Directing a Barbershop Chorus: A Beginner’s Guide

Our MDs of the future

Last year’s joint LABBS/BABS Directors Weekend had such large numbers of delegates that we had no room to accommodate, or indeed to meet the needs of, aspiring directors of tomorrow. So I promised that we would do something specifically for them in 2025, and it happened on Saturday.

The day was modelled on the introductory one-day courses I run periodically for the Association of British Choral Directors, but tailored to the needs of this one choral genre. So, the morning had class sessions on various aspects of the MD’s role, including tuition on the fundamental elements of conducting technique, while the afternoon was spent doing practical work, with each delegate taking it in turns to direct the rest in song and receiving individual coaching.

We had participants from LABBS, BIBA and BABS, and most of them are currently involved in their chorus’s music teams, but had very little actual directing experience, with just one MD and two AMDs already in post, albeit none of them for very long yet. This really helped bond the group together: everyone cam in feeling at least somewhat daunted and were thus keenly aware of how important it was to encourage and support each other.

Having everyone at about the same stage of their directing journey was also very valuable educationally, as we found ourselves focusing in on a few common elements that were helping everyone. It can be difficult when you are receiving conducting coaching for the first time to take in everything that is happening; just the experience of directing a group of people you’ve only known a few hours is pretty overwhelming.

But having your learning experience alongside lots of other people working on similar things really helps you process it. You get to see from the outside how others make the same kinds of technique changes that have been suggested to you, and to experience the difference it makes both to the sound and to the singer’s experience. It was abundantly apparent as the afternoon went on that those who had their turns later had been thinking about what they’d seen and were aiming to do what they’d seen others work on.

The three elements that came up most frequently were stability of posture, awareness of gesture space, and consistency of ictus. To help people keep their ictus nearer the seat of their breath, and to focus their attention on the moment of the ictus itself, we developed a metaphor of tapping gently on a velvet cushion that lay between their belly button and the bottom of their ribs. (The image emerged initially as a silk cushion, but we soon reached a consensus that velvet was somehow better. It has the same sense of being opulent and pleasantly tactile, but possibly matches the barbershop soundworld more closely.) Focusing the music down into a single fingertip was also very helpful for increasing clarity.

One of the many things I enjoyed during the coaching process was how when we managed to increase the sense of structure in someone’s conducting gesture, it not only became easier for the singers to follow, it also helped the conductors feel more in control. Decluttering and clarifying one’s gestures, that is, also serves to clear out mental space. Given how cognitively intense conducting is even when you’re experienced at it, this can be a real help, and something for us all to remember at every stage of our journeys.

Another thing I enjoyed was linking back the coaching process with some of the concepts we’d covered in the morning when discussing rehearsal technique. We made plenty of opportunities to pay specific, immediate, personal and sincere compliments, knowing that they are a way to cement skill as well as build confidence. There were also times when I chose not to make any interventions, as I could see that deep learning was going on within in the music and there was nothing to gain by interrupting it.

When I did make interventions, I was aware of being disciplined about only making one at a time, having exhorted everyone to this earlier. (To be fair, I think I have pretty good habits on this usually anyway; though it has to be said teaching conducting is a great way to make myself mindful of areas in which my discipline may have slipped in my own praxis.) And a full afternoon of close attention to other people’s technique reminded me that I am really in my happy place during the process of diagnosis. Asking: what’s going on here? what is the single most useful thing I can suggest that will help this person achieve their aims more readily from where they are right now?