Sunday, November 11, 2007
Choir
So I'm about two weeks away from the holiday concert and four weeks away from my Messiah concert. With the holiday concert fast approaching all the music needs to be memorized. Does anybody have any helpful tips on how to help a choir memorize the songs? The song I am conducting is "Do You Hear What I Hear" and the kids are having a hard time remembering the correct order in which the characters are introduced. The song also switches from "do you hear what I hear" to "do you see what I see" and the kids are having a difficult time with that change. When I conducted this on Wednesday, I would point to my eyes when the chorus sang "do you see what I see" and my ears when it was "do you hear". I can't act out the characters though of course. I suppose that practice makes perfect, but I'm figuring there are other solutions. Any ideas?
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2 comments:
I don't see why you couldn't just point to your eyes or your ears during the piece. Conductors do silly things like that all the time. It doesn't have to be a huge event, just simply point to your eye or to your ear before that particular part. One thing that can really help is just having them, on their own, read through the text multiple times. Have them do it as fast as they can, you can turn it into a competition between students seeing who can read through it the fastest. This commits it to the language side of their brain without them really realizing it. It works incredibly well in Youth Chorale all the time. Also, have them sing one line with the music and immediately repeat without the music, then sing the next line with music, then without. Then both lines together with/without music. If you have the time to be able to do that kind or repetition it can be very affective. Don't allow time between each repetition as you don't want them to be talking and using other words while trying to learn the text. These are just some ways I've used before! Hope they help.
Have you tried some brain-based activities? For example, give the students a paper where there is a block for each verse. Have some of the words you want them to remember in the box (i.e - "Said the nightwind...do you hear"). Then the students will draw a picture of their own to associate with that verse. When then practice, have them look at thier picture. Since they assigned the image themselves, the image and the words will be more likely to be implanted into memory. Let me know if you try it!
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