Reading Music

This year, the Youth Choir has only one new chorister, plus two older choristers who have returned after some years away. Last year, we had a much larger number, but whether one or a dozen, I must teach them to read music. I wish I could say that all of our choristers can sight-sing with ease; they don't. But I have learned to set the standard lower: I would like for them to be able to find the place where we are rehearsing, follow their part in a choral score, sing or speak the rhythms accurately (at least to the level of eighth notes, dotted quarter/eighth patterns, triplets, and occasional sixteenth note passages), and have the basic concept of solfege.

I often draw a chart on the board that outlines the basics:
- follow the notes
- rhythm
- pitch
- other stuff

Follow the Notes:
A chorister is not going to get far if he is not in the same place on the page as the rest of the choir. Or even on the same anthem! It continues to surprise me how often a young chorister can appear to be singing merrily along through ten minutes of work on an anthem, and upon closer examination, she is looking at a completely different anthem. We had one example of that yesterday form a second-year chorister: We were rehearsing the preces and responses by William Byrd; he had the responses by William Smith, bound in the same book. Granted, the text is the same, but I should have caught his mistake more quickly. And (ideally) so should he. So, the first part of following the notes is Finding the Place -- the right anthem, the right page, the right part of the page. It helps when the director is consistent in his announcements: "page six, the second system, third measure." Or as those influenced by Gerre Hancock would say, "Six, two, three," expecting the choir to find it from that - they can, and many choristers seem to enjoy the challenge of moving so quickly.

To this end, I pair a new chorister with a more experienced singer, perhaps one or two years older, or even much older (e.g., middle school or high school). They share one music folder. At first, the new singer watches the older one follow the notes with his finger, then (perhaps on the second or third time through a passage) they trade; the new singer has the folder and follows the notes, with the older singer watching and helping when she gets off-track.

The new choristers invariably want their own choir folder; it is one of the marks of Belonging to the Choir. And I have too often given it to them too early; I did this last year with some of the new singers, and it was in the long run a setback for them. Perhaps a month or so of rehearsals is right for folder-sharing; enough time so that the new singer can confidently follow notes and find the place.

What is "Follow the Notes?" I learned this from watching James Litton work with his probationers at Trinity Church, Princeton many years ago. I tell the choir to follow the notes; they put their finger on the first one, I play a passage (a short passage, perhaps one or two measures at first), they go from one note to the next. I stop suddenly, go around the room, and see if they have it. If not, I help them find it. Over time, the passages get longer, up to several pages sometimes -- but the limit then becomes the practical rehearsal value, for part of what we are doing is having the choir hear a new passage so that they can sing it.

And that is what we do. We follow the notes for a large enough chunk to work on, then we immediately sing it. But (usually) not with words, not yet. For we have more to do.

Rhythm
Rhythm notation is easier to learn than pitch notation, so we start there. I use the Kodaly rhythmic syllables: "Tah" for a quarter note, "Ti" for an eighth note. Longer durations are multiple "Tahs" -- a dotted half note would be "Ta - ah - ah" with an emphasis on each of the three beats.

The very first stage is aural. Especially if there are a lot of new singers (like last year), I will clap a short rhythm, speaking the "Tah's and Ti's", they repeat it back to me. That way, they learn what the durations mean. Then we would work from an example on the whiteboard, speaking/clapping it as I point to the notes. Then we would do the same from an anthem score -- often, I have taken my example from an anthem that we are learning -- speaking it (and following notes as we do so), then singing it on the Tah's and Ti's.

My goal is for the choir (and especially the new singers) to get to where we can sight-read the rhythms directly from the printed music, using the tah's and ti's and speaking the rhythms. They usually catch on to this quickly, within a few weeks or a couple of months.

Even much later, and with an adult choir (if they have learned the Tah's and Ti's), we will use the rhythmic syllables for sight-singing and rehearsal. I use them myself when I work on the congregational hymns, and sing them to myself in the liturgy as I play, especially when it is a situation where the congregation's sound lags behind the organ.

Another advantage of this work is that it breaks the common pattern where a new singer is following the words and not the notes. She must somehow learn to do both at once, but it helps to ignore the words at first.

Pitch
This is harder. Much harder.

Again, I use the Kodaly/Curwen solfege syllables, with movable Do: Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Ti-Do.
These go much further into the past, back to Guido of Arezzo in the early middle ages. And they remain essential, in my opinion. Others differ -- there are other systems, such as singing by interval. But this is what I teach.

The foundation is in our warmups. We always do scales - a descending scale down from Do to the bottom, then a turnaround and back up to the top. This is because descending patterns are better vocally for developing ease with register shifts. And with the children, we use the hand-signs (depicted in this article on the Kodaly Method). It gives them a tactile experience to go with the singing, and gives me a way to "line out" melodies. After they become thoroughly comfortable with scales and the hand signs, I will change directions in the middle of the scale, go back and forth stepwise, and try to "trick" them. They enjoy this.

After that is comfortable, I introduce skips in the melody. I begin with something like this:
Do-Re-Mi -- Do-Mi
where they have just sung the target of the skip and it is fresh in their memory.

All of this is by sound, rote, and hand-signing. It must be transferred to the page.

The first step is to write a scale on the board, with the solfa names. We sing from the board as I point to the notes; we go back and forth up and down the scale, and maybe do skips. Later, I will write an example from the music we are learning on the board and we will do the same; I point, they sing. Immediately after, we look at the printed score and do the same passage. Often, this is a hymn tune, for they are excellent material for this sort of work.

If the choir gets far enough along with this, we will eventually try to sight-read hymn tunes or anthem material on the solfa syllables, or do a second reading on the solfas after we have read it with the rhythm syllables. Most years, we don't develop much skill with this, though we often reach the point where we can slowly puzzle out a new tune with solfas as a group, the most experienced singers obviously taking a lead and the younger ones following.

I wish we could get further.

Other Stuff

That is, everything else that a music score tells us:
- words (vital for a singer! And this includes the vast domain of diction, phrase shaping, etc.)
- dynamic and tempo markings
- articulations (e.g., accents, breath marks)
- background material (composer, author, etc.)

And much more.

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Reading Music is a lifelong journey, a path I continue to walk. I can do no more than help the young people start down the path. But I am obliged to do at least that much.

Many children's choirs (and adult choirs too) don't do this. It is slow, it takes rehearsal time (though not so much when you are using the songs and anthems they are working on as your teaching material). And most choirs are working toward a more immediate result -- that anthem next month, or the Christmas concert. I believe that this shortchanges the choristers.

Again, I wish we could do more. I feel badly when singers that I have trained audition for other groups -- for example, the voice trials at every summer's RSCM Course. I wish that they would be far superior to the singers from other choirs -- but that is Pride talking, and I must ignore it. And when the occasional person comes through the choir and goes on to be a professional musician, I wish that I could have given them a more thorough training. But at least they have the concepts, which may make their collegiate training a little easier.

One of my young people from years ago, now the principal flutist with a mid-level symphony in the southeast, came back from her first semester at college amazed that her flute teacher expected her and the other students to learn their parts in solfege. She thanked me for getting her started.

More broadly, and probably of more importance, I hope that I can help equip these young people to sing in church and community choirs throughout their life, and intelligently sing the Songs of Zion, the hymns of the church.