Learning

I recently had an interesting conversation with my friend Sarra about different approaches to sight-singing – how some people think more in terms of key and others in terms of the intervals between notes. It turns out that we both use some of both, though possibly with rather different emphasis. I commented on how I am always surprised when I see how much of an emphasis some really quite distinguished colleagues in the choral profession seem to place on thinking in intervals in rehearsal and audition compared to thinking in keys.

Later that day, Sarra sent me an email in which she had these further thoughts:

Over on From the Front of the Choir a couple of years back, Chris Rowbury posted a thought-provoking piece on the theme that competitions are for losers (i.e. that, by definition, the majority of people who participate can’t win). He identifies two particular problems with the idea of competition in the arts. First, that they encourage extrinsic rather than intrinsic values – doing things for external rewards rather than their inherent worth – and are therefore artistically shallow. Second, this makes them psychologically disempowering, as participants are handing over their sense of self-worth to somebody else’s judgement.

These are both compelling arguments in my view, and articulate well why many of us in the arts experience a degree of discomfort about competitive events. On the other hand, contest is rife in all walks of musical life: from the institutionalised systems of brass bands and barbershop, to the local festival circuit, to the annual cycle of competitions and prizes in conservatoires, and their grown-up analogues in Cardiff and Leeds. Competition may be problematic for musicians, but it also clearly offers something that is valued widely enough to make contest a normal rather than aberrational behaviour.

Okay, so whilst I don’t really approve of using recordings to learn your music, I do live in the real world. I recognise that the world isn’t going to change its habits just because I have an opinion. So, today I am going send out a plea that if you insist on using learning tracks, you give some thought as to the type and quality you are going to use, and their likely effects.

First, can you check they’re accurate please? Don’t assume that just because you paid for them they’re going to be right. Do this before you send them out to your singers, and get them remade if they’re not accurate. If you leave it for some of your singers to notice any errors, that means that others will already have learned it wrong and you will waste a shocking amount of rehearsal time trying to fix those errors.

I know the arguments in favour of giving people recordings of the music they need to learn to sing their part in a choral group. It’s a very common practice in the barbershop world, and an increasingly common one in classical choirs. And it’s true that it enables people who don’t read music to participate with very little effort, and indeed to perform much more complex music than they would be able to without it.

And, yes, having people participate in singing is a Good Thing. No argument there.

But still, I do think that every so often someone needs to point out the problems that learning tracks create as well as their opportunities.

Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences has been attractive to educators, especially those in the arts and humanities who had the most reason to critique a narrow, logical-analytical definition of intelligence. If you’ve spent any time with human beings involved in the act of learning, you know that different people process ideas and develop skills in different ways and find different things come easily or resist learning.

As a musician I would on the face of it be expected to be most interested in his category of musical intelligence. But interestingly, this is actually the least useful category for a music educator.

I found myself in a Facebook chat the other day with a newly-appointed chorus director who had found herself flummoxed at how to explain to one of her singers how you know which note is the key note. I told her that the correct answer in rehearsal is ‘Good question!’ to give yourself time to gather your thoughts.

So this post is for the singer in Sian’s chorus who asked – and for anybody else who has ever wondered, as I know it is a perennial question. It’s also one where there is a very easy answer that does you 90% of the time, but you need quite a lot more detail to be right 100% of the time.

Do you ever have one of those evening where nothing seems to go right? Things that everyone sang with ease the week before sound like they’re sight-reading it upside down; when you gesture to start them singing, they just look at you as if you’ve done something strange and inexplicable; the vocal support sags and the tonal centre strays south.

We can sometimes identify the cause of difficult rehearsals.

Coast to Coast in warm-up modeCoast to Coast, the national chorus of LABBS, invited me to coach them on Sunday as part of their retreat weekend. The chorus comprises singers from across the country, and meets once a month, usually on a Sunday. Many of its members sing with small choruses, and find that Coast to Coast offers them not only the chance to sing in a larger group, but provides a wider networking opportunity to exchange ideas and advice to take back to their home clubs.

The chorus had spent the Saturday on big-picture questions such as planning the group’s development and exploring their understanding of the music. Their new director, Linda Blackett, has identified as a medium-term goal to work on musicianship, and having the extra day together gave them the chance to do activities that focused on the skills of the singers and not just preparing for their next performance – a nice bit of work on production capacity, not just production.