Latest Blog Posts

There are regular messages on ChoralNet's forums asking for help in translating Latin passages. Amazingly enough, Google Translate now can translate passages from Latin to English.   As with all machine translations, it's not likely to be very reliable, but for quick-and-dirty, just to get the gist of the meaning, it's a valuable tool. And […]

Paul Carey takes a moment to celebrate an inspiring program for male singers in his blog.   A bit of it here:   Let’s all of us music leaders around the country do our part to get more and more boys and men singing. It’s only a recent US societal phenomena that playing or just […]

Time is ticking away for the ACDA Honor Choir Submission . . . . . read all about it here.   That also means that members can begin registration for the ACDA Chicago Conference beginning today!  Get your registration in early!   Oh, and don't forget about the fantastic program I told you about yesterday […]

For those who have never heard of the program, IPA Now is a brilliant program that automatically transcribes several languages (Latin, French, German, Italian) into IPA Symbols.   For one week, Kelly Turner (owner of IPA Now!) has agreed to give ChoralNet members the program for a discounted price of $17.99.   Here is the […]

While there is a long list of qualities needed to be an effective leader, the following is a short list of qualities necessary to be an inspirational leader. My sources for this list are both “the literature”, including the Harvard Business Review, as well as my own observations. Please add to the list in the […]

Liz Garnett makes the lemons of a bad rehearsal day into lemonade: When things don’t go right, that forces us to pay more attention to how to do what we’re aiming for. We have to think more diagnostically, and listen more carefully to what the choir is struggling with. We have identify more precisely what the obstacles […]

Liz Garnett pens an interesting exploration of “semantic depletion”: Say something often enough and the connection between signifier (the sound that points to an idea) and signified (the idea a sound evokes) breaks down. This isn’t usually a problem in conversation…. In order to perform a song (or a sonata or a play), you need […]

The American Choral Directors Association cares about the choral instrument in worship. Because we care, ACDA is sponsoring a conference for musicians working with the choral instrument in worship settings. The event is called One Song, and I invite interested choral conductors, and particularly conductors new to this area, to join us in Atlanta on […]

Leading online magazine Salon has a feature article interviewing choir director Ralph Opacic about the impact Glee is having on existing high school show choirs. A sample: How has "Glee" warped expectations of what a show choir is? Many of us have distinct memories of being in a show choir growing up, and New Directions […]

My excellent Samford student Chris Barbee pointed this article out to me about composer Jason Robert Brown’s confrontation of copyright abusers.   It is a long story, but many of you will find it fascinating.   Here is how it began: Four thousand copies of my music were being offered for “trade.” (I put “trade” […]