ChoralNet

The professional networking site for the global online choral community.

You are here: Home / Others / Is Sheet Music Necessary for a Choir Rehearsal?

Is Sheet Music Necessary for a Choir Rehearsal?

by Leave a Comment


 
Chris Rowbury asks a more basic question – do you need sheet music in a rehearsal?
 
Here is his list of advantages/disadvantages.  What is he missing?
 
advantages of teaching by ear
  • no looking at pieces of paper – singers can focus properly on their director (and it’s not a problem when they forget to bring their music with them!)
  • no need to photocopy – or buy lots of copies of the music (cheaper and less hassle)
  • complex rhythms will be learnt through the body – and not intellectually on the page
  • emphasis on ears and not eyes – it is, after all, an aural and oral medium
  • easier to add clapping, dance steps, etc. – without bits of paper getting lost or books being dropped
  • no ‘perfect’ rendition to aim for – the singers won’t have the constant reminder of an ‘ideal’ version of the music staring at them
  • no possibility of reading ahead – seeing the whole score at once can seem daunting, also if the song is taught and built up in segments, it can often be learnt better
  • learning together creates a sense of community – people are able to look at and listen to each other and feel they are all part of one whole
  • complex rhythms often look very difficult when written down – whereas if you just teach it by engaging the body and getting everyone moving together, it can be much easier
advantages of using sheet music
  • can teach very complex songs – especially very long or structurally difficult ones
  • helps visual learners – although it’s good to exercise ears more than eyes
  • have a back up – the written music can remind us of our parts and/ or we can rehearse on our own at home
  • egalitarian – musical director doesn’t have all the power or act as gatekeeper, everyone is in the same position with the music in front of them
  • easy to disseminate music (but we now have recording devices, so not so relevant)
  • creates ‘product’ – a composition or arrangement that can be sold
What do you think?

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. You don’t have to “teach by ear/rote” in order to not use sheet music in a rehearsal. I sing in a world-class competitive 110+ member men’s ensemble in Denver (Sound of the Rockies) and we are not allowed to have sheet music on the risers ever. We receive music one week and we’re expected to have it learned by the next rehearsal. How we learn it is up to us (though, admittadely, they do provide auido rehearsal tracks for us, which essentially ammounts to learning by rote…, but that’s beside the point). My point is that it seems like comments on this thread suggest that either you have sheet music in rehearsal or you teach by rote in the rehearsal… um, no. The third (and superior) alternative is to put the responsibility on the singer to learn on thier own time. This makes for AMAZING rehearsals and a higher level of commitment by the singers.

  2. When I wanted to learn how to play a violin, after 3 weeks
    the teacher sent me back to the choir. I loved singing and learning
    by rote was the way that worked best for me. Years of singing alone
    at home, learning my favourite tunes by repetition and by ear until
    someone I respected told me to share my voice with the world. I
    tried to learn how to read sheet music in 2 years of adult
    education where I had to work hard at it and I felt just like a
    friend who has dyslexia.

    I then joined a choral society. No need for an audition was
    the recommendation – because everyone expected I could read music.
    I discovered a minority hiding the same secret and a ‘black market’
    of rehearsal cds. It all seemed like homework and no fun.

    The Natural Voice Network and choir leaders like Chris
    Rowbury have helped me share my voice with others in choirs, on
    stage and still just for the joy of it. I may need to be taught
    face-to-face but the tunes stay with me long term and the word cues
    remain long term, too. I sometimes remember more than one harmony
    part if I had the opportunity to learn it.

    With my confidence renewed, I joined a musical theatre group.
    The musical director took us through all parts once and with a
    recording, the score and some notes pencilled in, I have kept up
    with the rest. Mind you, those that were in the same show years
    back are learning as if from scratch.

    I bet you with a short reminder of the key points of the
    arrangement I could sing the first song I was taught by rote to me
    as an adult over ten years ago. How many songs does the average Joe
    recall all the way through? Only ones that were learned by rote as
    a child.

    Think about how many respected poets and writers with dyslexia
    have been published.

    Think about how many respected musicians learned by ear.

    Singers like me should be respected for the results if our
    singing, not how we do it.

    I am sick of people assuming I can and should be able to read
    music.

    I can learn a tune as quick as anyone else – as long as I can
    hear it clearly… the only difference is that don’t need a piece
    of paper to be able to repeat it the next rehearsal, just a few
    opening bars to ensure I am in the correct key.

    Sheet music has its place – I only keep it so my musician
    friends can accompany me!

  3. I live in a universe somewhere between Chris Rowbury and the traditionalists.  Like Chris, I’ve worked for years with folks who were told they couldn’t sing (generally when they were about seven years old).  Given the welcome of an open choir, most find their voices and eventually learn a fair amount about reading music.  I tell new singers to trust that they can move from learning by ear to parsing a score. However, it is really unkind to dismiss these people as “hobbiests and amateurs.” That attitude won’t win any of us friends or supporters in our efforts to keep music a real part of people’s lives.
       
    No, they’re not going to sing the B minor Mass or complex modern works.  However, their own vocal experience makes them more receptive to other choral music. And this access to music has, in some cases, completely changed their lives.

  4. Of course, none of this is black and white, and the context of my blog is that I want to create debate and discussion (result!).
     
    However, I do take umbrage at the apparent position of superiority that the musically literate sometimes take.
     
    The vast majority of singers that I work with (and I’ve worked with many hundreds over the last 15 years or so) are in their 50s and upwards who have been told that they can’t sing. It may have been a throw away comment they hard as a child, but it has stayed with them. Not only that, but most of them have come to believe that they can’t sing because they can’t read music. That somehow music-making is denied them because of this. They have come to believe that reading and understanding music is only for the elite and mere mortals like themselves are simply not educated enough to even begin to try to learn. And because they can’t read music, they have no right to sing.
     
    I don’t know where these beliefs come from (school? parents? the fact that ‘proper’ music is seen to be ‘posh’ and ‘academic’ still?), but the fact is that they are there, so I do my best to disabuse people of these notions and help them to begin to sing and make music. If they then want to go off and learn to read music, then great, but it’s not necessary with the work that I do.
     
    There is another assumption that I take offence at: that somehow learning by ear means that the work is not taken seriously, that the singers will always remain as ‘amateurs’, that the standards won’t be high, that their musical and singing skills won’t improve, etc. etc. (never mind the fact that many professional musicians and singers don’t or won’t read music — or do they not count?)
     
    Yes, “anyone can get up and sing” in my workshops. That is the entry requirement. Once there though I begin to train, coax, encourage and teach through discipline, hard work and humour. I take offence at singers being labelled as mere “hobbiests and amateurs” as if only choirs who work with written music are professional and accomplished, which I know is far from true.
     
    I strive for excellence in all my work and I teach to the top ‘students’ in all my groups. I have high expectations and create good quality results with people often commenting that the results were far higher than they had expected.
     
    As regards notation. Yes, of course there is a place for it. But remermber that much of the world’s music is NOT notated. It is very easy for us to get stuck within our own little ghetto and lose sight of other approaches and options. Isn’t it also a little sad to believe that the only reason Guido refined the system of musical notation was so that they could get through more repertoire? Speed learning at its best! Surely it’s better to think that it meant that singers could be introduced to more music which they could then truly inhabit.
     
    And producing CDs of parts — that’s just another form of musical notation.
     
    A disgruntled (living in a parallel universe) Chris Rowbury
     
     
     

  5. To read this in context – and before the formal choir conductors get their knickers in a knot over this issue – I interpreted this blog post of Chris’ to be discussing the appropriateness of using sheet music in a world music choir, not a formal choir singing music from the classical western tradition.    
     
    In world music choirs we sing music that comes from cultures having strong traditions of singing in harmony – and this music is often not notated.     We share transcriptions around amongst ourselves to make it easier for us to teach it, and there are a lot of collections of world music in book form that we use – the authenticity of which is often hotly debated. 
     
    Most of us who direct world music choirs try to memorise each of the parts before teaching our choirs all of their parts.  Many of our singers are not note readers and have never undergone formal voice training.    However, some singers do have such training – so we are always making decisions about giving out sheet music just to a few people and what effect this has on the others.
     
    To teach a world music choir is a completely different process to memorising, interpreting, teaching and conducting, say,  Brahm’s German Requiem or Tallis’ Spem in Alium with a choir all of whom have probably had considerable musical training.
     
     
     
     
     
        

  6. Philip et al.
     
    I’m afraid that Chris’ “advantages of teaching by ear” read more like a list of excuses by someone who would rather not go to the trouble of learning to read music.  I agree that the points he makes are desireable.  I cannot agree that they are never reached if you start with music in front of you.  Ideally music SHOULD be memorized–read “internalized” if you’re more comfortable with that–and understood by every performer, right?  But that takes time whether you start with music or by ear.  It just takes a lot MORE time by ear.
     
    But I would simply go back to our friend Guido, who cleverly invented a notational system way back in the 11th century, and for his reasons for taking the trouble to do so:
     
    1.  One of his assignments was to teach the choirboys all the chants of the Mass and Office that they needed to know.  He taught them by ear (no other choice at the time), and he wrote that it took him 10 years.  After inventing a system to read the music off the page (and teaching the system to his choirboys, obviously), he wrote that the time involved was reduced to 2 or even to a single year.  And THIS, a couple of centuries later, led to the addition of treble choristers to choirs since they no longer had to wait, learning all their chants, until their voices changed at about age 17.
     
    2.  As Guido pointed out to his Pope, his system made it possible to ensure that music could be distributed throughout Christian Europe and performed in the properly approved way no matter where you were.  In other words, it made music transportable without the need to send someone to teach it all over again by ear.
     
    Now some might not consider either of those as sufficient reason to “burden” themselves with the onerous job of learning to read music or teaching others to read music.  But can you really picture choirs incapable of performing anything they had not put hours into memorizing, let alone a symphony orchestra, a military band, a jazz band, a string quartet, or anything else?  For garage bands learning nothing but covers, and doo-wop vocal groups doing the same, fine.  For anyone and anything else, give me charts.  That’s what I write and that’s why I write ’em.
     
    All the best,
    John

Leave a Reply

© 2026 American Choral Directors Association. All rights reserved.
Terms of Use | Privacy Policy