May 2017

On Rational and Experiential Objectives

Published by Liz Garnett at Helping You Harmonise on Tuesday 30th May 2017

One of the Really Useful Concepts (so useful it needed Gratuitous Capitalisation) that I acquired at my recent course on facilitation skills was the distinction between rational and experiential objectives. It is one of those concepts that is so simple when it is pointed out to you, and in fact describes something you do anyway, but when given a label allows you to do things on purpose to be more effective.

Your rational objective for a workshop or consultation, or indeed for a rehearsal, lesson or practice session, is what you want to achieve by the time you finish. Anyone who has written course materials in higher education is fully familiar with this idea. You spend a lot of your time writing the back end of sentences that start, ‘On successful completion of this module, students will be able to…’.

Playlist 2017: 4th commentary

Published by Liz Garnett at Helping You Harmonise on Friday 26th May 2017

Feminism

And it’s time for some notes on the additions to 2017's Playlist since my last post about it.

Morfydd Llwyn Owen, Nocturne for orchestra in D-flat major (1913). Starting the next tranche of playlist items with the same ‘why did I not know this?’ sentiment from my last commentary. This piece is in some ways so exactly of its time, whilst being a distinct compositional voice I’ve never heard before.
Charlotte Bray, At the Speed of Stillness (2012). And a century later than Owen’s piece, an ex-student of mine making her mark
Fanny Mendelssohn, Quartet in E-flat (1834). If I had a criticism of this quartet, it would be that I would have liked the first movement in particular to be longer. When it ended, I thought, ‘No, don’t stop, I was enjoying that’.

Rehearsing Efficently with Bristol A Cappella Music Team

Published by Liz Garnett at Helping You Harmonise on Monday 22nd May 2017

As I reported a while back, as well as spending two days coaching the full chorus at Bristol A Cappella at the end of April, I also had a two-hour session with their music team in the evening.

In some ways this was a rather over-ambitious programme of activities. We had an hour between finishing one session and starting the next, and a change of venue also probably helped refresh our attention, but we were nonetheless all pretty tired when we reconvened.

But notwithstanding these hurdles, the timing offered advantages that wouldn’t have been available on a stand-alone session. We had a shared experience during the day we could point back to for examples, and we made explicit use of this at the start by going through a structured reflection process based on my conductors’ four questions.

Northward to Norwich

Published by Liz Garnett at Helping You Harmonise on Thursday 18th May 2017

Usually when I go to Norwich it involves going Eastwards, but as I was travelling there straight after my day with Capital Connection, I got a bonus alliteration for my title. Never say I fail to be pleased by small things.

I am also pleased to witness excellent rehearsal technique when I see it. And, having recently both run a workshop on efficient rehearsal techniques and published a blog post that extolled the value of a director minimising their speaking time in favour of the choir’s singing time, I enjoyed watching Norwich Harmony’s director Alison Thompson lead an almost-textbook session of warm-up/vocal craft at the start of the day. The continuity of musical attention she generated gave a very fertile ground for brief, precise spoken interventions as well as gestural enforcements and facial acknowledgements within the flow of the singing. She gently but systematically pushed the singers up the greasy pole of choral skill.

Coaching Micro and Macro with Capital Connection

Published by Liz Garnett at Helping You Harmonise on Sunday 14th May 2017

The weekend after my visit to Bristol A Cappella took me, first, down to London to work with my friends at Capital Connection. (The second part of my tour, to Norwich, follows in a subsequent post.) We were working on a contest package that they had originally planned for LABBS Convention 2016, but which they had subsequently decided needed a longer development phase, so they will be taking it to this year’s European Convention instead.

One of my hopes for this convention is that all our international visitors will think, ‘Gosh, they’re doing interesting music in LABBS,’ and Capital are contributing to this ambition with the contest premiere of an arrangement by their director Debi Cox. Coaching an arrangement directed by its arranger is strangely very like coaching any other arrangement – the same process of music analysis and performance diagnosis – except that when you point out to the singers, ‘That’s a nice bit of arranging there,’ the person you are praising actually gets to hear and appreciate the compliment.

Blonde Ambition

Published by Liz Garnett at Helping You Harmonise on Wednesday 10th May 2017

Thanks to the quartet for sending a pic since I forgot to take one!I spent a chunk of the May Day bank holiday with Blonde Ambition quartet. When they first booked the coaching session, it was with the intention of preparing for LABBS prelims in June, but due to an administrative mishap, they will not now be competing this year. The bright side of this is that we could do all kinds of deep work on building technique and working methods that you would never undertake a few weeks ahead of a big performance.

There were two main areas we addressed. First, the intake of breath. Their general approach to breath management was pretty good – they were engaging their support well to produce a nicely resonant and focused sound – but the moment of inhalation was inserting a couple of obstacles into the process. One was a tendency to lift the top of the chest, which introduced some tension and stopped the breath sitting as deeply as it could. The other was a tendency to lift the chin slightly as a result of a slight contraction of the muscles in the back of the neck, which prevented a truly silent breath. (Alexander Technique practitioners would know this as ‘pulling down’.)

The Paradox of Conductors’ Leadership Styles

Published by Liz Garnett at Helping You Harmonise on Saturday 6th May 2017

ICA course materialsThere is a fair amount written in the literature, both of conducting studies and leadership/management studies, about the leadership styles of conductors. People in business are a bit envious of the audible unanimity conductors elicit, and rather more envious of the glamour in the cultural images that surround them.

Musical studies tend instead to use concepts of leadership style taken from business to analyse conductor behaviour. The generalisation here is that once upon a time autocracy was the accepted norm, but that you are expected to be rather more polite these days. Phrases like ‘servant-leadership’ get bandied about.

Exploring Resonance and Emotion with Bristol A Cappella

Published by Liz Garnett at Helping You Harmonise on Tuesday 2nd May 2017

Another warm-up shot: "Bananas of the world unite!"I spent the first two days of the bank-holiday weekend with my friends at Bristol A Cappella. We had two full days for coaching the chorus, plus a two-hour session on the Saturday night for music-team training. One of the (many) triumphs of the weekend was pacing it so that we were still capable or productive work during the final hour of Sunday!

Another challenge is working out exactly what to blog about, since by definition when you have considerably more time together than usual, you have considerably more eventful and interesting things to think about on the way home. And considerably less brain with which to do the thinking, come to that.

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