Choral Warm Ups!

Physical Warm Up:
http://youtu.be/1mdoJXGxnXA

Breathing Warm Up:
http://youtu.be/K05P5Nn3_uU

Diction Warm Up:
http://youtu.be/Kd0Dorqjwxk

Resonance Warm Up
http://youtu.be/YCC2mQJE6ig

Flexibility
http://youtu.be/7-gRHFYTBKs

Vocal Warm Up — Oct. 9, 2014

Colin and Chantelle

Physical: Comparing relaxed posture and tension

Bend down while exhaling and touch toes and slowly rising to standing position during a 8 beat count.

An entire body clench for four seconds followed by a complete relaxation and bending down to repeat step 1

Bring hands into praying position, then raise them up, out and down. Hands should rest on the seam of the pants. This puts shoulders in a good place where they are relaxed, and it opens chest up for breathing.

Breathing: Candles, lasers, and bouncing bellies 

Begin with a few yawns. This is a simple way to show the basics of a good breath.

Candles and laser beams at varying amounts and tempi. Activate diaphragm by bounding the belly for every candle and laser.

Diction: Tongue Twisters

Instructor: “Red leather.” Choir repeats (spoken)

Instructor: “Yellow leather.” Choir repeats (spoken)

Instructor: “Red leather, yellow leather.” Choir repeats (spoken)

Sing “red leather, yellow leather” in descending scale and slowly increase tempo.

This provides a great opportunity for members to also come up with there own tongue twisters. This especially fun with young groups.

Resonance: Long vowels

Have choir sing mah, may, mee, moh, moo descending from Sol to Do. On last moo slur up from Do to Sol and back down to Do again.

Can be done with many other consonants. Note that soft consonants work better for long legato and connected lines, while a hard consonant might impede the connectivity. 

Flexibility: Stairs and Elevators

Do, Me Sol Do’ Re’— Do’ Sol Me Do, Do, / Re’ \ Do,   Stairs / Elevator

“Stairs” are meant to be sung normally without telegraphing. 

“Elevator” is to be sung with embracing the telegraphing to connect the lower range to the upper range.

N.B: Exercises work best if the instructor demonstrates first and then has choir repeat it back. Demonstrating rather than explaining with words keeps the choir more engaged.

Book Review: A Handbook For Beginning Choral Educators

http://youtu.be/ZA8dMjYbmdY

Lead like the great conductors, a TEDTalk by Itay Talgam,

I really enjoyed the many different styles of conduction Itay Talgam showed in this TEDTalk.

The conductors that really stood out to me were the first conductor and Strauss. Talgam talks about how the happiness of the first conductor doesn’t come from the music but comes from enabling other people’s story and their perception of the music. I think as music educators this is something that we really should incorporate into the classroom. If we can empower our students to be apart of the interpretation of music they will be much more committed to it. Something I enjoyed about Strauss’ conduction is that he didn’t interfere with the music by only using very subtle gestures. He want’s the musicians to interpret what is exactly on the page and what the composer’s intent was. As an educator this is also very useful, we need to encourage our students to interpret music very accurately. While both styles are very useful, they are also very different and it is impossible to have both. I feel that there is time for both to be used in the classroom, and depending on the students, we as educators need to use the perfect balance to maximize the students learning.

Welcome to my Blog

Good day! (Or night!) I'm Colin, I'm a music education student at Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland. This blog is for my Voice and Choral Methods course and it will serve as a platform for posting responses to assigned tasks and I will also be posting anything choir related that may not be necessary for the course. I'd love to hear from my classmates as well as anybody else that stumbles across my blog!


Also to make this post a little more interesting, I've attached one of my choral compositions which was recorded by QVE last year.