arrange • compose • conduct
A Zen proverb goes, “If you don’t think you have time to meditate for an hour today, you should meditate for two hours.” This runs through my head every single time I want to skip past vocal warmups in my Aces rehearsals. Sometimes the motivation is so strong to get […]
Sometimes I like to play a little musical game in rehearsal that I call “In My Head.” I adapted it from an Instagram post from the Swingles from 2017: In my version, we sing a set of three in a row, with the lyrics, “In my head, in my heart, […]
Timing your talking is tricky. I am a big proponent of “talk less” in rehearsal. Singers don’t need a soliloquy – they need simple, clear, concise guidance followed by singing the passage again. And again. And again. But on occasion, you need to deliver more words. Maybe it’s logistical instructions […]
How can you incorporate the effect of a studio session into rehearsal? Both I and my students hear differently in the studio. We all hear and seek to correct mistakes with an intensity not present at every rehearsal. We pace differently in the studio. There is still laughter and camaraderie […]
Take the music seriously. Everything else, treat lightly. “I try never to take myself too seriously. But music has to be taken seriously.” Yannick Nézet-Séguin, on 60 Minutes I agree with him on both counts. Where we get into danger is when a conductor starts to associate their vision of […]
Sometimes what’s called for is White Rabbit Mode. The white rabbit in Alice In Wonderland constantly shouts “I’m late!” as he bustles and hurries through the story. In plenty of rehearsals, there’s a little time for digression, for stories, for flights of fancy and following musical ideas and experiments. Other […]
Watching Part 3 of The Beatles documentary “Get Back,” I was struck by the way that they rehearse. As they are working up these now-classic songs into full recorded versions, they vary the tempo, the feel, the instrumentation. They rewrite words on the fly, and interject with nonsense whenever they […]
What will rehearsal be like if I’m not there? I consider it my goal to teach myself out of a job by the end of the school year. (Never worrying, of course, because a new group with new needs will be with me soon.) That means that my ensemble should […]
I’ve been experimenting with a new strategy in my after school rehearsals: starting optional vocal warmups before the rehearsal starts. At 2:45, we start a one-hour rehearsal. At 2:35, I start doing some basic vocal warmups. It’s optional to attend – they have all already sung today, and their voices […]
Fun and learning are not either/or. We’re taught pretty thoroughly – and consistently – in school that there are two tiers of behavior. There’s relaxed, fun, social behavior and there is serious, focused, studious behavior. The outcome is that students don’t know how to have fun while learning. They have […]