What if boys do like to sing, and the problem is the choir we are asking them to sing in? The boy who is told to stop singing, or thrown in front of an audience before he is ready is often gone for good.
Patrick Freer has spent decades asking boys themselves, in classrooms and choirs around the world, what keeps them singing and what pushes them out, and they are now saying the same things. They want to learn how their voices work, they want to know what is happening in the voice change and what comes next, and they want to be taught how to sing, not just told when they got the notes wrong. The physiology of the voice change is settled science. What Freer studies is how boys experience it, and what teachers can do differently.
He lived that question himself. When his voice changed, he was told to stand in the back and mouth the words, and he walked away from singing for years until one college teacher showed him what his voice could do instead of what it could not do.
In this conversation, Patrick and I get into what that research means in a rehearsal: warm-ups that fit the voices actually in the room, repertoire chosen for the ranges boys can sing with confidence, and not putting singers on stage before they are ready. We also talk about masculinity and singing, and about using the words boys and girls honestly while still respecting the singers who do not fit inside those categories.
Tune in, and have your thinking stimulated and challenged. Then, weigh in yourself with your related ideas and experiences on Facebook in the Choralosophers group or over on choralosophy.substack.comd
Be Sure to Find Choralosophy on TikTok!
For future rehearsal clips, find me on TikTok, Insta and Facebook
Patrick K. Freer is Distinguished Professor of Music at Georgia State University where he conducts the Tenor-Bass Choir and directs the doctoral programs in music education. Dr. Freer has held Visiting Professorships at the Universität Mozarteum Salzburg (Austria) and at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain), and has been in residence as a guest conductor for the Bogotá Philharmonic Orchestra (Colombia). His degrees are from Westminster Choir College and Teachers College-Columbia University. Dr. Freer is the immediate past Editor of the International Journal of Research in Choral Singing and former longtime editor of Music Educators Journal.
Patrick Freer — Georgia State School of Music —
Getting Started with Middle School Chorus, 3rd ed. —
Georgia State News — “Boys To Men”
@choralosophypodca