the concert

Posted on February 11, 2012 by jpolberg

J – Yes, I know it’s a little late. I am feeling a little guilty about taking this long… but here it is. THE CONCERT! Of course most of you know- EVERYTHING that could go wrong in the couple of weeks prior, will!  The program will not be printed in time, your pianist may miss part of dress rehearsal because you told her the wrong time, some microphone is apt to break and of course the tech person may not be there to help, a basketball game will be scheduled at the same time and students WILL be forced to make a decision, and the whole time you are wishing “ Why didn’t I wear a sweater with more breathable fabric?”

First- THE SCHEDULE!  Middle School chorus meets two times a week for 35 minutes and Upper School meets for an hour on Wednesday and 30 minutes on Friday. Neither ensemble is graded but fulfills a performing arts credit that all students need to graduate.

Back in January we had our first 6-12 Chorus concert of the year. It was a small program of about 6 pieces  lasting about 35 minutes long. As I see it, you can focus on preparing pieces for the concert or you can focus on developing skills. If you choose to focus on the first the second will suffer, but if you choose to focus on the second the first will only get better. The only thing is… you might have to cut a few pieces!  I wanted to focus on the “hows, whats, and whys” of being a good singer and musician. We took time to sight read, work on tone, learn how to identify key signatures, listen to examples of  good choirs, develop good posture and breathing habits, and assess all of this throughout the process. Consequently, we cut about 3 pieces in all.

This was a big decision that I was battling throughout the semester- the idea of putting together a well-received product can be a little…well …mind numbing (Especially when its your first at a new school). The kids are going to be disappointed and they are going to want to sing more. What are their families going to think? What is the school going to think? We worked for four months and only sang two pieces in Middle School, three in Upper School and one combined piece. And I said “welp..ISN”T IT OBVIOUS?” The amount of growth these students have made over the past four months is incredible. They didn’t just learn the notes and rhythms of a few songs.. they became musicians. They learned the process and no matter how many times they said “Ms. Olberg can we sing it on text?” They knew why I did it and could instantly see the benefits. Eventually .. I was hearing “Can we sing it on numbers?” Growth was taking place and whether we showcased this through 1 or 15 songs, to me this is what matters.

I truly believe the audience heard that. They saw the pride in the kids faces. I also wanted to let everyone into our classroom, as I did with the 4/5 concert when the audience sightread together, and we did this by we learning and performing “Freedom is Coming” that night. I hadn’t told the students what was going to happen, but I did tell them to go have a seat somewhere in the audience before the last combined piece.

I was MILDLY freaking out because this WAS a big risk. They could choose not to sing, I could fumble through words and confuse the whole room, or any number of things (trust me I came up with many).. I made several plans and in the end forgot about all of them. By the end of this process the entire room was up and singing in 4 part harmony- students, faculty, parents and friends (I could hear Rob wailing the Tenor part from the back row). They got a glimpse of what it takes to sing as an ensemble. I just regret not having a video camera to catch the beauty of an entire room of people unexpectedly coming together to sing.

I believe it was a success- not because we prepared a number of audience favorites, or because we sang pop songs, or even because we had big ensembles (we don’t). It was because the concert was a BYPRODUCT of the learning PROCESS. We didn’t spend the entire semester preparing for our concert.. we spent it learning and when January came around we were pretty proud to present our growth to the audience.

Posted in Etcetera, Performance | 1 Comment

what does it take

Posted on February 11, 2012 by mllama4

R – I watched last night as a wonderful friend and colleague of mine, Dr. Sandra Howard of Keene State College, warmed up her own Chamber Singers along side those of York and Brunswick High Schools. She is on tour with them this week and did a 2 hour workshop with the three choirs at YHS. As she was warming them up, I noted that about 32.7 seconds into it she had them completely in the palm of her hand. Completely.

Why? How?

There are several things that jumped out at me. First, she connected with the singers as people. No stuffiness, no head games, no self concerned “agenda”, no baggage, no timidness, she simply got up there and engaged them as young adults. This establishes a trust factor that can’t be duplicated any other way. It’s a conviction that the people in front of you are exceedingly valuable, and you have the ability to transmit to them that you feel that way.

Second, she was real. It was evident from the start she was being herself… and herself is a pretty amazing person. She is gregarious and energetic, but it is an extension of her personality. I know Sandi. I know she can be extraordinarily reflective and thoughtful. She is a great listener. But she possesses the capacity to love the process of creating music to a very high degree. And she shows it. And it’s real.

Third, she knows her stuff. Right away she was engaging the students in unique, creative exercises which were developing immediate results… and the students could hear it. I saw them looking around and thinking to themselves, “wow, this is weird, but wow do we sound good!” As the warmup progressed the satisfaction on the singers faces only grew and their sound developed into something really special.

How should we engage our singers? Sandi reflected three starting points that serve as a pretty great foundation for any conductor. It’s not enough to be good at your craft  (you’ve got to be great… and that requires continuous study). It’s not enough to be enthusiastic (it has to be natural; it has to be you). And it’s not good enough to simply relate to your singers as people (although it’s the essential foundation). You need a wonderful conglomeration of all three. And I’d submit that establishing just one of those qualities – any one of those qualities – is a full time job. Establishing two or, in Sandi’s case, all three? That’s a work of art. It’s something for all of us to strive for.

Posted in Etcetera, Rehearsal | 6 Comments

problems vs. symptoms

Posted on January 28, 2012 by mllama4

R – The tenors are flat. Is that a problem? No. The altos still miss the A sharp on measure 32. Is that a problem? No. The choir doesn’t watch very well. Is that a problem? No. None of these are problems at all.

They’re symptoms.

One of the profound traps we fall into in rehearsals is mistaking symptoms for problems. When there are “problems” of intonation, I would argue that 98% of the time the real issue is not the intonation. Rather, it’s what’s causing the symptom of intonation issues, i.e. the real problem. And the cool thing for a director in rehearsal is that the solution to the problem is rarely the same. The tenors are flat… is it a posture issue? Address THAT. Is their tone the cause? Address THAT. Are they aiming for the note instead of just above it? Address THAT. Are they singing high notes with neck tension? Unsupported breath? Perhaps a difficult interval to hear? Address that!!!

I have a conviction that one of the primary goals  – perhaps even the primary goal – of a rehearsal technician is not just to hear symptoms (intonation, missed notes, watching, etc) but to be a round-the-clock sleuth and identify the problems that are causing those symptoms. And when those problems get continually addressed in an ongoing process through both thoughtful rehearsal and warmup practices, then the symptoms begin to disappear. This is not only the great challenge in any rehearsal but also among the most fun things a director gets to do in running an effective rehearsal! Don’t forget: symptoms are not problems, and fixing symptoms brings only limited returns at best. Identify the real problems, address them, and then watch your ensembles blossom further!

Posted in Rehearsal | 2 Comments

guido d’arezzo would have preferred a pc?

Posted on January 21, 2012 by mllama4

R – For any debate of solfege vs. numbers, let’s establish a few things. First, solfege 1) has easier, more singing friendly vowels for all notes including chromatics, 2) uses a maximium of 2 phonemes (units of sound), 3) works in all languages, 4) incorporates hand signs that are naturally incorporated into solfege practice. Second, numbers 1) possess no learning curve whatsoever, 2) incorporates hand signs that are naturally incorporated into basic number practice, 3) relate directly to all studies of music theory. I’m sure there are more pros for each that I haven’t mentioned, but these are some basics.

Which is better?

The Apple vs. PC debate is an apt analogy to me. Does each have pros? Yes. Does each have cons? Yes. Is one better than the other? It depends. It depends on preference. It depends on familiarity. It depends on function. It depends on resources (financial). It depends on support (infrastructure). Are there biases on either side of the debate? Of course there are.

Here’s my take on numbers and solfege: it goes back to the why. Do I want to incorporate a system that develops the reading skills in a sequential elementary through College setting? Solfege. Do I want to take an apathetic High School Junior who hasn’t sung since 5th grade and takes my one semester chorus class and make him musically literate within 4 months? Numbers. Do I want to utilize a system that naturally incorporates the half steps? Solfege. Do I want to teach reading skills to the adult learner in my Community Chorus? Numbers. Do I want to utilize a system that easily incorporates good tone and phonation? Solfege. Do I want to utilize a system that requires the singer to consciously analyze their tone placement and phonation out of necessity? Numbers. Do I want to use the universally “accepted” system of teaching reading skills? Solfege. Do I want to utilize a system that immediately translates to Music Theory? Numbers. Do I have a rehearsal schedule that allows me to invest the time into teaching my students a new musical language to the point of functional literacy? Solfege. Do I have a rehearsal schedule that limits my ability to teach my students a new musical language to the point of functional literacy? Numbers.

York, Maine teaches solfege at the Middle school level and numbers at the High School level. “That’s confusing, isn’t it?” Yup. For almost a day. Sometimes even two. “But you can’t use hand signs with the High School kids.” Have you ever held up fingers in the air and had students sing those pitches? “Numbers are unnatural to sing though.” You mean, unlike the text my singers are going to have to sing on those exact same notes in the next phase of learning the music? “But it is difficult to use numbers if you also use them for rhythms/count singing.” Yes it can be. That’s why it’s called academic rigor.

The singers who learned solfege in York Middle School arrive at YHS with reading skills I only wish I had when I was their age. Solfege rocks. The most egregious thing I subject them to is the ability to fluently read music with two distinct systems by the time they go to College, and those who weren’t in Middle School Chorus are also able to sight read. Numbers rocks.

Mac vs. PC. Solfege vs. Numbers. Which is better? It depends.

Posted in Etcetera, Rehearsal | 8 Comments

lessons learned

Posted on January 8, 2012 by mllama4

R – The reason I went into music education was less to do with music and more to do with the personal impact I saw a powerful music program make on my peers when I was in High School. I suspect I’m not alone in that. Once a music teacher however, we are required to be held accountable for musical elements taught, practiced and mastered by our students. Yet that’s both the joy and the frustration, because we also want to get to the heart of the matter: our students. How do we reach them? How do we teach them about them?

My chorus midterm exam every year is a 5 paragraph essay. It always offers multiple essay options, including correlating Kohlberg’s 6 stages of moral reasoning to chorus (mwaa, haa, haaaa…). But it also always emphasizes one thing regardless of which reflective essay they choose: their grade will be based almost exclusively on their thorough substantiation of their opinion. The point to this? The “what” you say is not nearly as important as the “why” you say it. Lesson #1. Lesson #2 is the story I tell about the year I had a student rip me to shreds in their midterm… “you teach by intimidation”, “you talk a good game but don’t really know what’s going on”, etc. Yet she proceeded to follow up every one of her three points with thoughtful, insightful, supporting observations on the matter. She received an A-. She didn’t spell check very well and there were errors in punctuation so she didn’t ace it, but it was still an A-. She had earned it. I took her aside after I turned them back and she was dumbfounded. She expected me to fail her because she didn’t believe that someone would actually stick to their guns and follow through on the premise that the grade will reflect the support given the arguments. I told her that I disagreed with every single statement she made. She was also the only one out of 118 students to feel the way she did. But she supported her opinions thoughtfully and articulately and that was the point. It turned her around in some key ways, and to this day I am so proud of that. I also had a student write glowingly about me that year, how I was the greatest thing ever and my course was the most awesome they’d ever taken. They also didn’t support a word of what they wrote; no examples or justifications were written to support the statements. Guess what grade the student received?

And perhaps you don’t think the word got out that chorus was a class where your opinion mattered as long as you were respectful and articulate?

I also developed an exercise called “question box” where once every year or two, the chorus will walk in to class, I hand them a piece of paper and ask them to write down a question for me (without their names on them), personal or professional, theoretical or practical, serious or funny. I then collect everyone’s anonymous questions in a box and spend the class answering the questions. I toss aside any that are inappropriate but actually go through the process of answering all the rest. And some of the topics that come out of those questions, and the class discussion that follows (teen drinking, cheating, relationships, family, honesty, faith, decision making), well, some of those classes have been the most valuable of my career. I know I get to hit on topics that are near and dear to my students, and many times a student has come to see me privately as a follow-up to ask more questions, seek advice on something that came up or to thank me. They realize that teachers aren’t just there for the coursework… they realize that teachers are always there for them as people too. And that is perhaps the greatest lesson I get to teach them.

Posted in Etcetera, Rehearsal | 4 Comments

concert apple seeds

Posted on December 14, 2011 by mllama4

R – This is “concert month” for music teachers virtually everywhere. I saw Matt Murray’s Gorham High School singers Sunday, Jarika’s 4/5 singers at Waynflete last night and I’ve gotten a few concerts of my own in the books already. It is a strange feeling, observing the audience either from the podium or from their own perspective. What are they thinking? What’s going through their heads? And why should that be of any consequence if it is all about the music education (the process and rehearsals that led up to the performance)?

Our concerts reflect and represent so many things. But as I like to remind myself and others, sometimes you need a blessing to walk into your life, and other times you provide the blessing that someone else needed without your even knowing.

My first High School I went to as a teenager was a private “college prep” school the next town over from me. I wanted to be challenged further and figured that going to a private school would be an improvement over my home town High School (I was wrong, but IMG_1828that’s a conversation for another day). That private school had no music program. For my first two and a half years, I wasn’t involved in one at all. Then, during my Junior year, a friend of mine told me that I had to come hear the local High School Christmas Concert he was in. I gave in and went. The concert began with the lights going out in a 1,000 seat concert hall that was packed. Down the aisles came 180 singers with candles singing Silent Night, arranged by Malcom Sargent. 180 singers out of a school of 400. 180 singers including every member of the state championship basketball team later that year. 180 teenagers all of whom were from my own home town. I was reduced to tears before the song even finished and the rest of the night I had what Ben Zander calls “shiny eyes”.

Just under 4 weeks later my transfer to my local High School was complete and the next year and a half inspired me to the point of realizing what I had to spend the rest of my life on earth doing, getting to touch the lives of thousands of people along the way.

All from one song at a High School Christmas Concert in northeastern Connecticut in December, 1981.

Don’t assume that you know the impact your concerts have on people. You don’t. Don’t think that the notes – right and wrong ones – are what your audience is always paying attention to. They’re not. Don’t think that your concerts aren’t a blessing to someone’s life who you may not even know. They are. Last night I saw parents glowing when Jarika began the concert by having the audience sight read along with their children. Yeah, sight read. Sunday afternoon I saw pride in that audience at Gorham High School that was something truly special. At my concert Monday I turned around to bow and saw faces in the audience I’ve never seen before – and wondered what they were thinking…

… that we largely don’t get to see the trees behind us doesn’t discount the fact that we dropped the seeds along the way from which so many of them grew. And it doesn’t discount that those trees are very, very real. And it doesn’t discount how genuinely magical this time of year is for us in music education if we stop to reflect on that. My only wish for my colleagues this month is that they pause just long enough to take the moment in; providing the blessing that others needed or didn’t even see coming. A microcosm of what our lives can be.

Dropping the apple seeds.

Malcom Sargent’s Silent Night

Posted in Etcetera | 3 Comments

isolated disciplines

Posted on December 10, 2011 by mllama4

R – Robert Shaw used to have at the core of his philosophy that each of the choral disciplines must be mastered and they must be mastered independently in order for a choir to do the job of re-creating another person’s work (the music). He articulated these as intonation, rhythmic precision, singing with a variety of dynamics and tone colors, communicative diction, and phrasing. The problem is that singers intuitively lean on at least one of these to master another. The last two for instance almost seem contradictory (articulation post). Intonation is influenced heavily by dynamics and tone color. Rhythmic precision is rarely accomplished because the singer normally does not nail it down without text first. Along those lines, here’s a few things to experiment with for the purpose of getting singers to understand each of these as stand alone entities:

1) An amazing thing happens when you remove the text from a selection of music that has already been learned and instead ask the choir to sing on “doot”; short bursts of tone that are not sustained regardless of sustained notes on the page:  

                                                                             becomes

Your singers might be surprised to find that the rhythms are not as secure as they thought they were. “Yeah, but we can do it good on words and the real notes”. Of course you can. You’re leaning on one discipline to accomplish another and not mastering either. It will never clean up to the same degree until you take it apart.

2) Conversely, try taking away pitch differentiation and see how the rhythms and diction line up! Take any selection of music you’re working on and have your singers sing it, except now you’re going to make it “easier” for them: instead of singing all those different notes, just sing the whole thing on one assigned pitch (and keep it in tune)!  

Initially they can’t do it. Try it, see if I’m wrong (note that the basses and sopranos ears have to be good enough to maintain the tritone). Shaw did this routinely with his choirs. Why? In part to make sure that none of the choral disciplines were dictated by change in pitch. Singers subconsciously equate the text and rhythms they’re supposed to sing with the pitches they learned to sing them on! This practice of singing on nonsense notes works in undoing that. And then when you throw the real notes back in, it’s a revelation! And see what good things that got developed on the nonsense notes completely disappear again when you add the real ones back in! 🙂

3) Finally, take the following routine warmup exercise on “neh – aw”: 

I have literally never had a choir sing this without changing the dynamics based on how high the notes are… does pitch dictate dynamics or are dynamics an independent entity? Try this: do the exercise above with the additional instruction of having the dynamics go conversely to the height of the pitch; the loudest notes will be on G, A will be a bit quieter and so on. The D is to be the quietest note of all. See if your singers can do it. And once they can, are they able to continue doing so as they continue the exercise going up by half steps?

Mastering the choral disciplines is a hallmark of a genuinely musical choir that truly understands each one as a stand alone entity, and allows them to bring a composer’s dream “back to life” without allowing their subjective, musical biases to get in the way. Once a song is “learned”, try one of these on for size and see what you and your singers find out.

ps… does this sound like a cappella listening – part 2????

Posted in Music is work, Rehearsal, Warmups | 3 Comments

a cappella listening – part 1

Posted on December 2, 2011 by mllama4

R – Jarika and I were talking about her rehearsal today and some breakthrough moments she and her students experienced. As a related sidebar, she commented how strange it was that she now prefers being her own accompanist in rehearsals even though she is not a piano player. I’ve always felt the same way and we talked about why. One reason I prefer it is that my rehearsal pace and “brain motor” work more quickly and more efficiently when I’m on my own. But the other reason for me is that I become more of an “a cappella listener”. And I have never used that phrase before but I am so glad it came to mind! We talk about the benefits of a cappella singing to our singers, but what an awesome thing to have to do it as a director… think about it: the piano is, in part, a percussion instrument – which by definition works against the natural flow of phrasing. And even when it tries, the rehearsal piano is incapable of simulating a rainbow phrase to the same degree that the human voice can. The piano is incapable of subdividing microscopic components of text into meter.

And the piano covers up singers’ musical sins. And lots of ’em.

Rehearsing without piano forces the conductor to become acutely analytical of why (there’s that word again!) something isn’t working. Take pitch accuracy for instance, you really can only fall into one of two categories as a rehearsal technician: you identify the wrong note as the problem, or you understand wrong notes to be symptoms of other issues. When you rehearse with piano, you are completely limited to hearing wrong notes. When you rehearse a cappella, you are suddenly able to train yourself to understand wrong notes as symptoms, and THEN you begin to HEAR and address the actual issues that cause those wrong notes; those issues become the primary concerns of your rehearsal. A cappella listening! More on this topic soon!!!

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articulation

Posted on November 26, 2011 by mllama4

R – I say it as often as I can: “Singing is fun, but music is work. The reason we commit to the work is because it’s a labor of love.” Articulation is a sticky subject for me because if my first and foremost concern with any choir I conduct is tone, articulation works against it. If you don’t believe me, try this out with your own choir: do a warmup that establishes good tone, and then go right into a warmup that requires good articulation. Assuming you really did establish a tone of balanced ring and loft in the first warmup, I dare you to tell me your choir’s tone didn’t change during the second. You fix the tone and then the articulation isn’t as crisp.

Why?

I think we can easily overlook how radically difficult is is to establish both in equal measure. Let’s presupposition that to get an adequate balance of ring (resonance) and loft (openness without tension) we have to ask our singers to explore more loft in their sound because many – most? – of them already utilize their speaking voice (ring) to sing. Adding loft means removing the emphasis away from the articulators such as the teeth, tip of the tongue, etc. This can accomplish a mature tone produced without tension, retaining the qualities of the speaking voice that are desirable (ring) while incorporating  an open sound (loft). The problem is that as soon as a singer begins to articulate, the sound immediately comes forward again and the loft dissipates. The interesting thing to me is that a wonderful tone can take many weeks, months or years to produce, but articulation is something we already can do! The problem is that we have to re-learn how to articulate while sustaining tone. And THAT requires hard work and concentration. Do we insist on it from our singers? Does our tone change when we have good articulation? How about articulating while sustaining phrasing? Do we inadvertently accent and clip our phrases when we articulate?

The Robert Shaw Chorale was and is my standard for incorporating articulation. It was not “talent” or ability that made their articulation extraordinary while maintaining exquisite tone and phrasing. It was something more basic than that. It was hard work. Our singers must make a commitment to the musical attribute of articulation without sacrificing any of the other musical attributes. Listen to this recording of the Robert Shaw Chorale singing Bring A Torch Jeanette Isabella and I think you’ll get the picture.

traditional: “ChrieeST ihs boRn, ahnD Mar-eee’s Call-ING, ah…”

Shaw at 0:09 “Chri sti sboo na ndmaa rysca lih ngah…”

Ask your choirs to find the balance and see where it leads.

Posted in Music is work | Leave a comment

pop music

Posted on November 22, 2011 by mllama4

J – A teacher raised a question today.. Why don’t you perform pop music?

I thought about it for a second. There are a lot of things I could have said, but this is what I came up with.

1. They already know sooo much about POP music, and I want to introduce them to other genres that they may not experience otherwise. 

2. I don’t choose music based on text, or whether it is sacred or secular. If I can have a general theme then great, and if not that is great too. I think about the needs/capabilities of my students, strengths and weaknesses, and my goals for them as an ensemble. These are the goals I provided for her:

Tone!!! (round and head dominant)..introducing certain rhythmic elements..meters… pure vowels to help incorporate head voice… harmonic qualities that they are capable of singing but will challenge them on different levels, music that may appear simple but will challenge them expressively and force them do to something with it musically.

3. Vocal Technique- Pop music today is essentially chest-dominant, and basically that is all any child of this generation hears unless they are in a music class or chorus that encourages them to sing in their head voice (or light fuzzy voice as I tell my fourth graders).  I feel very strongly that students of all ages needs to develop their head voice (even if that means singing completely in that voice until 10th grade) before they even begin to transition to using their chest voice in the lower register.

Try listening to a pop singer sing classical music and then listen to a classical singer sing pop music.. This speaks for itself.

Along those lines.. I found this article pretty interesting!

It is a little scary when people question what I am doing, but it also feels good to be able to talk to people about the WHY 🙂

❤ J

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