behaviour, it isn't too long before the kids begin to act this way with each other as well.

We've discovered some very good singers because we cared about the kid first. In a few cases, we are even talking about children who couldn't always accurately match pitch when they started. Both of us firmly believe that virtually anyone can learn to sing well if given the chance; what people can't learn is that special spark that helps us know if a child is right for the choir.

So what steps can you take to improve your relationship with your singers and improve the relationships between singers?

1. Greet each of your singers as they enter the room. It's important that they realize you know they are they and that you are glad to see them.

2. Use the minutes before rehearsal starts to interact with the singers. Prepare for rehearsal in advance, so that instead of running around at the last minute, you can use this time to socialize with the choristers. For the first year or two of the choir's existence, we would sit on a bench by the door for 15 minutes before the start time of each practice. As people came in they would join us and at the rehearsal start time, we would all go upstairs together to our rehearsal room. Now we all meet upstairs in the choir room to chat before rehearsal.

This might seem like wasted time to you, but this is the best chance you have of finding out what is going on in their lives. Are they having trouble in school? Did they win their soccer game last weekend? Are they excited about an upcoming family trip? Knowing these things will help you connect with the singers and find ways to make the music more relevant to them. By taking the time to have these conversations with our singers, we have been able to help them in many ways, including sorting out difficult relationships at school or finding tutors for them when they are struggling, and even on occasion helping their parents deal with custody issues. It's extremely important that they know we see them as people, not just singers.

This is also an opportunity to observe body language and social patterns between the singers. Is there one chorister who always stays by themselves over to the side or one person who is annoying everyone else? Noticing these minor issues right away will help you change these patterns so they don't become major social issues later on.

3. Have a time during practice for choristers to have fun together. Go outside if possible, or find a different space where the choristers feel like they can relax.  For us this period was originally called "Fun and Frolic Time" and we would go out to the church lawn, weather permitting. We run a pretty tight ship during rehearsal so this time allows our Choristers to have a snack, chat with each other, and run around like maniacs for ten minutes. You may think that this time become less important as singers get older, but actually the exact opposite is true. Little kids need the time to move and play, but older kids need the time to connect with each other even more. 

One further note about this. People are often shocked when they see the Choristers before and after rehearsal and during breaks, because of the energy and noise level. We expect them to act like professionals during rehearsal but encourage them to act like kids any time we are not singing. It is important to make the expectations for rehearsal behaviour clear and distinct from free time behaviour. 

4. Be direct with feedback during rehearsal. Kids know when you are lying to them to try to make them feel good and will appreciate honesty and clear directions. To the outsider, these moments can often seem harsh. Our Choristers know that during rehearsal they have a job to do and that we need to get things done quickly. However you direct you are, you must be thoughtful and kind, and all comments should be related to behaviour and performance. Negative comments can never be personal because that can quickly destroy any relationship you create through these other practices. It is impossible to know which of the hundreds of comments we make to singers will have a lifelong impact on them and you can never take back a thoughtless or mean comment made in anger. 

5. Single out in a positive way. Each singer in the choir has the opportunity to sing by themselves every week. One way to initially make this a positive experience is to ask the other singers to give compliments after someone has sung. What did they think was good about it? Soon, everyone in the choir will want to sing by themselves and you will be developing a culture where each individual is recognized for their particular gifts. Each singer will also recognize the courage it takes to sing by themselves, encouraging a supportive and safe environment. 

We often think that building a choir begins with music and attracting kids who are naturally talented. The reality in our case was quite different, as our choir began with an average amount of musical talent and a lot of enthusiasm and desire to be with us and to be together. That turned out to be the magical component in holding the choir together. Musical excellence becomes possible when you have this type of loving and supportive environment, the result of putting relationships first. 
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]]><![CDATA[You've got to start somewhere]]>Sun, 15 Sep 2019 12:19:56 GMThttp://metropolitanchoirschool.com/choir-training-101/youve-got-to-start-somewhere
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The original contingent of pre-choir school Choristers on the way to Montreal in May 2015

Having decided that we wanted to create a new and more dynamic children's choir at Met we had to figure out where to start. At this particular moment we had five singers who we knew we could count on to sing with us, but that was it. We knew we needed more singers, but we had to decide exactly what and who we wanted. Yes that's correct -  we chose our original group of singers!

STEP ONE: Choose singers who get it. We wanted singers who we knew would be committed to what we were trying to accomplish. We were halfway there, because we knew we wanted to develop a professionally competent choir, but how did we go about selecting who would sing in it? First, we decided that quality was more important than size. We wanted smart kids, who could focus and who would want to learn. For us at the beginning, this was much more important than the beauty of the voice! You can train almost anyone to sing well with a bit of work, but you can't create that special spark in a kid. So with this in mind we looked over the list of our current group of singers and after much discussion we found that we had seven additional singers that we wanted to add to the original five who had proposed the idea.

STEP TWO: Sit down and speak with each singer individually Having made our list, we sat down with each singer and explained what we were trying to do. We asked them if they might like to be part of the experiment, but only after being very clear that we expected commitment and hard work. We ended up with a very young group of singers, but they all had one thing in common: they wanted to be part of something very special.

STEP THREE: Time to sit down and talk with the parents. Having assembled our future Choir,  the next step was to sit down with the parents and fill them in on our great adventure. At this meeting we told them that within four years we hoped that this choir would be one of the best choirs of its kind in Ontario (be on the watch over the next year as you follow this blog for the gradual change in this vision!) and to accomplish this we needed all twelve singers at rehearsal every week. We also needed the parents to believe in the importance of undertaking the project and to commit to it. We may also have mentioned something about going to England when the choir was ready, but the parents didn't seem convinced that this would be possible. However, with great enthusiasm everyone agreed to follow the rubrics laid down, and with that we had embarked on our remarkable journey!

STEP FOUR: Best to get the approval of the Church Board. In my then fourteen years at Met we had made several tries at a first-rate children's choir, but nothing had ever really materialized. I am sure no one looking in really had much faith that this time would be any different, yet nonetheless we decided it was best to present our proposal to the church board and ask for their blessing. Unanimously they agreed to support us, a decision made all the easier by the fact that we weren't asking to change or increase our already approved annual music budget. 

STEP FIVE: Time to sing! And so, on the first Thursday in June in 2015, at 530 in the evening, The Metropolitan United Church Choir School began its trajectory towards greatness! We laid out the music for the first rehearsal: a couple of anthems, a set of Preces and Responses and some hymns. We warmed up and then started to look at Peter Aston's set of Preces and Responses. They seemed simple to us, but clearly not to our newly assembled choristers. Feeling slightly less than excited we put these away and tried a simple hymn instead. While this went better than the responses, we still weren't exactly sailing through the music. Perhaps this was going to be harder than we at first thought!

At the end of an hour of practice we had come to three conclusions:
1. Our kids absolutely had to learn to read music and sightsing.
2. Everyone needed to learn to sing properly, so proper voice lessons were an immediate necessity.
3. While it hadn't gone spectacularly in our minds, our choristers left the rehearsal room flying. They truly felt that they had been chosen to be part of something special.. 

They were in fact correct about that. We learned to love the kids first and worry about their musical training second. That turned out to be the key to every success from there on in!
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]]><![CDATA[It's all about passion!]]>Sun, 25 Aug 2019 12:24:17 GMThttp://metropolitanchoirschool.com/choir-training-101/its-all-about-passion​
To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time."
                                                                                                                          - Leonard Bernstein Picture
Let's be honest, building a children's choir from scratch requires more than just casual interest. It requires passion. The rollercoaster ride of emotions, the highs and lows that come week in and week out are exhausting. Just when you think you are on the right path, a key chorister will drop out to play hockey, or a parent will tell you that their child can't sing on Christmas Eve. You might spend time teaching your singers to sightsing, or to figure out key signatures and the following week when you ask them to show you what they remember from the previous week, they will demonstrated that they remember absolutely NOTHING! Then there is the crushing feeling engendered by a choir that made a decent sound during rehearsal, but suddenly can't be heard during the service! Yes, creating a children's choir from the ground up can be a challenging, frustrating, exhausting and often times soul crushing endeavour.

What is needed to help you through the inevitable ups and downs of building a children's choir? The answer is simple: one needs a tremendous amount of passion for the work! You have to want to accomplish great things. You have to be positive when no one else is. You have to believe when to do so seems futile and foolish. If you aren't willing to passionately inspire your young singers, to work tirelessly to encourage them, then stop reading now. Without passion you might create a choir, but you will never build a truly great one! What do we mean by passion? Let's explore a bit deeper.
  1. It is essential that you love working with children. It is essential that you believe than they can perform on the same level as adults and that they truly want to do something meaningful and magnificent.
  2. You have to work tirelessly to make the impossible happen.
  3. Your energy must be boundless.
  4. Your choristers will mirror what you give them. If you don't provide the energy and the sense of expectation then who will?
  5. Never miss the opportunity to let them know that you are glad to see them. Greet every chorister personally as they arrive. Tell them how thrilled you are to see them.
  6. Remember that you will always believe in them before they believe in themselves. Find something positive to say to each singer in the course of rehearsal. It doesn't have to be profound, it just has to say, 'I saw you today and I appreciated your efforts!'
  7. Always reflect positive energy. It is about building momentum towards the goal. If you don't keep the energy level high and positive then how can you expect the same from your singers.
  8. Your choristers will 'read you' and if they sense you don't care, or that you are disappointed in them, then they in turn will be disappointed in themselves, or worse yet, not care.
  9. Make the impossible happen each week. Give them something to feel very good about. This can be as simple as singing a verse of a hymn with the proper breathing! However, whatever the event is, make sure to praise them for their professionalism and remind them that accomplishing what they just accomplished was a very big deal.
  10. Remind them constantly how proud you are of them. Tell them that they have the stuff of greatness in them.
Most of all, remember that building a quality children's program is hard work. There will be many days of struggle ahead! It will be largely discouraging before it becomes even remotely thrilling. There will be many nights when you will leave wondering why you are even bothering to attempt the task. However, if you have passion for the work, tomorrow will always be another day, one filled with promise, expectation and potentially even joy!
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]]><![CDATA[From the depths of despair....the phoenix rises!]]>Thu, 01 Aug 2019 13:03:01 GMThttp://metropolitanchoirschool.com/choir-training-101/from-the-depths-of-despairthe-phoenix-risesIn this week's blog post we thought we would begin with a bit of background on our great adventure. Our church, Metropolitan United Church in London, Ontario, Canada, is one of our country's most storied congregations. We are one of The United Church of Canada's 'cathedral' churches and we have always had a tradition of excellent music. 'Met' is the kind of church that one comes to and stays. Built in 1897, Metropolitan has only had had seven organists in its history, so it is a pretty splendid place to work. With this said, in spite of always having a superb professional quality adult choir, there is absolutely no tradition of children's music at Met. Sure, we have had our share of Junior Choirs over the years, but no one ever took these very seriously. 

​This all changed eight years ago, when our new Senior Minister suggested that we might want to think about beginning a music and arts program for children in the area. After a summer of planning, the Metropolitan Church Arts and Music Program, or mCAMP as it came to be known, was born. (mCAMP still exists today and is distinct from the Metropolitan United Church Choir School, which will be speaking about in this blog. You can read more about mCAMP by clicking the following link: mcamp.org) The new program was open to all interested children between the ages of six and seventeen and included a choir component. The mCAMP choir was informally referred to as 'The Choristers' and we did our very best to encourage our participants to sing at our Sunday morning service once a month.

​However, it was difficult to get parents in an informal program to commit regularly to attending the Sunday morning services of a church that they did not belong too. In spite of having a 'choir' of roughly twenty singers, we rarely had more than ten on any given Sunday. We tried everything we could think of to generate interest! We took trips to Montreal and Toronto, we brought in visiting clinicians and held summer camps. No matter what we did we simply could not muster commitment on the part of families, and worse than this, no one seemed to see the choir as anything other than 'cute' and relatively 'unnecessary!

It was on our trip to Montreal that the seeds of our current Choir School were sown. This happened after a particularly discouraging day. As part of our time in Montreal, the choir participated in a Music Festival. During the adjudication after our performance, two of our choristers, who were tired, laid down on the stage and 'took a nap' while the adjudicator spoke! In just seconds, both of us realized that this was never going to work and that the dream of building a children's choir that performed at a high level was clearly not going to happen. We left the festival depressed and disheartened. 

The rest of the day faded in a haze of melancholy, and then somewhere around 945 there was a knock on my hotel room door. Three of our older choristers were in the hall and they asked if we could meet in Catherine's room in ten minutes. I had no idea what they were going to say, fearing the worst. We all gathered and then the most remarkable thing happened! The girls were very upset by what had happened that day - none of them had been among the nappers! - and they had a question. We took a deep breath. "Would it be possible to start a choir that was very serious, with  people who all really cared about singing and wanted to be there?" We sat silently for a moment and then....snatched from the jaws of defeat, we agreed that it seemed like a very, very good idea to us!

But as we would quickly learn, it was easier said than done...
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