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Vocal Group Directing
Freeing the song – an approach to directing vocal groups (École de Fromage 2010; 80 pages, B5)
This book is for anyone who runs a community choir, chorus, vocal ensemble or quartet, for music teachers or for anyone who finds themselves teaching a song or running a workshop. It’s also for anyone who sings in a group or chorus or choir. The music examples I’ve chosen are all a cappella, and I refer to choirs a lot, but the ideas apply to any kind of vocal group. This book reflects my fairly informal notion of doing things (a notion I don’t always follow myself in the heat of the moment), and doesn’t pretend to be comprehensive. It reflects my influences: gospel choirs and quartets, early polyphony, South African gospel, Tamla Motown, funk, pop.Contents include:
Rehearsals
Warmups- freeing the voice
Group technique
Teaching the song
Directing
Creating the performance
Freeing the group - workshops and improvisation
and an appendix on Choir organisation
A sample page:
Freeing the song is available from the Australian Music Centre from Tony.
Price: NZ$25 + NZ$5 postage & handling anywhere in New Zealand.
AU$ 22 + AU$8 postage & handling anywhere in Australia.
GBP£ 13 + airmail postage and handling £12.60 by air (3-5 days) or £10.75 economy (5-10 days) to the UK
Elsewhere, contact Tony and we'll work it out. Payment can be made via Paymate
(Please enter 'FTS' as the order number.)
This page will contain further brainwaves, hypnotic gesticulations, additions and revisions to the book.
(A cappella - Rehearsing For Heaven also contains a few tips on working with a cappella groups and improvisation on pp 6-14.)
SKYPE CONSULTATIONS AND LESSONS:
Tony is available for consultations on choral directing, vocal arranging, songwriting and
Tony is available for consultations on choral directing, vocal arranging, songwriting and
related a cappella questions via Skype.
So if you have burning questions and would like a half-hour face-to-face with him online,
contact us and we'll book you in. $60 per half hour, payable via PayPal or PayMate.
Or on the topic of competitions (Battle of the Choirs, eisteddfods, etc.): 'The primary fact which should be burned into the mind of every competitor, from the conductor to the humblest member of the choir, is that trouble is inevitable. This trouble may be taken before or after the event. If taken before, it assumes the form of hard work and self-sacrifice. If competitors refuse to take it in this form they get trouble all the same, only it comes after the event in the shape of disappointment and chagrin which may rankle for years. Therefore, let each competitor be prepared to take just the kind of trouble which he or she is called upon to bear, and not begin the slacker's whine that if it had only been some other kind of burden or pinch they would have borne it without a murmur.'
Go, Henry! À propos nothing, Coward in 1926 condemned jazz as "atavistic, lowering, degrading and a racial question ... composed of jingly tunes, jerky rhythms, unquestionably grotesque forms".
You can find Choral Technique and Interpretation online, weirdly formatted, at : http://www.hartenshield.com/choral_technique_01.html
No talking in rehearsal?
Check this out:
http://blog.chrisrowbury.com/2010/10/how-to-deal-with-unwanted-talking.html
David Jorlett http://www.northernpines.org/director.aspx
Andre Thomas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Thomas
Faye Dumont: author of You Can Do It — Starting a Choir / You Can Do It — Conducting a Choir:
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~fdsinc/faye.html
Colin Durrant: Author of Choral Conducting - philosophy and practice
http://www.colinjdurrant.net/
John Bertalot: author of How To Be A Successful Choir Director:
'Start punctually even if you only have two sopranos and a goat.'
http://www.singers.com/instructional/johnbertalot.html
James Jordan: http://www.evokingsound.com/
Mike Brewer: author of Kick-start your choir
http://www.fabermusic.com/schoolsmusic/choral.html
Shirlee Emmons: author (with Contance Chase) of Prescriptions for Choral Excellence
http://www.shirlee-emmons.com/vocaltechnique.html
Rodney Eichenberger http://www.rodneyeichenberger.com/bio.htm
Karen Grylls http://www.youthchoir.org.nz/info_conductor.htm
Roland Peelman http://www.songcompany.com.au/about/artists/roland-peelman/
Stephen Leek http://www.stephenleek.com/
Rev. Jermaine Landrum (Ebenezer MBC Radio Choir, New Orleans) - Holy Ghost Headquarters
The late O’landa Draper (O'Landa Draper Associates Choir)
Kirk Franklin: http://www.kirkfranklin.com/
Richard Smallwood http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTuRjFn5ySk
http://www.mapleshaderecords.com/cds/04132.php
Camp Meeting Choir - an obscure but charming choir who recorded in the 1940s
Pentecostal Choir of Detroit (1960s)
Golden Age Gospel Choirs
Chanticleer http://www.chanticleer.org/
A Sei Voci http://www.aseivoci.com/
http://www.goldbergweb.com/en/interpreters/orchestras/533.php
The Song Company http://www.songcompany.com.au/
Lavender Light: The Black and People of All Colors Lesbian and Gay Gospel Choir
http://www.lavenderlight.com/
The Philippine Madrigal singers
http://thephilippinemadrigalsingers.blogspot.com/
http://www.philippinemadrigalsingers.com/
Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_State_Television_Female_Vocal_Choir
Barorisi Ba Morena - great South African gospel choir
Taverner Choir and Consort
http://www.taverner.org/
Pilgrim Travellers http://afgen.com/pilgrim.html
Swan Silvertones http://afgen.com/tones.html
Black Rose (Fiji) http://www.rosiloa.com/
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Have a rehearsal or a preliminary session in the studio or venue where you’re recording to see if there are any problems. Record your rehearsals leading up to the recording, and let the choir listen to them. They’re bound to hear stuff in there that they didn’t realise was going on.
Do you record the whole choir with soloists(if you have them) all at once or part by part?
When I worked with the Café of the Gate of Salvation, we generally recorded everything 'live' in the studio, and soloists overdubbed
their parts later on. But we have some great live recordings, and some songs that were recorded with soloist and choir simultaneously in the studio.
Tracking everything at once will tend to have a better energy, the song will flow better. You could do it direct to two track stereo (a mic on each side angled toward the centre, or a pair of mics in the XY configuration in the centre), but the norm is to multi-track these days. My engineers have used one or two mics per section, and a couple of ambient/room mics for space and colour. That way, there's more flexibility to rebalance or EQ the parts if you need to later - or even redo things. (However, if you have to re-do something and it only involves one section (say the tenors), keep all the other mics open while recording their part—because there will have been some spill into the other mics, and this will create one soundspace, so re-recording on only the tenor’s mics will have a different tone and space. A messy thing to try and fix later.)
Isolate any soloists in a separate booth, so they have the opportunity to redo their part if necessary once you’re happy with the choir’s recording.
Tracking part by part you have more control, but the performance can tend to be pretty soulless unless you have really experienced singers. I've done it that way with good results (Steal Away on the Café of the Gate of Salvation’s first CD, and God made the rhythm machine on the same choir’s Deluxe CD), but it's time-consuming. Depending on the size of the group, it can be a hassle organising enough headphones. And do you work with a click-track? That’s another factor that could constrain the phrasing and flow of the song, if you’re not used to it.
Handclaps: if using shotgun mics for the choir, they’ll pick up handclaps far too well, even if the singers are clapping down low (which is a constraint you don’t want to have anyway). If you're using vocal mics (like Shure 58s) for the voices, the handclaps won't be picked up as much. If you overdub the handclaps (as we did on God made the rhythm machine), you have more control but you better take care to sit the claps back in the choir space, or they can sound artificial and distracting.
1) one vocal mic (eg Shure 58) per pair of singers. This way, your sound engineer has more control, there's little spill between parts, though it’s also more complex for the engineer, and it inhibits the members’ movements on stage, since they have to cluster closely around the mics.
2) ambient/condenser mics, one or two per section. The choir is freer to move, though it’s maybe more time-consuming to set up. Setting up involves checking each section separately. When checking the sopranos, have half the section sing, then the other half. Are they balanced? Or if there are two or more rows in the section, are the back rows as audible and clear as the front row?
The downside is more spill into each mic from other sections, hence less control. Also, any stagemonitors tend to feed into the choir mics, creating feedback—the soundman will then turn either the front-of-house down (= less butch sound out front) or turn down the monitors (= less onstage sound, and the less the choir will potentially hear). However, I prefer this set-up. Soloists can have solo mics or stand a little closer to the choir mics.
Check out:
Recording a choir (NZ Musician)
RecordBetterAudio.com on youTube.
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep99/articles/location.htm
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun08/articles/qa0608_5.htm
http://www.bedroom-recording.com/choir-mic-technique.html
http://www.bedroom-recording.com/choir-recording.html
http://www.recording-microphone.com/recording-articles/1.recording-a-choir.php
The CASA recording blog may also be of use.
............................................................................................................................................................................................
"If I don't practice for one day, I know it; if I don't practice for two days, the critics know it; if I don't practice for three days, the audience knows it." — Paderewski
Michael Tilson Thomas talking to James Brown: “Being a conductor means you're trying to get a lot of people to agree where now is”
James Brown:“Now is earlier than anything you can think of ...”
“The great conductors I have observed in my life.....all accept minimal responsibility for the sound of the music and its rhythmic and tonal details. Their responsibilities lie within the realm of being in a constant state of awareness about both the music and themselves, as well as adherence to a rehearsal plan that respects the learning process and understands how people learn music.”
— James Jordan - Evoking Sound - The Choral Rehearsal
"If there did not exist the technique of conducting, and you wanted to lead something, what would you do? And that brings into the whole idea of conducting a natural inflection, dance movements, facial expressions, gestures that have more to do about sculpting and shaping than they do about time patterns and all the things you can read in the textbooks.
Conducting...is as much about your ability to induce those people to want to go with you over the cliff as it is technique - and to do that in my view you need conviction, know the tune, BE the music."
— Larry Livingston, Professor of Conducting and Music USC Thornton
“A capella singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community.
That's one of the great feelings -- to stop being me for a little while, and to become us.”
— Brian Eno
“When we start listening, the world changes.”
— Dr. John Hooper (choir director, Canada)
“Life is ever unexplored. The secret is to make life swing.”
— Ralph Ellison
So if you have burning questions and would like a half-hour face-to-face with him online,
contact us and we'll book you in. $60 per half hour, payable via PayPal or PayMate.
Also:
Henry Coward’s 1914 book Choral Technique and Interpretation can hardly be bettered. The archaic, imperialistic language aside, the book is still a good practical guide for a choirmaster. You have to love the no-nonsense, yet fruity writing like the following: ‘There is a hoary fiction that a final bad rehearsal ensures a good performance. It may be granted that a poor final effort may have its value by making the performers careful at the concert, but it is a mistake to think that a poor or bad rehearsal is anything but a calamity to a society of amateurs. Artistic ideality soon droops in the chilly atmosphere of incompetent dulness; shrivels up in the air of strenuous misdirection of effort; withers and expires in the sultry blasts of querulous irritability.’Or on the topic of competitions (Battle of the Choirs, eisteddfods, etc.): 'The primary fact which should be burned into the mind of every competitor, from the conductor to the humblest member of the choir, is that trouble is inevitable. This trouble may be taken before or after the event. If taken before, it assumes the form of hard work and self-sacrifice. If competitors refuse to take it in this form they get trouble all the same, only it comes after the event in the shape of disappointment and chagrin which may rankle for years. Therefore, let each competitor be prepared to take just the kind of trouble which he or she is called upon to bear, and not begin the slacker's whine that if it had only been some other kind of burden or pinch they would have borne it without a murmur.'
Go, Henry! À propos nothing, Coward in 1926 condemned jazz as "atavistic, lowering, degrading and a racial question ... composed of jingly tunes, jerky rhythms, unquestionably grotesque forms".
You can find Choral Technique and Interpretation online, weirdly formatted, at : http://www.hartenshield.com/choral_technique_01.html
No talking in rehearsal?
Check this out:
http://blog.chrisrowbury.com/2010/10/how-to-deal-with-unwanted-talking.html
Here’s a partial list of choral directors and educators in the classical musical world:
Robert Shaw http://www.singers.com/choral/robertshaw.html
David Jorlett http://www.northernpines.org/director.aspx
Andre Thomas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Thomas
Faye Dumont: author of You Can Do It — Starting a Choir / You Can Do It — Conducting a Choir:
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~fdsinc/faye.html
Colin Durrant: Author of Choral Conducting - philosophy and practice
http://www.colinjdurrant.net/
John Bertalot: author of How To Be A Successful Choir Director:
'Start punctually even if you only have two sopranos and a goat.'
http://www.singers.com/instructional/johnbertalot.html
James Jordan: http://www.evokingsound.com/
Mike Brewer: author of Kick-start your choir
http://www.fabermusic.com/schoolsmusic/choral.html
Shirlee Emmons: author (with Contance Chase) of Prescriptions for Choral Excellence
http://www.shirlee-emmons.com/vocaltechnique.html
Rodney Eichenberger http://www.rodneyeichenberger.com/bio.htm
Karen Grylls http://www.youthchoir.org.nz/info_conductor.htm
Roland Peelman http://www.songcompany.com.au/about/artists/roland-peelman/
Stephen Leek http://www.stephenleek.com/
Some gospel choir directors:
Other directors I like work in the gospel/vernacular tradition and don’t seem to work as clinicians or choral educators:Rev. Jermaine Landrum (Ebenezer MBC Radio Choir, New Orleans) - Holy Ghost Headquarters
The late O’landa Draper (O'Landa Draper Associates Choir)
Kirk Franklin: http://www.kirkfranklin.com/
Richard Smallwood http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTuRjFn5ySk
Vocal groups and choirs I'm inspired by:
Addicts Rehabilitation Centre Choir (ARC Choir)http://www.mapleshaderecords.com/cds/04132.php
Camp Meeting Choir - an obscure but charming choir who recorded in the 1940s
Pentecostal Choir of Detroit (1960s)
Golden Age Gospel Choirs
Chanticleer http://www.chanticleer.org/
A Sei Voci http://www.aseivoci.com/
http://www.goldbergweb.com/en/interpreters/orchestras/533.php
The Song Company http://www.songcompany.com.au/
Lavender Light: The Black and People of All Colors Lesbian and Gay Gospel Choir
http://www.lavenderlight.com/
The Philippine Madrigal singers
http://thephilippinemadrigalsingers.blogspot.com/
http://www.philippinemadrigalsingers.com/
Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_State_Television_Female_Vocal_Choir
Barorisi Ba Morena - great South African gospel choir
Taverner Choir and Consort
http://www.taverner.org/
Pilgrim Travellers http://afgen.com/pilgrim.html
Swan Silvertones http://afgen.com/tones.html
Black Rose (Fiji) http://www.rosiloa.com/
·································································································································································
Recording a choir:
Anticipate how much time you’ll need then multiply that figure by three, and you’ll be close.Have a rehearsal or a preliminary session in the studio or venue where you’re recording to see if there are any problems. Record your rehearsals leading up to the recording, and let the choir listen to them. They’re bound to hear stuff in there that they didn’t realise was going on.
Do you record the whole choir with soloists(if you have them) all at once or part by part?
When I worked with the Café of the Gate of Salvation, we generally recorded everything 'live' in the studio, and soloists overdubbed
their parts later on. But we have some great live recordings, and some songs that were recorded with soloist and choir simultaneously in the studio.
Tracking everything at once will tend to have a better energy, the song will flow better. You could do it direct to two track stereo (a mic on each side angled toward the centre, or a pair of mics in the XY configuration in the centre), but the norm is to multi-track these days. My engineers have used one or two mics per section, and a couple of ambient/room mics for space and colour. That way, there's more flexibility to rebalance or EQ the parts if you need to later - or even redo things. (However, if you have to re-do something and it only involves one section (say the tenors), keep all the other mics open while recording their part—because there will have been some spill into the other mics, and this will create one soundspace, so re-recording on only the tenor’s mics will have a different tone and space. A messy thing to try and fix later.)
Isolate any soloists in a separate booth, so they have the opportunity to redo their part if necessary once you’re happy with the choir’s recording.
Tracking part by part you have more control, but the performance can tend to be pretty soulless unless you have really experienced singers. I've done it that way with good results (Steal Away on the Café of the Gate of Salvation’s first CD, and God made the rhythm machine on the same choir’s Deluxe CD), but it's time-consuming. Depending on the size of the group, it can be a hassle organising enough headphones. And do you work with a click-track? That’s another factor that could constrain the phrasing and flow of the song, if you’re not used to it.
Handclaps: if using shotgun mics for the choir, they’ll pick up handclaps far too well, even if the singers are clapping down low (which is a constraint you don’t want to have anyway). If you're using vocal mics (like Shure 58s) for the voices, the handclaps won't be picked up as much. If you overdub the handclaps (as we did on God made the rhythm machine), you have more control but you better take care to sit the claps back in the choir space, or they can sound artificial and distracting.
Microphones in performance:
I've seen a few ways of mic’ing up the choir for live performance (or live recording):1) one vocal mic (eg Shure 58) per pair of singers. This way, your sound engineer has more control, there's little spill between parts, though it’s also more complex for the engineer, and it inhibits the members’ movements on stage, since they have to cluster closely around the mics.
2) ambient/condenser mics, one or two per section. The choir is freer to move, though it’s maybe more time-consuming to set up. Setting up involves checking each section separately. When checking the sopranos, have half the section sing, then the other half. Are they balanced? Or if there are two or more rows in the section, are the back rows as audible and clear as the front row?
The downside is more spill into each mic from other sections, hence less control. Also, any stagemonitors tend to feed into the choir mics, creating feedback—the soundman will then turn either the front-of-house down (= less butch sound out front) or turn down the monitors (= less onstage sound, and the less the choir will potentially hear). However, I prefer this set-up. Soloists can have solo mics or stand a little closer to the choir mics.
Sound check:
Remind the choir the sound check is not for the engineer, it’s to ensure the choir’s comfort and confidence onstage, to establish that the singers can all hear each other and that the system is doing them justice. So attendance at soundcheck is mandatory.Check out:
Recording a choir (NZ Musician)
RecordBetterAudio.com on youTube.
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep99/articles/location.htm
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun08/articles/qa0608_5.htm
http://www.bedroom-recording.com/choir-mic-technique.html
http://www.bedroom-recording.com/choir-recording.html
http://www.recording-microphone.com/recording-articles/1.recording-a-choir.php
The CASA recording blog may also be of use.
............................................................................................................................................................................................
Ponder on these:
My friend Yani Mills claims the secret of her success as a choir leader is having a rehearsal venue where there's plenty of parking for the members. One less cause for stress for everyone."If I don't practice for one day, I know it; if I don't practice for two days, the critics know it; if I don't practice for three days, the audience knows it." — Paderewski
Michael Tilson Thomas talking to James Brown: “Being a conductor means you're trying to get a lot of people to agree where now is”
James Brown:“Now is earlier than anything you can think of ...”
“The great conductors I have observed in my life.....all accept minimal responsibility for the sound of the music and its rhythmic and tonal details. Their responsibilities lie within the realm of being in a constant state of awareness about both the music and themselves, as well as adherence to a rehearsal plan that respects the learning process and understands how people learn music.”
— James Jordan - Evoking Sound - The Choral Rehearsal
"If there did not exist the technique of conducting, and you wanted to lead something, what would you do? And that brings into the whole idea of conducting a natural inflection, dance movements, facial expressions, gestures that have more to do about sculpting and shaping than they do about time patterns and all the things you can read in the textbooks.
Conducting...is as much about your ability to induce those people to want to go with you over the cliff as it is technique - and to do that in my view you need conviction, know the tune, BE the music."
— Larry Livingston, Professor of Conducting and Music USC Thornton
“A capella singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community.
That's one of the great feelings -- to stop being me for a little while, and to become us.”
— Brian Eno
“When we start listening, the world changes.”
— Dr. John Hooper (choir director, Canada)
“Life is ever unexplored. The secret is to make life swing.”
— Ralph Ellison