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!
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