I observed a choir in Harrisonburg called VOICE, and they are a community-based mixed

voice choir. The group accepts anybody age 13 and up, but I think this season they have all

adults in the group. They are a non-auditioned group and rehearse once a week from

5:30-8:00pm. They do two benefit concerts a year, and they donate the proceeds to local

non-profit organizations.

The rehearsal started with a warm up on different vowel sounds. The group started low

and sang going up chromatically, and they were encouraged to keep going until it hit the top of

the range. They did this again but then started low and went high.

Next, they sang the Star-Spangled Banner. I really liked how the director, Ben,

approached this because he varied how he had the group approached it. First, they did a normal

run-through. Ben wanted them to think about balance because the sopranos couldn’t be heard

very well, so he had the group all stand up in a circle so they could hear each other better. The

tempo did drag during this run through and the group wasn’t moving together, so they sang it

again with their eyes closed. To me, this automatically helped so much of the balance issues. Ben

didn’t even tell the specific sections that the balance needed to be better, but I could hear the

melody so well along with all the other voices. This kind of activity is something I’m going to

keep in mind for my teaching. This was an example of how we have talked about having our

ensembles doing instead of the teacher spewing information. I was amazed by how Ben didn’t

even have to say what the problem spots were and so many of the problems were fixed.

The group then split into sectionals, and I watched the soprano section. The pianist,

Melanie, was leading this sectional. The sopranos were a relatively small section considering the

size of the ensemble, but they had a nice sound overall. One thing that I liked while watching the

group was how comfortable everybody seemed to be with each other. To my understanding, the
members of the group are not professional musicians, but they are a great group of singers. Many

of them seemed to have a really great sense of pitch and had a good tone.

While rehearsing the piece “Unforgettable” in sectionals, I noticed how Melanie gave

unspoken instruction while rehearsing spots. When the group was singing and they were letting

the phrase die, she would lead forward until the phrase ended. When she did that, the section

started leaning into the phrase again.

For most of the sectional, they were focusing primarily on pitch. They would sing the

pieces first with a recording and the pianist played the pitches as they were singing. Then they

went through trouble spots and sang with just the piano playing their pitches. Sometimes

Melanie would have them sing it slow, especially in phrases that went very high or had larger

intervals. Doing this seemed to help the confidence of the singers- especially in the harder

sections.

I also liked how Melanie explained musical concepts the singers may not have been

necessarily aware of. For example, there were marcato accents and normal accents in the piece

“Unforgettable.” She explained the “carrot top” accents like normal accents with a punch in the

beginning but also “staccato” and “with space.” I think this was a great way of explaining it to

the singers who have more and less knowledge on the various music terminology.

At the end of the rehearsal, the ensemble came back together to do the final run through. I

liked how Ben encouraged the members to mark their own personal problem spots so they can

bring them back for a future sectional. I would like to practice this in my teaching because it

heightens individual awareness on what they need to work on personally, and it requires

responsibility for them to know what they need to work on and to practice that for a future

rehearsal.