Choral Caffeine: Help Singers Count

One of the beauties of choral music is the incredible rhythmic flexibility allowed by the text in combination with the natural dexterity of the articulators.  But what makes the art so special is also the cause of more than a few problems. Put simply, we singers just don’t count all that well. 

 

Thomas Wine agrees, and offers some suggestions for improving a choir’s rhythmic acuity in his article, “Rhythmic Integrity in the Choral Rehearsal: A Bag of Tricks and More” (Kansas Choral Range, Vol.32, No.2)

 

Count-singing is the practice of rehearsing a choral work on counts rather than singing the text. Singers use a number on every beat containing a pitch, thus engaging the singer for the entire length of long notes. When subdividing rhythms for eighth note patterns in duple time, singers should sing 1 & 2 &, etc. Shaw replaced the number “three” with the syllable “tee” to make thetongue move faster and not slow the rhythm on that beat. For greater rhythmic definition, singers should count sixteenth notes as 1 ee & ah, 2 ee & ah, 3 ee & ah, etc. To perform a cut-off more accurately, singers should place the appropriate consonant on the rest following the last pitch, for example, 1 & 2 & 3 & “t”, if the rest is on 4 and the concluding consonant is “t.” Variations on this method should also be utilized for all compound meters.

 

Understanding and having a method for solving counting problems is vital to the musical health of an ensemble.

 

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