Rehearsing

Having contemplated some broad themes in my previous post about the research strand at the recent abcd Choral Leaders Festival, I’d like to pick out a few interesting cross-references between the papers. There were four speakers reporting on projects undertaken for advanced degrees in the strand sessions, plus the plenary keynote presented by Dr Katie Overy, all of which addressed topics that would make choral practitioners say, ‘Ooh yes, we want to know about that!’

But it’s in the resonances between them that you really feel the value of a event like this, rather than just reading their findings as published articles. Not that I object to reading articles, you understand. The published format offers other strengths – the opportunity for the author to cover more detail, and for the reader to take time to think about things en route. But it doesn’t offer the same kind of creative opportunities as a live event, where the ways in which the papers bounce off each other spark insights beyond what they each offer individually.

So, here are the things that I came away wanting to think about further:

This post is inspired by a recent conversation about what different choral groups do by way of a tea break (or not) during an evening rehearsal. I have framed my post as one where I climb up on my platform for being opinionated, but I should let you know that the dialogue it emerges from was anything but contentious. Just a bunch of people saying, ‘We rehearse from this time to that time, and this is what we do by way of a break’.

We all found it helpful and interesting to see the range of options available. I particularly liked the one where they had drinks available for the half hour they had the hall before rehearsal started so that those who wanted to come early could socialise. It seemed a good way of balancing the needs of those who value a cuppa and chat and the task-focused shy people who would rather be singing.

click on the pic to see it biggerAt the Telfordaires we recently spent a chunk of rehearsal exploring the sonority of the Icicle 7th. And since I had in the process ended up with a nice picture of it, I thought I’d share it with you as well. The original picture I drew of this on our flipchart in rehearsal wasn’t either as neat or as colourful as this, but since I forgot to take a photo of it for our weekly notes, I had to recreate it at home, and took the opportunity to spiffy it up a bit.

So, we started out by singing a normal barbershop 7th. (That’s a dominant-type 7th for normal musicians; we let you use them, because we like to share, but know that they’re ours.) Basses on root, baris on the 3rd, leads on the 5th, tenors on the 7th.

Many years ago, someone told me that the average time that a professional comedian keeps any particular joke in their act is 7 years. Soon after that I went to see Hattie Hayridge for the second time – 7 years after I had first seen her. I recognised one joke from the previous set, and on the basis of that believed the factoid about joke replacement cycles.

I suspect that this is something that happens organically, as the comedian juggles the need for freshness with the need for well-honed material that can be relied upon to land well with an audience. Many jokes will come in and fall out again without making it past the tryout at a new material act; others may go on forever if they keep giving.

The group's analysis of the conductor's roles

Last Saturday gave me the treat of working in my home city, leading a Basic Conducting Skills day on behalf of the Association of British Choral Directors. I love events like these; the participants are always so engaged and dedicated to their singers, and so supportive to each other as they learn together. And they always come with such great questions, straight from coalface of practical problem-solving.

One of the things I found interesting about these questions was the way the answer so often included the caveat that best choice often depends on the context. The size of choir, the genre expectations and musical habits that come from them, the needs of that particular collective of singers. The decision about how to proceed then becomes a matter of figuring out the range of possibilities, and locating your particular circumstances within it.

Here are some of the subjects they raised:

The French for rehearsal is ‘répétition’, which captures an interestingly different aspect of the process than the English term’s implications of ‘trial run’. Things need doing more than once to secure the combination of mental concept and motor actions we experience as ‘doing it right’.

But simply repeating things isn’t enough. It is easy to spend a lot of rehearsal time repeating the same errors and inadequacies you are already quite good at. Improving the music requires a change in behaviour.

This process of making changes, then routinising them is a recurring theme of this blog over the years. I’ve looked at it via Kotter’s model of organisation change, through the Dilts Pyramid, and most directly through my model of the Intervention and Enforcement Cycles (which itself crystallised in the wake of reading Doug Lemov’s ideas on effective classroom habits). Oh, and then with additions from Chip and Dan Heath last year.

Attention span graphSome years ago I wrote about this graph of attention spans in the context of managing interest in a musical form. But the use I put it to more routinely is teaching people about planning rehearsals: understanding when you are likely to get the best and worst quality attention over the course of a rehearsal allows you to plan your activities to make the best use of the cognitive resources available.

Last Sunday brought Aurora Quartet round for an afternoon’s coaching. They are a recently formed quartet, two of whom have little prior quartetting experience, so whilst the content of our work revolved around two of their songs, our attention was firmly on providing techniques and rehearsal tactics they could use to continue their development beyond the coaching session.

Regular readers won’t be surprised to know that duetting featured prominently here, and worked its usual magic. Indeed, it was in this context that previous experience showed most clearly, by producing the most clearly articulated observations on what they had been listening to. Honing the listening skills isn’t just about the ears, it’s about working out what the ears have just perceived, and the duetting process gives a structured environment in which to develop this skill, at the same time as cleaning up the quartet’s performance.