How well do you know your “instrument”?

If you're a singer, your voice is your instrument. If you're a choir director, the voices of all the choir members are your instrument.

To use those voices most effectively, you need to know what they're capable of, what their strengths and weaknesses are.

Listen to yourself sing. How do you sound at quiet volumes? At loud volumes? Some people are good at getting a sweet, gentle sound with their voice; others are good at getting a forceful or brassy sound.

How high can you go before your voice starts straining? Go to a piano and find out the names of the notes that are your top note and your bottom note (there's an online keyboard that you can use for this, too: http://www.music.vt.edu/musicdictionary/appendix/pitch/pitch.html). Be aware also, that with practice you can increase your range, so your top note today doesn't have to be your top note forever.

Directors should know this information about their choir members, too. Know your singers' strengths and weaknesses. Know what their top and bottom notes are. Then arrange your music so that it's a good fit for the singers in your choir.  In the choir at my home church, the tenors can hit an F, but it's a challenge.  Hitting a G is a struggle.  I don't try to take them above that G.

A couple of things to keep in mind about choir music:

• In *contemporary gospel* choir music, the parts are often written in a way that leaves the tenors singing a lot of high notes, including notes that go above the standard tenor range, AND there are no baritone or bass parts. A lot of songs will also have numerous key changes, sometimes going amazingly (ridiculously?) high.  The gospel artists who make the albums can pick and choose the most exceptional singers to be in their choirs, but in our churches, we're working with regular voices.

Knowing this, you may want to change the key or rearrange the parts on some songs to make things work better for your choir. And consider adding a baritone or bass part, so that men with bass voices aren't forced to either sing high tenor or leave the choir.

• In *classical* choral music, the pieces are written for people with trained voices, and trained voices can hit higher notes and hold them longer than untrained voices can. If you work with untrained singers, keep that in mind when selecting music. Try to use music that works with the vocal ranges of your members. With long passages that don't leave room for a breath, make sure your singers know how to work together and do alternate breathing (taking turns pausing for a breath while everyone else continues singing).

The better you know your instrument(s), the better use you can make of them, with beautiful results.

(By the way, ChoirParts.com will happily do parts on request in whatever key the customer wants. I recently did an order for a song in two different keys, neither of which was the key from the original recording.)

Two new web pages for choirs who don't have a musician

I just wrote a new web page with ideas for choirs who don't have any instrument player.  Check it out: 3 Ways a Church Choir Can Minister When They Don't Have a Musician.  The page talks about three strategies -- singing a cappella songs, using instrumental tracks, and doing songs that are so very easy to play that someone in your church could probably learn it even if they haven't ever played before.

To go with that, I've written a page with step-by-step instructions for how to play one very easy song.  The page is called "Gospel Music for Non-Musicians: You Can Play 'Holy Spirit' by the New Jersey Mass Choir".

Have fun!

You can never start too early practicing for a concert

Our upcoming concert date: August 26th.

The date we started rehearsing songs for the concert: May 7th (approximately).

But of course, at the same time that you're practicing concert songs, you also have to practice the music that you're going to be singing at your weekly services.  So . . .

The date that we learned the last of the 10 concert songs: July 16th.

I love it.

If we had thought that two months would be plenty of time to prepare for the concert, we would have been scrambling at the end and feeling unready.  But as it stands now, we have 5 rehearsals left to just work on polishing and refining.

Confidence comes from feeling prepared.

Using Sign Language (ASL) When You Direct your Choir

I've found real sign language (ASL) to be very useful sometimes during directing.  More than anything, it can be a helpful reminder for the choir at those places in a song where it's easy to forget what lyrics come next.

For example, one of the choirs I direct sings "King Of Love" by Hillsong.  On the first verse, some of the singers have trouble remembering which word comes first -- "marvelous" or "wonderful".  When we sing that part, I do the ASL sign for the letter "M" first, to remind them that the first thing they say is "You're marvelous".  Then, at the next section, I sign the letter "W" for them to sing "You're wonderful".

Other signs that have come in handy during some of our songs include the signs for "love", "heal", "and", "yes", and others.  It's a very good alternative to mouthing words to them to tell them what's coming next.

Even if the members of the choir don't know sign language, during rehearsal you can teach them the couple of signs that you plan to use during a particular song.


If you want to learn a few signs, there are sign language books that are written specifically for church ministry.

Do you ever use ASL while you're directing?  What signs do you use the most?

Do you use the "H" word with your choir?

I was in a rehearsal once where the director told the choir, "This song is hard."  That was interesting to me because I try to avoid using the word "hard" when I'm teaching a song.

I'll say, "This one is going to take some work," or, "This next part of the song is the most challenging part."  But I think the word "hard" can be a turn-off to some choir members.  If a song "is going to take some work", that suggests that they can definitely do it if they put the work into it.  But if it's "hard", they may get the feeling that maybe it's possible or maybe it's not.

That's my thought, anyway.  I'd be interested to hear how other choir directors feel about it.

Also I have a web page with my suggestions for how to approach teaching difficult music to your choir.

Added another song to ChoirParts.com: "Matthew 28"

Yes, this is a major one.  I have Soprano, Alto, and Tenor practice for the epic Easter piece "Matthew 28" by Donald Lawrence.  Here's the product page: Matthew 28

New song at ChoirParts.com: "Give Me Jesus"

I just added an arrangement of the spiritual "Give Me Jesus" to our catalog.  It's in the category of "Hymns and Spirituals".

Here's the page: Give Me Jesus

This is an arrangement that I made myself and used with the choir at my home church.  The other choral arrangements of "Give Me Jesus" that I had found were too advanced for the people in my home choir, so I made one of my own that would be better for gospel choirs who are just getting started singing 4-part choral music.

The download of the entire song is free so that you can hear how the arrangement goes.  Then you can purchase the individual parts (soprano, alto, tenor, bass) and the sheet music.