Rehearsing

Just before Christmas, a friend showed me this video entitled 'One-Moment Meditation'. Its basic premise was that meditative techniques don’t necessarily require a special time and place and commitment, but can be integrated into our daily lives and still have a positive impact.

In addition to its primary message, it set off two related trains of thought.

A couple of years ago, I was mulling over the challenges that semantic depletion presents for performers. This is where repetition of an individual word sound (or musical element) gradually renders it meaningless by stripping it from its linguistic (or musical) context. The problem for performers is that rehearsal necessarily involves lots of repetition: so how do you refine and perfect your execution of the performance without detaching yourself from its meaning?

More recently, though, I’ve been finding that there are situations in which semantic depletion can work in your favour.

I’ve had several conversations recently with directors about the challenges involved in learning big pieces. Big implies, at the most obvious level, pieces that go on for longer than usual, though that also usually brings with it a degree of expressive size too. There are three distinct dimensions to the stamina demands these pieces place on a choir, and while they are interrelated, it’s worth identifying them separately:

It is something that all choral conductors will have experienced at some point: starting a rehearsal and finding the choir completely lacking in energy. Eyes are down, body language is closed, words are mumbled and the sound projects about 3 inches before falling to the ground. The question is: what does the director do to change this?

The first instinct is usually to inject oomph: with bigger, more emphatic gestures and a bright cheery tone of voice we attempt to chivvy the singers into life. If it is a usually responsive choir that’s just having a randomly dozy day, this will work just fine. But if the unresponsiveness is a common experience with the group, then chivvying becomes counter-productive. You can find yourself with one of two scenarios:

Back in February when I was coaching NoteOrious, I had one of those penny-drop moments where an idea pops out that you instantly recognise needs some thinking about. In this case it was the sentence: ‘Simultaneous isn’t necessarily the same as well-coordinated’.

We often think of the concept of ensemble in primarily terms of synchronisation. Singing (or playing) at the same time is central to our perception of the ‘tightness’ of a group, and a lack of synchronisation is often the most audible symptom of slightly (or endemically) dysfunctional relationships within the group.

You quite often hear people saying things like, ‘I heard a good warm-up the other day,’ or, ‘Have you got any good warm-ups?’ When they say this, they are generally meaning a short song or round or singing game that can be learned in a few minutes and has some element of fun to it – vivid and/or nonsense words, rhythmic bounce, interesting combination into parts etc. These are useful things to have about the house, and you can see why people like to collect them.

However, it is worth making a distinction between these ditties known as ‘warm-ups’ and the warm-up – as in the part of a rehearsal in which you get a choir primed and ready to sing. You may sometimes want to use ‘warm-ups’ in ‘the warm-up’, but they’re really not the same thing. One is a self-contained activity, and the other is a process – and the first does not fulfil all the needs of the second.

Recently I was watching highlights of England’s 4th one-day cricket match against Sri Lanka at Trent Bridge, and in particular the stunning innings that Alistair Cook and Craig Kieswetter put in to win the match. After a while I started to notice a distinctive quality to their successful shots. (You probably notice this more in the highlights as you see them back-to-back without all the guff in between. And there were plenty of brilliant shots in this match from which to generalise observations.)

Even though everything was moving fast – the ball, and thus the bat, and indeed the body preparing the bat for the strike – there was a sense of space, of taking time. None of the shots seemed hurried. Rather, each player seemed to find time to consider exactly how to hit the ball, and then place their shot calmly and precisely.

I had an email from my friend Annie from Bristol Fashion last week with one of those questions that looks at first like a small, specific question, but actually opens up to not a quick a answer when you start to look at it. She said:

Why don't choruses use a two note tune up at the beginning of a song? It's done in most 4tet's, so is it frowned on in barbershop circles/competition for a chorus to do it, if so, why? If it means that the first chord is true and sets the rest of the song up then isn't that a plus?

So, there are several things to talk about here: (a) what is a tune-up, and what is it for? (b) is it to be approved of or frowned upon? (c) what’s with the difference between chorus and quartet?