Sample Choral Warm Up

Warm-up Script

Breathing/ Posture INHALE> lift arms to sides and stretch overhead EXHALE>release arms back down to mountain pose. Your feet are firmly planted in the ground, like an old tree whose roots have been growing for hundreds or years. INHALE> Your breath is energy, rising up from the earth through your trunk EXHALE> and releasing out through the top of your head. *on the next exhale, release arms towards the floor hinge from the hips and let your torso fall down into ragdoll. Stay here for a couple breaths. Your knees should be bent. As you inhale, notice any tensions your upper body might be holding and on your exhale release a little further into the pose. Your entire upper body feels like meat hanging off the bones. INHALE>as you inhale your way out of this pose, imagine that each vertebrae is aligning above your tailbone, starting from the lowest bone, one by one. The last vertebrae is in your head. Gently let the weight of your head roll around, finding its balance point with the rest of the spine. The spine is not forced into a straight line but rather is upright and healthily balanced. *draw spine on board Shoulders: Up-down-middle, forth-back-middle. Singing Posture: Your body is comfortably aligned but to sing healthily and to the best of your ability, it helps to make some slight adjustments. Your feet are still firmly rooted in the ground. As you inhale and feel your belly expand, imagine a shelf is being placed under your ribcage when its at its highest natural position. Your head is balanced without overusing any neck muscles. There are three strings attaching a helium balloon to the top vertebrae in your head and your two shoulders, helping you to stay tall as your muscles relax. As you inhale silently your throat feels open and your shoulders stay heavy. Breathing/ Posture/ Phonation: Ascending then descending a fifth, another fifth, then a ninth. He he he he, he he he he, hay hay hay hay, hay hay hay hay, haw haw haw haw, haw haw haw haw, haw haw haw haw, haw haw haw haw, haaaaw. Each syllable should be hard work for the abdomen, necessitating a belly breath full of air support. Set a slow pace. *start on D major and ascend by semitones. Breathing/Posture/Articulation: INHALE>set pace and audiate pitch EXHALE>Descending a fifth. Ooee ooee ooee ooee oooo. Exaggerate each vowel change. *start on D major and descend by semitones. Breathing/ Posture/ Range stretching: Say mhmmm! As if agreeing with your friend on the telephone, descending to the bottom of your range then ascending to the top. Inhale and exhale on your own time, staggered breathing when needed. The point is to feel your entire range on your own time, not to listen to the group or to complete the activity quickly. Change to uhhhuhh!, gradually opening to a full a vowel. Use rising hand gestures while pitch descends and lowering hand gestures while pitch ascends. This helps promote a healthy tone (i.e. demotes “pushing”). Breathing/ Posture/ Resonance/ Listening: Stand in a semicircle with basses at the center. No piano. One base chooses a pitch. The other bases listen carefully and join the pitch to add volume. After listening carefully and first audiating fifth above, the sopranos join. Then altos very softly add the major third. If tuning is off, start over. Sopranos change pitch rising one semi-tone, then return. Altos lower one semitone. Sopranos lower one semitone. Bases lower one semitone. Always allow time to listen in between changes.

In Chapter 5, Williams talks about the importance of breathing and posture and notes their interdependence. She says, good alignment is a direction not a position. I think it is a great idea to explain posture to kids this way. When being forced to stand in "singing position", students tire easily and feel that posture is a chore. Explaining balance in terms of direction encourages openness and alignment, directing the head up without forming negative habits such as pulling the head forward or pulling the chin up. I like that Williams includes a section about different musical styles that kids may want to explore, but I wish this section was more detailed. She briefly mentions the possible issues with children copying the adult voice but the issue is glossed over and no practical solutions for teachers are provided.

Williams introduces singing through a Darwinian lens, noting that "Raw emotive vocal gestures such as wailing...laughing, shrieking and sobbing are much closer to singing than speech. Because of these emotional roots, singing has the power to move us. With or without words, we can understand the emotional message on an intuitive level". I think this is an excellent way to help children understand the importance of singing. This argument could also be used when defending choral programs to parents and school administrators. I like the idea of using the voice as organically as possible, avoiding and "forcing" that may occur when trying to mimic other singers. This notion is reinforced by Williams' opening argument. Exploring the voice's natural capacity to produce a variety of sounds can and should be done during the choral warm-up.

A certainly had and AHA moment while reading Chapter 8 of "Vocal Technique". I always had thought that "falsetto" and "head voice" were synonymous terms. Again, this book has really opened my mind to all the areas of vocal technique that I need to further research and explore. I would tend to encourage singers to use their "natural" range assuming this would be the most comfortable and healthy, but I have spoken to my colleagues and have changed my thinking towards realizing the potential of teaching falsetto. One of my colleagues feels the most comfortable using his falsetto range, and many students may feel the same way. Some transgender students may choose to sing in their falsetto range, and this can be executed healthily and should be encouraged.

I believe that vibrato is way overused by amateur singers, and is often "forced". Singers hear vibrato on recordings and attempt to mimic it by waving pitches up and down. Vibrato sounds and feels best when it occurs naturally, as the voice rings like a perfectly tuned string. Although I don't know much about vocal technique or vibrato production, David's chapter on vibrato confirms these suspicions for me. I am going to talk with my colleagues and further learn some ways to address the vibrato issue as a teacher - are there ways to discourage unnatural vibrato in the classroom or should the topic be avoided entirely?

Davids describes how to sing consonants quickly and efficiently, which is an important lesson. Preceding the beat helps students to feel "in the pocket", which is especially difficult in group settings. Slow consonants contribute to lagging tempos, which quickly can kill the energy of a choral sound. I think this principal is generally undervalued in choral settings. Davids also provides a list of problematic consonants, and provides some solutions to overcome their difficulties.

Watching the Shallaway choir this semester, I noticed they use the IPA system. This seems to work really well for them, and I can see the benefits of teaching phonetic vowels. Not only do they help with vocal vowel production, they can help ESL students with English and can be transferred to singing in many other languages such as French or Latin. Some argue that it adds an unnecessary layer of difficulty for young students, but I believe in "setting the bar high" and giving students the opportunity to rise to that challenge. The IPA alphabet can be taught to any age group if explanations and pace are tailored to their learning level. Learning IPA vowels can reduce the need to explain how a vowel feels in the mouth, eliminating tedious explanations in the future and proactively eliminating vowel issues. Davids IPA discussion helps me to formulate the language and knowledge necessary to teach IPA vowels to my future students.