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Choral Caffeine: Get Guys

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There are some days I wish I was an English teacher.  English faculty don’t need to invest time worrying about wardrobe issues, they don’t have to place their classroom product on display, and they don’t have to lift a finger to recruit member to their class.
 
Choral conductors on the other hand . . .
 
Of the countless non-musical details we have to deal with, recruiting is toward the top of the list in importance.  Have a bad recruiting cycle and you get to suffer the effects for a year or longer; and recruiting male singers is even more critical.
 
In his article “Male Choirs: Recruit, Maintain, and Develop” (Missouri MCDA Reporter, Fall 2007), Mark Cotter shares a few brief suggestions for finding and keeping those lower voices for your ensemble.
 
In addition to suggestions for find the guys, Mark has this to say about the conductor’s approach to various choirs in the hierarchy of a choral program, “Teach the non-auditioned choirs with the same dignity, integrity, enthusiasm, and high standards you would with the top honor choir at your school.”
 
Once you get the men in the room, you have to teach them, well, to sing.  Mark has a few thoughts in that regard, too.  He discusses methods for developing pitch matching skills for those fellows who are still having some difficulty in that regard.
 
Yes, recruiting male singers is a challenge, but even Bach complained about a lack of men, so why should we get off easily?
 
(To access the full article, simply click the highlighted title. For additional articles on a dazzling array of choral topics, visit  ChorTeach.)
 

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Comments

  1. Bob,
        I really like your comment. I tried to think of a subject area in high school that has it easier than we do.  They all either are burdened with recruiting just like we are or they are saddled with tons of homework to correct and parent contacts to make.  You have to love what you do in any subject area to be an effective teacher.
        On the subject of pitch matching for boys, I would like to share an amazing technique I have discovered.  The problem with monotones is  almost completely mindset.  If you understand exactly what has made them sing that way you can unravel it in one lesson (with later encouragement).  
         The problem is that pre-pubescent boys do not want to sound like a girl.  Almost every man who can not sing in tune has had the experience of answering the phone and being mistaken for his mother.  That is so emasculating.  These boys have then pushed their voices down lower so that they don’t sound like a girl when they sing.  When their voices change, they keep pushing their voices down lower.  They have done it for so long it sounds right to them. 
          I discus this with them.  Then I say: “You don’t have to try to sound like a man.  You are a man.”  Then try some pitch matching starting on a note they produce and work up.  If the start to struggle, repeat the mantra above and remind tem that no mater how hard they try, they can’t sound like a girl and continue.  This has worked with every monotone I have tried it with except two.   One had down’s syndrome and one didn’t trust me enough for this to work.  
          When you recruit boys from behind the school where they smoke, from study halls, lunch rooms and councilors who need a place for a disruptive student, you get a lot of young men with this problem.   This technique really works.   It does not help the person who simply sings out of tune but I’ll bet it will work for the smiling Mr. Tallandhandsome!

  2. I think my reply got mashed when the computer crashed, so here it is again:
     
    I am a lifelong music director, minister, teacher and composer, currently accompanying and assisting an excellent high school/middle school teacher.  My wife is an Englsih teacher. 
    So, my friend, you’ve mused about being an English teacher…
     
    1)  A singer who cannot follow the pitch can get an A for trying.  An English student who cannot follow instructions gets an F; and any grade below a C in any class requires a progress report to be filled out for that week.
    2)  Recruiting men is a pain; but there is such a thing as SSA.  An English teacher has to take them all — every “whatever” attitude, every whiny kid who wants their next two weeks’ assignments because the parent is taking them to Hawaii.
    3)  I rarely get a phone call from a parent, for any reason, or from my boss.  My wife often gets calls at 9:30 at night from the student who is doing distance learning because she couldn’t handle life in a classroom.  This is a double pain because she is trying to finish grading the papers for the day — 80 students, each with at least an essay and a journal every week, the rough equivalent of having a 15-minute chat with each member of a large choir every week (on the subject of their virtues and deficiencies).
    4)  I buy nice little cartridges for my computer to make cool arrangements people will applaud.  My wife buys red-ink pens by the BOX.
     
    Now it is true, the new guy — tall, handsome, always smiling — can only make pitches between C# and F around middle C, and even those not reliably.  But when you step back the “God Loves Monotones” phenomenon happens — the dissonant tones he produces disappear into the mass of strong partials generated by the other singers.
     
    I will have to look at what this Mark Cotter has to say about pitch-matching skills.  In general, searching the Internet for new techniques has been in vain.  I do like Mark’s approach — to teach all choirs with the same dignity, enthusiasm and high standards.  People do rise to meet the occasion.  We’re doing “Elijah Rock” with a few altos helping the tenors out; and when they came in, the basses began singing out, and in tune.  Figure.  Hmm…  I don’t know, but just as the bumblebee flies, they are singing!

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