How to Sing in a Choir, According to Champion a Cappella
You don’t need to be a virtuoso to excel in a choir. You need a willingness to practice and learn, as well as a “basic ability to hear and imitate,” says Mira Taferner, artistic director of the Sirens of Gotham a cappella choir. “Fortunately, this is a relatively versatile skill.” Taferner, along with Sirens Deputy Artistic Director Kari Francis and Visual Coordinator Anna Chelak, spoke to Lifehacker about the basics of learning to sing in the chorus – the basics that helped the band win last fall ‘s Sweet Adelines International Harmony Classic Competition with the performance above.
Use What You Already Know
“Most people who join the choir already know more than they think,” says Taferner. If they listen to Western music with any regularity, they can already imitate and copy notes at a basic level and even define harmonies. A cappella singing is built around these easily detectable harmonies. “When certain intervals coincide in a certain way, it’s a pretty natural acoustic phenomenon,” she says. In particular, singing in hairdressing salons is built on harmonies that the average person can notice, regardless of whether or not they understand the musical theory behind it.
Explore your styles
The Sirens of Gotham specialize in harmony hairdressing, but they also perform contemporary a cappella, vocal jazz and classical choral. In addition to using different source materials, each style uses specific arrangements and tones. This is the part that many singers have yet to master when they join the choir and require group rehearsals where the singers learn the style together.
Traditional choral music comes from the religious music of the Catholic Church – a cappella translated from Italian means “the style of a chapel,” which originally had no instruments. Frances explains: “Choral music in a sacred setting, given its role in promoting worship (rather than as entertainment), should have clearly recited and / or enhanced text from ordinary masses or scriptures in a beautifully clean and often unadorned manner.”
After the Reformation, Francis says, Protestant churches made their music more accessible to parishioners who could not practice like a choir. The Barbershop combines elements of Protestant hymns with elements of jazz and blues. By using “simple intonation” rather than “equal temperament”, which is usually tuned to a piano or organ, and singing in close harmony, hairdressing artists create resonant overtones that you can imagine right now by singing “Hello, hello, hello. Hey! ” in your mind. It is also the dominant style for organizations such as
Vocal jazz is similar to a hair salon but includes improvisation, scattering, and more complex harmonics and vocal dexterity. Notable performers include Manhattan Transfer and Take 6.
Contemporary a cappella is popular with student groups that are usually small and want to play contemporary pop music. With fewer voices to manipulate and match, a small choir group can perform more complex arrangements by simulating instrumental tracks. This is the style you’ll hear from Pentatonix, Rockapella, Glee Club and Pitch Perfect .
Protect your voice
In addition to arrangements and styles, choral singing also requires regular performance. Faking the wrong style can not only create inappropriate sound, but also tire your vocal cords. If you model your sound after a recording artist who only needed one perfect take, you won’t be able to sustain it for a performance after a performance.
In New York, where the Sirens are based, “it’s very easy to overpower and abuse your voice,” says Francis. Many singers come with already damaged vocal cords from screaming and screaming to be heard. Singers need to learn to keep their voices, and they follow the most classic life advice: Drink plenty of water.
Choral singing is about more than just technical achievement and perfect combination. The Sirens most of their work is trying to find and convey the feelings behind each song.
Find the emotion behind the line
“If we pick a song, we’ll move on to its story,” says Taferner. “Who is it written by? What’s the storyline? How well can that relate to the chorus? “Much of the chorus job is about discussing the feel of the song and using it in performance with tools like role-playing exercises and line-by-line lyric analysis. it sounds good, “Chelak says,” we want to approach it [through] emotion and the work we put into studying it. “
The process that Sirens describes is very similar to general advice for stage directors and on-screen directors: Don’t let the performers read the lines, or they’ll focus on imitating you rather than the actual performance. Instead, communicate the emotion and tone you want so they can express it in their own unique and authentic way. Chelak uses the phrase “sincerity of performance” – singing out of sincere emotion, instead of simply matching a given tone or volume.
And like any performer, the choir thinks about the impact they want to have on their audience: who needs to hear this song, what healing an emotional ballad can bring to someone, what message of inspiration it can convey, and how the choir can convey it. out?
In practice, Chelak says, finding that emotional sincerity involves rehearsing a lot of certain parts, breaking up into small groups, going home to rehearsal, and then coming back together to fine-tune. Singers also learn to adapt to each other, to control their breathing, and not to distract each other.
This development process is different for each song; the choir is not a factory. Every person in this group is here because they want to be, are willing to work, and hopes to have a great group experience.