Chorus and Director Coaching with Surrey Harmony

Wednesday took me down to Coulsdon to see my friends at . I last visited them just as we were coming out of covid, and I have very fond memories of the joy of being able to get back to coaching again with them. Since then they have had a change of director, and their new one, Penny, is by chance someone I had previously known through the Association of British Choral Directors.

Our remit on this occasion was to help the director with her musical leadership skills to develop her effectiveness in rehearsal. Part of this involved mediating between the classical choral experience she brings with her and the barbershop heritage of the chorus. There is a good deal of common ground in the praxis of the two genres, but there are also differences that one doesn’t always realise are there until you find yourself in the middle of a miscommunication. This was a journey I travelled myself nearly 30 years ago, and it informed the research questions of both my books, so it was a question I felt I understood well.

The other part of it was a more general development of both conducting technique and rehearsal methods to expand her repertoire of tools to engage in achieving their musical aims more directly. Penny brings a deep knowledge of vocal craft and excellent ears to her task, so she had a clear idea of what the music needed, but she sometimes found herself getting frustrated in trying to bridge the gap between what she was hearing and the possibilities she can imagine.

In the world of gesture, we started by taking out the mouthing of the words, which the chorus had trained her into (as they are wont to do). This immediately cleaned up the synchronisation and, more importantly, gave her clearly information from the sound as to what her gestures were achieving. Later, we reduced the size of her dominant hand pattern in passages where the tempo remained consistent between major structural events. This allowed bigger gestures at major moments to become more salient, freed up her non-dominant hand to be more expressive, and – most interestingly – allowed her to hear more detail in the sound.

In terms of rehearsal technique, a key phrase was ‘do it again’. The instinct was, when something was partway there but not yet fully sorted, to stop and analyse what was yet needed, but often what the singers really need is a couple or three more runs at it to find their way to the goal. Or, if they get it right first time, they need a couple or three more runs at it to be sure they can do it again at will. The second attempt after achieving something is nearly always not as good as the first, as the neural pathways are not yet well established, but further repetitions often fix that without further intervention.

We also explore the usefulness of demonstrating by singing a phrase while directing it, to help clarify the meaning of gestures. Penny had tended to feel that this was somehow cheating, but it turned out to be an effective way to enhance the singers’ capacity to read the detail of her gestures. Not least because when modelling she was not only sharing technical information (this syllable happens between these two points in the pattern), but also expressive shape: adding meaning to technical information helps people make sense of it much more readily. We also explored, in both demonstration and with the chorus singing, contrasting two versions of a passage to help everyone grasp the change that was needed. This was classic Inner Game work: if you can get it wrong on purpose you are much better equipped also to get it right on purpose.

One interesting challenge was how a director with a higher vocal range can help singers as they head down into registers where she can’t effectively model. This isn’t usually an issue in SATB music, as the altos don’t go all that low in the presence of male voices, and female conductors usually model for the latter an octave up. Women’s barbershop, however uses the full extent of the lower range of female voices, which not all of us can reach effectively. It was audibly apparent that the chorus had a greater brightness, clarity and focus in the ranges where Penny could demonstrate than in the ranges where she could not. (This applied most often to the basses, but also occurred when bari or lead went low, so it was clearly a question about register and use of voice throughout the chorus rather than of the particular singers in any one section.)

Like so many questions of rehearsal and learning, this one needed approaching from multiple angles. One was to use an exercise with the whole chorus that used a slide from high to low and back again to focus how to keep the mid-voice placement rather than dropping into a darker, foggier tone (Zac Booles memorably refers to the latter as ‘dumpage’). You can demo this kind of exercise in a range comfortable for yourself, then let the singers carry it down into the bass range. We also used a technique I picked up from Kim Newcombe at a LABBS Harmony College of using speech as a model for vocal tone that keeps placement in a brighter, more expressive mode. Again, you can use this exercise without being able to reach the low notes yourself.

We also drew on our old friend duetting, which does so much to deepen all aspects of a group’s understanding of the music they sing and of the other voices they are singing it with. In this instance, the teamwork involved in making all pairings of balance did a lot to brighten the sound of the passages in the lower registers without any further intervention. Basses are often told, ‘Sing like leads,’ which sometimes helps but only if they have a clear concept of what that involves. But if their task is to make a satisfying musical relationship with tenors, their intuitive musicianship will make vocal adjustments to deliver that duet, and their reward is the pleasure that the leads and baris take in listening to it.