Repertoire Post #2

Hope Is the Thing with Feathers, Kenny Potter (SATB) - MS mixed choir

•Why this piece is worthy of consideration:

 -  I like that the piece is in 7/8 and 8/8, which gives rhythmic variety in a compound meter as opposed to the same old duple. Also, it's an SATB piece for middle school, so it should definitely be looked at!

•The ensemble for which the piece will be appropriate:

 - This would be best for an intermediate to advanced middle school mixed choir. There is a lot of parallel motion and some independence between the lines, so I would not give this to a beginning choir.

 

•Discuss range/tessitura and how the piece works for singers:

- Soprano: low D - E, this gets the female voices into all parts of their developing ranges

- Alto: low C - B, the part stays around D and E, so it doesn't go super low, but I wish it went a little higher

- Tenor: G - F#, the part is mostly around B and only goes up to the C or higher by step, so it should be manageable

- Bass: low C - C, the part hovers around the G, so it stays out of the range where holes may be for changing voices

•What musical ideas can be taught:

-compound meter, phrases, interacting parts across the choir, sustained breath/notes

 

•What about the text is worthy of singing:

- The text is by Emily Dickinson so it is "real" text instead of middle school fluff text.

 

•What, if any, material should be adapted/re-written:

-  The basses need to sustain a high C, which may need to be re-written depending on the voices in the choir.

Repertoire Post #1

Bright Morning Stars (SSAA), Jay Althouse - HS Women's Choir

•Why this piece is worthy of consideration:

 - This piece is really great for working on blend and open vowels. Also, it has 4-part, which I really like for developing a more advanced female choir. Bright Morning Stars is also a folk song, so it has some really nice text and is also preserving US folk songs/history, which I like.

•The ensemble for which the piece will be appropriate:

 - This would be best for an advanced high school choir. The piece requires a lot of technique to keep the vowels open even in high registers. It also requires good breath control because of the longer phrases.

•Discuss range/tessitura and how the piece works for singers:

-  Soprano 1: G - E, vowels need to be open and clear, singers need to sing without tension

- Soprano 2: E - E, open vowels so that the singer can move throughout the octave comfortably

- Alto 1: low C - C, singers need to keep the voice light as it goes lower

- Alto 2: low G - G, this is low for some altos so part assignment is critical

•What musical ideas can be taught:

- Phrasing, blend across the choir, open vowels, dynamics/musicality

•What about the text is worthy of singing:

- The text reminds of a spiritual, and the whole song has that feel so it is really powerful.

•What, if any, material should be adapted/re-written:

-  Depending on the choir, the low G in the second alto part may need to be re-written

Haslett HS Select Women's Choir - Observation #8/Teaching #3

This past Tuesday was my last observation at Haslett. Ms. Valla is prepping the choir for State S+E and District Choral performances, so it was a very tight rehearsal, but she had me lead a sightreading exercise today in preparation.

I was leading the exercise for State S+E, which means that the group could sing individually if they wanted, but nothing as a group. Instead, everything has to be talked about, but specific intervals from the excerpt could not be sung.

I started with the unison line and I pointed out a couple of interval things, such as a minor triad in the second measure. I also asked the group to tell me what the key signature (6/8) and time signature (b-flat Major) meant and where Do was on the staff. Ms. Valla told me not to have the group sing through it individually because she wanted to see how they did without that step of preparation.

I brought in the group (or tried to) by showing the second macro beat of 6/8 before they came in, but it was not very clear as the group took a different tempo. When this happened, I started snapping micro beats, because I remembered that Ms. Valla has done this previously. I forgot that this was allowed in sight reading. The group did the unison line very well, so we went to two-part. The added line was very straight forward, mostly stepwise motion. I asked if anyone saw anything that they had questions about and nobody did, so I cued them to start the two-part lines. Again, I tried to show the second macro beat, but the group carried over the previous tempo from the unison line.

After two-part, we looked at the 3-part line. There were a couple instances of So-Do jumps, which I pointed out by asking students to tell me what the last note of a measure was to the first note of the next measure (where the jump was). The group identified the jump relatively easily. The other thing I pointed out was that there was a lot of dialogue back and forth between the 3 lines, which I asked the group to bring out. I also asked them to pay attention to the marked dynamics and bring those out. The reading went really well and all of the musicality things were brought out, which was really cool.

Ms. Valla said overall thing went really well and she liked my process. She suggested either conducting a whole measure to bring the group in or snapping a full measure to bring the full group in to make the first notes clearer. However, she said that was the only thing she would change. She thought my talk through was really clear and touched on all the things she would point out as well, which I thought was really cool.

I've really enjoyed having an opportunity to watch this group for the past couple of months and I feel like I learned a lot watching Ms. Valla teach. This experience also gave me confidence in front of a choir, which I didn't really have since I see myself as an instrumentalist not a vocalist. I'm really glad I got to work with this group!

Haslett HS Select Women's Choir - Observation #7

Today was a normal observation as Ms. Valla did not have any opportunity for me to lead a sectional or warm up. The group is competing in state Solo and Ensemble next week Friday as well as District Choral Festival on Thursday, so Ms. Valla is really pushing for performance readiness right now. Also, Tuesday was a short rehearsal because parent/teacher conferences started at 3pm.

Because of the shortened rehearsal, work consisted of run throughs of both pieces ("Dance on my Heart" and "Bright Morning Stars") with targeted work as it came up. The group began with "Dance" and I noticed a big improvement on facial expressions and movement from last week. Also, the group was a lot more musical and had much greater dynamic contrast than before. Ms. Valla must have really targeted these things on the Thursday rehearsal because they sounded great and everyone was very engaged in the performance.

After "Dance", the group switched to "Bright Morning Stars". The focus on this piece is maintaining an open sound, even when the notes go higher. This allows for the piece to float and not be strained at all in the voice. It also allows for the sections to blend easier, as this piece has a few staggered entrances that are supposed to sound seamless - you are not supposed to know when a new soloist or section enters. Just like last week, the three soloists at the beginning are wavering on pitch and end up going flat as new soloists enter (or the first soloist began very sharp - it's hard to tell which because the piece is a cappella). However, when the whole choir entered and the pitch settled, the blend and the tone quality was absolutely beautiful. Vowels were very tall and, again, there was a large dynamic contrast throughout the work. I got goosebumps listening to them.

Unlike "Dance", the girls were not moving very much at all on "Bright", which Ms. Valla pointed out. She said that while the piece is technically correct, there is not a lot of emotional connection yet because the singers are not as engaged facially or with their body like they are on "Dance". She also said that there is no connection with their breathe because of the lack of movement, which helps with the emotional connection. This is going to be their main focus next week on their final rehearsals.

Because this group is so close to two rated performances, Ms. Valla is not comfortable allowing me to lead part of the rehearsal. She said she is very possessive of this particular group because of how little she sees them and won't allow her student teacher to lead the group either. However, she is going to let me lead a sight reading exercise next week in preparation for State S+E, which means nothing can be sung before the whole exercise is sung, except for a scale and tonal chord patterns (Do Mi So Mi Do, La Fa Re Ti Do). Instead, potential hard intervals can be discussed, but not sung.

I have really enjoyed watching and working with this group and I'm sad that next week is my last observation with them.

Sightreading Exercise

Haslett HS Select Women's Choir - Observation #6/Teaching #2

This past Tuesday, I was able to lead a few more warm ups with the choir. The rest of the rehearsal was spent preparing for District Choral Festival, which was rescheduled for next week after being cancelled due to weather.

Ms. Valla started the warm ups and then had me lead a couple at the end. Since the choir is used to singing with some kind of pitch underneath them, Ms. Valla had suggested that I either play simple chords on the piano while they were singing, or hold "do" while they sang the exercise. I opted for holding "do" had having the choir sing above that.

I started with the alphabet warm up by modeling it once. Then I sustained "do" while they sung the exercise. At the end of the first sequence, I sang "now here" with my pitch moved up a half step. This seemed to work, but when I did it the next time, the choir did not match my pitch and began on different notes. Ms. Valla stopped them and said that I was giving the starting pitch instead of a piano so they had to be listening to what I was singing. She said the pattern was probably a predictable one (like ascending half steps) but that they had to pay attention since this was different than how they normally warmed up. Once Ms. Valla said this, the girls were able to stay on pitch very well and the problems that happened the first time I lead warm ups (changing keys, not sure of entrances, etc.) did not happen this time.

After the alphabet warm up, I modeled Marcus' warm up of "Sing legato now sing staccato, I-- just want to sing." I sang this for the choir twice because Ms. Valla said they have a similar warm up in terms of notes, but use different words. I saw a couple of the students nod like they liked the warm up though, which was cool to see. This time, the choir stayed on pitch easily with me sustaining the starting pitch for them. As I moved them through the range, I started sustaining the pitch a little shorter time, and the group managed to stay in tune, which I liked.

I talked to Ms. Valla after rehearsal and she said that she thought my warm ups went really well and that the group followed me very well. She said that method of warming up is really good to train choirs with, especially for instances where you may not have a piano around for warm ups (like Festival sometimes in the warm up room). She said if the choir was trained to hear this, that often the director can just give the starting pitch and the choir can stay in tune without anything being sustained. Obviously, this particular choir is not trained for that, but I was glad that it went better than last time.

The rehearsal was fairly typical and similar to what I had seen previously, but Ms. Valla did do something very interesting to get sections to blend better. She called each section down individually and had them sing "La" on a descending C scale. She then positioned the girls from darkest to brightest voice so that when singers added in, they blended seamlessly with one another. Then, she broke the line in half and had the girls stand with the darker voices in the back and the brighter voices in the front row. This whole process was incredibly quick, but it made a huge difference in "Bright Morning Stars," since sections are entering one after another and trying to create seamless blends with each other.

One thing that was really interesting to me is that a couple of the girls were very self-conscious just singing a scale in front of the group by themselves to get blend. "Bright Morning Stars" also starts with 3 solos, and when Ms. Valla was asking for people to sing, the majority of the girls adamantly said no. It surprised me that in this advanced group so many people were afraid or reluctant to sing solos. I remember being in advanced or additional choirs when I was in school, and more often than not, there was a competition for limited solos, which is the opposite of what I saw here. I know everyone auditions to get into this group, which made the reluctance, especially in the blend activity, even more surprising to me. I wonder if this is a confidence thing with individual students or a classroom thing that has to do with how Ms. Valla runs her classes during the day. I haven't seen anything to suggest that a solo would be intimidating to do, but this is the first song with a solo I have observed and this was not the first day people had sung solos, so I don't know for sure how it was set up.

Hayes Middle School Observation - Grand Ledge

I really enjoyed observing Hayes MS this week. And getting all that information was so great! I'm looking forward to being able to thumb through it over break.

I loved watching how engaged Mr. Armstead was with his students. It was so clear that he had a completely safe space for them so that they didn't feel restricted or isolated - especially when he asked them to move. I also loved that he had movement incorporated in everything from warm ups to sight singing to repertoire. He didn't just ask them to move in one setting, but in all of them, which I'm sure makes it more natural to move during pieces since this becomes an integral part of choir as a whole.

I also really liked how there was almost no down time. Having the students repeat what he tells them worked really well to keep the class flowing and keep the class engaged at the same time. He can make sure that they are taking in the information he is giving them and it almost eliminates talking from the students because they are focused on what he is saying. Also, when he gave directions, I noticed that they were very short - usually one or two words - that he could say while the choir sang and get immediate responses with. This allowed him to have significantly more singing than talking in the rehearsal, which is a little different from my Haslett observation.

I found it interesting to watch his personality and what that elicited from the students. Samara in Haslett is always telling the girls in the choir to show the music on their faces more and to move, but her personality is a little more reserved. Mr. Armstead is always in motion it seems and his face is very active - although not mouthing words, which I like. Because of this, his choir moved to the music much easier than in Haslett and their facial expressions were much more engaged than at the High School, which I found very interesting.

In addition to the music stuff, which I loved, I also really liked how music was not the entire focus of the class. It was very clear from the posters around the room to the reading of the day (what a cool way to integrate the English requirement!) that Armstead is focused on developing good citizens, not just good musicians. His room was not just a safe space, but a respectful one where everyone could be vulnerable and grow strong together through shared experiences. To me, this is the real power of music and I loved seeing such a great atmosphere in his classroom. I am more than a music teacher to my students, at least I hope I am, and I want my class room or studio to reflect that just like his did.