Spoiler- Don’t Ask Them To Sing Louder

One of the most common questions I get from choir teachers is “How do I get my kids to sing louder?! I beg and I plead, but they just don’t make any noise.”

The first mistake you made was the begging and pleading. The second mistake was asking for louder. If kids aren’t singing with enough decibels for your liking, they don’t know how. Trust me. If they did, you will be spending most of your time getting them to shut up and sing softer! Once kids figure this out, they LOVE to hear their own resonance. Tune in for some ideas on my preferred approach.

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Once you establish these expectations, the next step is accountability. This is where your grading system is HUGE. Once they know how to sing this way, continuing to do so becomes part of their grade. See more about this system here:

The Art of Community with Dr. Iona Italia

Shared goals are more important than any other factors when building community. Not shared cultures, shared backgrounds, or shared talents. We just need to want the same things. Choirs are typically natural breeding grounds of this type of shared interest. In this episode I compare notes with writer, podcaster and Tango instructor Dr. Iona Italia on the the ways we build community in our artistic spaces. She brings her experience living all over the world and participating in many cultures and the common threads in all of those efforts, while I just continue to notice more and more parallels to what we do in group singing. There is a little bit of something for everyone here, including my first E for explicit rating. Something about Iona just makes you want to take off the filter. Tune in and prepare to be fascinated by one of my most interesting guests!

Highlights include:

• In both group singing and in tango, the music looses some of its value when we are apart.
• The importance of accountability to each other
• Thoughts about how music and dance can cause a beautiful melding of cultures when we allow it.
• The intimacy of the connections formed. Dance and choir romances! Why is sexual connection so common in choir and tango?
• An entire bonus episode about an hour in on our political philosophies related to discourse.