Observation #6, Teach #2

Lesson:

• Rote teach Somagwaza

Though it's a simple lesson plan, the application of teaching a rote song at the beginning of the day with an inexperienced choir is much more difficult that it seems. First off, they guys are tired, their brains are not working quickly and retaining their part can be difficult. Second, it's easy for you as a teacher to get off track since you are also waking up. The song I chose to teach is an African ceremonial song that Dr. Reed does with the MSU Men's Glee Club at the beginning of every semester, so I know it like the back of my hand. Still, in front of students, I could not figure out when the third part was supposed to enter, and I was the only one singing it! 

The process went something like this: I first spoke the words to every one. We said them a few times to get it into muscle memory, then I started to sing the bass part. The basses would join in when they felt ready and that took about 5 or 6 times through before everyone was in. As the continued, I started to shift towards the middle part, and the bass part would go away. So I would go back and get it going again, start the middle part up, and they would be singing a mix between the bass and the middle part. So I isolated the second part, restarted the bass, added the middle back in, then realized everyone was already singing so I sang the third part alone. It could possibly have been too much for that day anyway so it was a good thing that I sang it. 

It's interesting to see how the brains of singers work, at least the boys in this choir. They like to be completely secure on a part before they even think about singing it out loud. This proved to be difficult as I wanted them to sing text, pitch, and rhythm all at the same time. A few said, I've got it, but I can't put the words to it yet, which I accepted. The best part about teaching this song was that afterwards, they asked if they could keep learning it so they could perform it on their next concert. I'll call that a success.

Observation #5, Teach #1

Lesson Plan:

• Warm up
• Stretch and pat
• Breathing, hiss on eighth note pulse
• Sirens
• Falsetto Lydian Warmup
• Zee ah round 1-5, 4-3-2-1
• Zee, zeh, zah, zoh, zoo, Single Pitch
• Counting, Dynamics

For this fifth visit, I conducted and lead warmups for MOH. As I mentioned earlier, before today the guys hadn't really warmed up to the idea of me teaching. This time around, they expected me more. I had given some comments earlier about their festival set so they knew who I was more. Before I went in to teach, I spoke with the director about what he wanted me to cover. I am a firm believer that warmups are the single best way to teach concepts and technique. As Dr. Snow always says, show it in the air, on the board, in the music. Warm ups act as a way to show it in the air before they realize what is going on. Since the choir was about to go to festival, he wanted me to focus on standard things, tone, part independence, but specifically dynamics and volume change. I added the final counting warm up to fit this need and will go into more detail with that later.

The first few warmups are the standard "warm up." It's a 7:30am class, these boys need to just move and get the mechanism working. I then shifted straight into a high falsetto warm up that Dr. Reed uses often. I wanted to get them out of the habit of just doing a scalular pattern so this lydian mode warm up keeps their brains active while still working on bringing the head voice down. I continued the brain work by having them sing a simple round that also works to build connectivity while leaping through the two ranges that the fifth covers. I had some issues with this one because they were all dropping their sound backward as the leapt up. I added a hand gesture (touch shoulder then have them glide forward) along with a slight squat on the leap to keep the air moving and the sound cleared up very quickly. 

The next warmup involved vowel unification on a single pitch, helping with those that have trouble finding pitch and just unity throughout the choir. I realized that trying to unify all the vowels in one warmup is a losing effort. There is just too much to work on at one time. I feel that it would be more effective to take a day focusing on one vowel, adding a new one on each day, so you can scaffold up to a full vowel set warmup. Each day you can have a specific idea that works for each vowel that you can draw on the next day if the singers slip back into old habits. 

The final warmup is a simple warm up where you count to 5 and back to 1 on a single pitch, dynamics going up with the number. We then used these same numbers and applied them to the music when they were singing. A very quick and effective warmup that can transfer to octavo application.

(Apparently this saved as a draft last week, apologies) 

Observation #4

I'm a bit at a loss as to what to write for today's observation. The rehearsal today was taken up mainly by a few long, drawn out stories that didn't relate at all to the material. So I guess I have a question of philosophy.

Do we teach to teach music or do we teach to teach people? I know that I used that specific word 4 times in that statement but it was well worth it. I'm having a bit of an internal debate over this subject. In my mind, I want an excellent product. I want my students to learn about music, about singing, and have the classroom be a skill based class. It has tangible results and it seems to be validated by the idea that we need to actually "teach" something.

At the same time, I feel the need to sometimes tell stories like what happened today, just to get through to the students. I wouldn't go so far as to say that we should talk about random things and hold a pseudo-fireside chat every week, but I think there needs to be a bit of a human element in there. The students are partially there for you as the teacher. Is that because they like your personality? Or your teaching style? Or the way you run a rehearsal?

Depending on the type of student, you'll draw different populations dependent on which area you focus. Is there a balance? Is there one that will draw both populations and grow your program to the fullest? It you focus one, you'll obviously get the population that resonates with our values and vice versa. If you find a balance, though, is it possible that you'll get less of both because they will be bored when you are in the "other mood?" It's an interesting debate.

Observation #3

The second of three visits this week to catch myself up was very similar to the first two. In this post, I'll be focusing on the operational procedures of the class room.

From observations over this first few visits, there doesn't seem to be any type of grading in the classroom. I don't even notice if the teacher takes attendance. I do not believe I have heard the phrase practice in terms of the music or outside of rehearsal as well.

Throughout the day, Mr. Bishop has five classes for one class that he meets with five days a week. The classes are split up into ability level and gender, except for the Chorale group. Some of the Chorale guys also sing with the Men's ensemble that I visit. Even after asking, any administrative duties that he has are unknown to me. He was not very specific in what exactly he does but I believe he does a hallway shift where he monitors hallways. The relationship with the students is very close, as explained in the last post, and the relationship with other staff is the same. Whenever they enter the classroom for various reasons, he chit chats with them for a while while the choir just sits there. Since I've been there, I have seen no sight reading books, besides old MSVMA contest examples. The ensemble that I'm with, even though they are competing, have not opened them once.

The physical space of the choir room, though, is fantastic. There is a large riser set up with chairs and attached desks. The "audience" wall is a giant mirror that the students can see themselves in. The back of the classroom has four practice rooms with pianos for student use. The tables, however, are littered with music and papers, it's hard to find anything.

To me, it just seems so unfortunate that they have all of the resources but not the best musical environment. The program has everything it needs to succeed at a very high level, I'm just not seeing it in this group.

Observation #2

Since I am on Spring Break, I thought this would be a great time to catch up on some days that I've missed due to my various circumstances. As a quick reminder, these observations are at Holt High school with their Men's chorus.

I found it very hard to answer some of the prompts that were given to us for this observation. There are many great things that the teacher does, but in terms of actually being able to see if everything was planned is tough to tell. For example, each class starts with the Pledge of Allegiance. Even if official class time starts, they wait for that moment so they aren't interrupted. They then move straight into the warm up, which does not really relate to the music they will be working on. It's just singing with no guidance and no forethought. While the exercises are good in it of themselves, it just doesn't relate the way we expect it to.

In terms of the repertoire, the sequence of pieces seem to be in a need based order. If there is something to fix, we'll sing it. Typically, the teacher sits behind the piano, plucking out notes, or standing and listening to the sound while the choir sings to a YouTube recording. The main goal seems to be, sing the notes and have it not sound too bad. It's sometimes frustrating to sit in on because there are some easy fixes in terms of tone or rhythm or pitch and they just blow by it. Conducting rarely happens, and if it does, it is from seated in a chair. All instructions are verbal with some modeling, but without explaining it substantially first. There are also many tangents on very random stories that don't relate to the rehearsal.

While the actual rehearsal can be very frustrating, the students absolutely love their teacher. It's like an adult friend scenario. This makes it difficult to control the students but they will do anything that is asked of them, that is, if it is asked.

Repertory Project 1

The piece I chose for the repertory project is Aaron Copland's, "Shall We Gather At the River," for Unison voice and Piano.

I think that we don't consider unison pieces enough as opportunities for learning. We focus so much and how many parts can we get students to sing as opposed to the quality of singing that happens. I like this piece for it's simplicity and it's ability to be adapted if necessary. This piece could be used for many different levels, as far down as middle school, and still useful in intermediate ensembles. The tessitura is broken up into to distinct sections, one that hovers around G in the staff and the other around D in the staff for treble. The range of each of these sections are also very limited. This makes the piece easily adaptable if some singers can only do one section or another. Musically, there are a lot of dynamic markings and typical music information included in the score. This gives a good opportunity to introduce these terms with such a simple melody. Singing in unison in general also teaches phrasing because of the simplicity and "training" the choir to respond to gesture when they aren't concerned with other parts. The text is also a very traditional text. Yes, you would have to deal with the religious aspect of the text, but the tradition of the song is worth teaching as well.

Finally. Week 1(?)

I didn't even feel tired waking up at 5:30 this morning to get to school. Just too much excitement to get back.

Today was an interesting day and I ended up working with the class that I don't typically work with. Holt High School is combining with two other high schools to put on a concert. I don't have all of the details because Mr. Bishop was running around still setting some things up. Because of this, I lead warm ups just to relieve some of the stress. I unfortunately had no preparatory time but I knew he needed the extra second to breath and check for the buses so I very willingly lead the young women's ensemble. I did have the Pledge of Allegiance to plan so this is what I came up with and a bit of rationale:

Stretching (It's 7:30 am. They need to move)
Quick breathing exercise, pulsing on eighth notes (Part of our standard warmup procedure)
Vocals sighs, to get the breath moving (phonation)
Very bright Mi-eh-mi-eh 5-3-4-2-3-1-2-7-1 (Classic Elizabeth Hermanson warm up to get the resonators moving)
The tone was very breathy during this warmup, even with insistence to make it very nasal, so I moved to a warm up that sings "Zing-a-zing-a-zoo, Zing-a-zing-a-zoo, Zing-a-zing-a-Zing-a-Zing-a-Zoo)" to get their air moving but still focus that sound through the Z consonant.
Since he still wasn't back, I moved to a tuning exercise where one part holds a tonic pitch, and the other outlines a major chord. This worked more effectively in getting a more focused tone.

Since this was an all women's group, the maturity level was significantly higher than the men's group. Talking during rehearsal was strictly about musical ideas and Mr. Bishop let that slide. The set up of the class was interesting, there were small pockets of singers spread out across the choir risers, in chairs with desks. I thought this would be a problem in terms of talking but it seemed to be held to a minimum. Mr. Bishop keeps a very open rehearsal, he allows for lots of questions and listens to his students needs. If someone said they needed help with a part, he would have everyone sing it. It's a very relaxed atmosphere, with him conducting from a chair or from behind the piano.

At this point, the rehearsal was taken over by Prof. Parr from Albion College, the conductor for this combined concert. The students were seemingly less responsive to him as they were to Mr. Bishop, and this may explain why they students were so unresponsive to me. They trust Mr. Bishop so much that it is hard for them to adjust. I do really like this atmosphere though. It is very trusting, and they believe that Mr. Bishop is there to help them. I can only hope that my future students will have that much trust in me, but maybe a bit more respect for a stranger in the classroom.

ZL