The most important part of
choir directing is the teaching. The congregation sees the director
at the end of the process, when the choir sings, but the real work of
the director is what happens in rehearsal. Everything the choir
sings comes from what they've been taught. When you come before the
choir to teach, you want them to feel confident that you're going to
share something good and worthwhile with them.
What this means for you is that you
need to be fully prepared to teach. The rehearsal is the choir's
time for learning and practice. But the director's time for learning
and practice is BEFORE the rehearsal.
Spend time alone with the music,
getting familiar with the songs you're going to teach. You want to
know the words by memory so that you can make eye contact with the
choir while you teach. You want to know all of the vocal parts so
that you can teach them with confidence.
What's the best way to learn the words
and the parts? Practice singing the song! Sing it out loud, over
and over and over. Sing the soprano line; sing the alto line; sing
the tenor line and the bass line. Singing the song yourself helps
you memorize everything. It also helps you recognize which parts of
the song are the most challenging so you'll know what parts you might
need to spend more time on during rehearsal.
Practice the song over the course of
several days. You might work on it one day and feel like you
completely know it, but then a couple days later there will be parts
that you've forgotten. Your brain does much better at keeping
information in long-term memory if you practice at several different
times.
When a director is well prepared, the
choir members know that the rehearsal is going to be productive and
worth their time. If it seems like the teacher is unsure, it can be
very discouraging to the choir. No choir member wants to see the
director playing the CD during rehearsal trying to figure out how a
line is supposed to go!
Now, in some choirs, the choir director
is not the one who selects the music. If you have a music director
who chooses the songs for the choir to learn, communicate with them
about how much advance time you need to prepare songs before you
teach them. I work with one choir where a music director picks the
music for me. I try to prompt him well in advance about important
occasions: “What songs do you have in mind for Easter this year?”;
“Did you want to do any special music for Mother's Day?” The
sooner I know what we're doing, the better I can be prepared,
especially for any difficult music.
The Bible says that studying will make
us into a worker that doesn't need to be ashamed. This principle
definitely applies to the music ministry. The more we study, the
less we'll need to apologize for when we stand up to teach the choir.
