ChorTeach: Teaching Healthy Singing in the Choral and Applied Studio

ChorTeach is ACDA’s quarterly online publication, designed for those who work with singers of all levels. A full annotated ChorTeach index is available online at acda.org/chorteach. Over 160 articles are organized into seventeen categories. For submission information, to view the index, or to read the latest issue, visit acda.org/chorteach. Following is an excerpt from an article in the Fall 2020 issue titled: Teaching Healthy Singing in the Choral and Applied Studio
Part One: The Pedagogues’ Teachings + Part Two: The Students’ Perspectives by Derrick L. Thompson
_____________________

In vocal music programs, voice majors are required to participate in a choral ensemble and an applied studio lesson as part of their degree completion. While a student may work with multiple singing instructors during his/her studies, each student may come across numerous methods or approaches to developing healthy singing habits. Researchers have found that “misunderstandings can occur when the singer’s understanding of specific terms or phrases do not match the voice instructor’s or choral conductor’s concept.”1

To help expand the literature available for choral and applied voice instructors, a study to determine what approaches pedagogues of singing considered useful in developing healthy young singers was conducted. In this study, the term healthy singing is defined as the ability to produce musical sounds with the voice that incorporate the use of correct posture, proper breath support, full tone quality, evenness moving between vocal registers, and good intonation combined with the singer’s natural talent.

Materials and Method
To determine how choral and applied voice pedagogues define healthy singing and work toward developing healthy singers, a qualitative approach was used. The participants consisted of three choral and three applied voice pedagogues. They were selected from a purposeful sample of pedagogues in higher education, along with one student of the pedagogue participants from each institution. Interviews with the pedagogues served as the primary sources of data collection, supported by observations of choral and applied studio instruction and student interviews.

Notes

1. H. Apfelstadt, L. Robinson, & M. Taylor, “Building Bridges
   among Choral Conductors, Voice Teachers, and Students.”
   Choral Journal, 44 no. 2, (2003): 25-33.

You can read more in the Fall 2020 issue of ChorTeach. A summary of the other articles in this issue can be found here: https://choralnet.org/2020/06/summer-2020-chorteach-preview/