The beautiful challenge is that in vocal music ensemble instruction, every instrument is unique. So unique in fact that an instruction that helps one student sound better can make another sound worse. In the instrumental classroom there are MANY technical instructions that can be delivered in a way that applies to EVERY trombone or every drum in the room. They may even be the same manufacturer! We don’t realistically have time in a choral rehearsal to give customized vocal instruction like a voice teacher can in a one on one setting. In this live presentation, turned podcast, Beth and I discuss and provide suggestions for balancing the need for a solid foundation in vocal pedagogy presented by choral directors to their students with the reality that their isn’t enough time in choir rehearsal to give fully individualized instruction. How can we focus on the universal aspects of singing, and speak in the most efficient and clear ways about the voice?
As always, when you see the LIVE logo, video is recommended. Patreon members are able to access all of my live presentation slides and resources.
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The best sight singing tool on the market. A must have for any band/choir or orchestra teacher and their students. In class and at home tools to build their literacy at their own pace. Enter “choralosophy” at checkout to get 10% off every time you renew at http://www.sightreadingfactory.com
One of the oddest things about Vocal Music Education as a profession, is how little we are required to learn in our schooling about the voice. Vocal Pedagogy courses are often the purview of voice performance majors, which is very odd considering how many more students will be impacted with vocal instruction by a person with a Music Ed degree. It is also odd considering that in many schools, vocal instruction is a key component of our course descriptions. Despite this seemingly obvious academic connection, a startlingly low number of music educators have taken any Vocal Ped, very little Voice Science is presented at conventions, and myths and misinformation litter the landscape of discussions and instruction about how the voice works. Dr. Sharon Hansen joins me to discuss this issue candidly, as well as a recounting of her battle getting ACDA to include the “On the Voice” column in the Choral Journal. You will be amazed to hear some of the reasons she was given for NOT including Vocal information in a Choral journal. An important episode that no one should miss.
Dr. Sharon A. Hansen is Professor and Director of Choral Studies, Emerita, at the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee. Widely known as a conductor and master teacher throughout the United States and in Europe, Hansen has conducted the Romanian National Radio Choir (Bucharest), the Gächinger Kantorei and Bach Collegium-Stuttgart (Germany), the Stockholm (Sweden) Conservatory Chamber Choir, the Moldavian and Oltenian Philharmonic Choirs (Iasì and Craiova, Romania), and the University of Regensburg (Germany) Symphony Orchestra. Ensembles under Hansen’s direction have appeared at state, regional, and national ACDA and NAfME Conferences, and she has served as guest conductor and clinician with all-state, all-regional, and select honor choirs in more than forty states.
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Hansen is the Founder and Music Director Emerita of the Milwaukee Choral Artists, a professional women’s vocal ensemble that left a legacy of some fifty commissioned, premiered, and published new works for treble voices. Hansen authored Helmuth Rilling: Conductor – Teacher, the definitive book on renowned conductor Helmuth Rilling, when she spent sixteen months in Germany singing with Rilling and the Gächinger Chorale. As contributing author for the 2009 book Wisdom, Wit, and Will: Women Choral Conductors on their Art, Hansen’s detailed chapter on the status of collegiate women choral conductors, “Women, Conductors, and the Tenure Process: What’s Up in the Academy?”, was the first such in-depth examination since 1988. She served as a member of the Editorial Board of the American Choral Directors’ Association’s Choral Journal from 1993–2018, where she was Founder and Editor Emerita of the Choral Journal article series “On the Voice,” which she curated for eighteen years. Because of her long-time passion for voice and choral music, she examined the history of voice education in the choral classroom in ACDA’s first 50 years, which is Monograph #18 in ACDA’s monograph series.
The best sight singing tool on the market. A must have for any band/choir or orchestra teacher and their students. In class and at home tools to build their literacy at their own pace. Enter “choralosophy” at checkout to get 10% off every time you renew at http://www.sightreadingfactory.com
Hansen received the Wisconsin Choral Directors Association’s Morris D. Hayes Award, the Milwaukee Civic Music Association’s Excellence in Choral Music Award, and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra’s highest meritorious honors for outstanding contributions to the choral art. Prior to her twenty years in Wisconsin, Hansen was Professor of Choral Music at the University of Northern Iowa, and a vocal music teacher in the public schools near Omaha, Nebraska. Now calling Arizona her home, she recently served as lead writer on the Hal Leonard–McGraw-Hill choral textbook series Voices in Concert, and as full-time Interim Director of Music and Arts at Pinnacle Presbyterian Church in Scottsdale. Presently, she serves on the Board of Directors for the Arizona Chapter of the American Choral Directors’ Association, and is the Chorus Conductor for the Arizona Musicfest Symphony Orchestra.
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This episode is a milestone. The 100th full length episode of the podcast. Since my wife Beth was the FIRST guest on the show, I thought it would be good to go full circle, and bring her on again!
Being a music teacher is an important job. It is, or should be about SO MUCH more than the “collection and curation of musicians who are already good.” But how often is that our quickest route to career success? In this episode Beth and I take the gloves off and dive into the topic of the ways in which choir directors of all levels, with all of the best intentions, can often say or do things that either do not help singers become better, or even make the singer worse. “Raise the soft palette” when the problem is actually tongue tension. “Blend! when the result is actually just removing resonance so you can no longer hear the problem. “Open your mouth to the size of the 3 Oreos” when every mouth is a different size, and much more.
We also go a bit hard on the problems with ranking, or rating competitions for beginning singers. The systems, often governed by the same organization that governs basketball games in many places, can actually disincentivize quality feedback for singers.
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While many of my singing and teaching of singing philosophies and approaches have shifted or changed…some I would completely redo differently if I had the chance…one that hasn’t (and this is a hill that I will die on) is that there is a place in music for EVERYONE.
Sorry Trevor
The unique nature of singing is that 1) we all have a different instrument: everyone’s lung capacity, torso length, pharyngeal shape, tongue size, etc…are all different!! So there is not a one size fits all approach to singing. It is different for everyone. And everyone learns differently! Add that into the mix. Plus every person has to learn how to coordinate their muscles, where to feel resonance, how to learn to resonate effectively and efficiently, and how to adjust this approach when their bodies and hormones are changing. It’s a lot! Plus, 2) unlike starting piano or band where the first time you pick up an instrument is with your teacher (where they can tell you “put this hand here, this finger here…”) in choir, EVERY kid has prior experience in singing/phonation whether that be with the radio, with mom, in another choir, etc…some of these habits are good, some detrimental (don’t get me started on some of the bad singing examples on the radio!). The point being, you are having to redirect those already insulated neural pathways. Retrain those muscles. And this takes time and concerted effort. Some kids give up and don’t want to put forth the effort. I tell my students that learning to sing is like you are renovating a home as opposed to building one from scratch. And some houses need more work than others!
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Some of my proudest moments in teaching have been the kid whose mom thought he was “tone deaf” and he ended up being able to perform a solo successfully and make concert choir to be with his buddies…the girl who was the only one of her peers who auditioned for an honor choir her sophomore year and didn’t make it, who went on to make All-State choir her senior year…the boy who was so awkward and shy and could barely make a peep who went on to get a full ride scholarship in vocal performance and has had an active adult performance career. Those stories of hard work and perseverance are my favorite. The kid that didn’t think they could or was the underdog who worked their butt off and ended up excelling!!
The best sight singing tool on the market. A must have for any band/choir or orchestra teacher and their students. In class and at home tools to build their literacy at their own pace. Enter “choralosophy” at checkout to get 10% off every time you renew at http://www.sightreadingfactory.com
