[Menvi-discuss] Conducting a choir

Sat Jan 11 13:41:57 UTC 2014

Hello Brian!
I am from Panamá. I used to live in Springfield and studied classical guitar at NOVA. After my AAA I traveled to Argentina where I studied Orch and Choir conducting.
The first thing I believe you have to do is, to figure out what king of choir you want to put together. Poliphonic, adults, youth, instruments or not. Then thy must classify your voices, if you dont know how to do so, ask a singer friend who can help selecting at least your 3 main voices S A AND MEN (regardless of tenor or bass) but if you want get the 4pack at once. You can also find in the internet all kinds of vocal warm ups in pdf formats for free. I recomend you check on the Robert Shaw ones, very help full.
First thing is to get them to sing tunned with unison melodies, everything from classical/popular canons or well know worship music. For a few rehearsals keep doing it until you have a feel of balance, tunning, color etc.
I am speaking from a Poliphonic choir point of view, I have no knowlegde of what you mean by Worship Leader. I target purely about the musical procedure.
Gestures are the less important. Thy shall know the music and texct of every single voice by heart.
If the choir does not read music, teach short logical phrases using "quironimia", not necessary Kodaly, but clear specific heigth level (from belly button to head or above depending on the melodis passage.
Once you get one voice clear, get quickly to the other voice and make them sing together so they get a feel of singing different melodic lines. Specially low voices and soprano first, since alto tend to have more difficult and senseless passages, afterwards they will realize they fill in the richness of the harmony (generally).
Get every day in front of the mirror to practice you tempo marking and pickup"anacrusa" gesture.
As I said before, it all depends on the style of choir you want to put together. 
I f you want easy and fast results get instruments, and sing unison with 6ths or 3drs above or below the principal melody... after that you can try to apply on the basses, I-IV-V-I melodic passages. These are options if you have to arrange your own music for the choir.

By knowing the music by heart everything just flows, My choir in my city in Panama, only two teen know how to read music because they play instruments, the rest just like to sing, no one knows music. Using just a pitch fork, and knowing the music by heart every rehearsal the sing 4 measures of a ramdon back Bach choral W/O text just using lala-nunu etc. Within 6 month of one practice per week they are singing liszt  and elgar´s ave verum corpus, spanish renaisance, salieri canon, madrigals, whitacre, kodaly, bartok etc. two weeks ago i started to send them midis, for home learning. Just usings hand sings, and fast and clear teaching of any melody.

There is a lot more when it comes to choir... it all depends on your spectations.

Alyson Moore Shirk is and excelent conductor and pedagoge, I met her at a Kodaly international festival/seminar in Hungary. she lives in MD.

I hope something of what I said works...
musically yours 
German Pinzon Jimenez

On Saturday, January 11, 2014 8:37 AM, German Pinzon-Jimenez <germanepj at yahoo.com> wrote:

Hello Brian!
I am from Panamá. I used to live in Springfield and studied classical guitar at NOVA. After my AAA I traveled to Argentina where I studied Orch and Choir conducting.
The first thing I believe you have to do is, to figure out what king of choir you want to put together. Poliphonic, adults, youth, instruments or not. Then thy must classify your voices, if you dont know how to do so, ask a singer friend who can help selecting at least your 3 main voices S A AND MEN (regardless of tenor or bass) but if you want get the 4pack at once. You can also find in the internet all kinds of vocal warm ups in pdf formats for free. I recomend you check on the Robert Shaw ones, very help full.
First thing is to get them to sing tunned with unison melodies, everything from classical/popular canons or well know worship music. For a few rehearsals keep doing it until you have a feel of balance, tunning, color etc.
I am speaking from a Poliphonic choir point of view, I have no knowlegde of what you mean by Worship Leader. I target purely about the musical procedure.
Gestures are the less important. Thy shall know the music and texct of every single voice by heart.
If the choir does not read music, teach short logical phrases using "quironimia", not necessary Kodaly, but clear specific heigth level (from belly button to head or above depending on the melodis passage.
Once you get one voice clear, get quickly to the other voice and make them sing together so they get a feel of singing different melodic lines. Specially low voices and soprano first, since alto tend to have more difficult and senseless passages, afterwards they will realize they fill in the richness of the harmony (generally).
Get every day in front of the mirror to practice you tempo marking and pickup"anacrusa" gesture.
As I said before, it all depends on the style of choir you want to put together. 
I f you want easy and fast results get instruments, and sing unison with 6ths or 3drs above or below the principal melody... after that you can try to apply on the basses, I-IV-V-I melodic passages. These are options if you have to arrange your own music for the choir.

By knowing the music by heart everything just flows, My choir in my city in Panama, only two teen know how to read music because they play instruments, the rest just like to sing, no one knows music. Using just a pitch fork, and knowing the music by heart every rehearsal the sing 4 measures of a ramdon back Bach choral W/O text just using lala-nunu etc. Within 6 month of one practice per week they are singing liszt  and elgar´s ave verum corpus, spanish renaisance, salieri canon, madrigals, whitacre, kodaly, bartok etc. two weeks ago i started to send them midis, for home learning. Just usings hand sings, and fast and clear teaching of any melody.

There is a lot more when it comes to choir... it all depends on your spectations.

Alyson Moore Shirk is and excelent conductor and pedagoge, I met her at a Kodaly international festival/seminar in Hungary. she lives in MD.

I hope something of what I said works...
musically yours 
German Pinzon Jimenez

On Saturday, January 11, 2014 6:34 AM, Brian Howerton <bshowerton1 at gmail.com> wrote:

Hello all,
I just recently took a position at a church here in the Richmond 
Virginia area as a worship leader.  I studied worship and music studies 
in college at Liberty University, and I took conducting, but 
unfortunately, my professor gave up on working with me privately on how 
to conduct.  That is the one thing in college that I felt like I really 
missed out on.  So now I am going to have to conduct the choir at the 
church where I serve and I have no idea what to do. Can anyone give any 
conducting tips for someone who has really had no experience doing it at 
all?  Thanks so much for the help,
Brian

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