(no subject)

[cahn]

Dear choir directors, both of you,

I love choir, and I really like you, and I think you are both lovely people. But I do get really tired of rehearsing by just running the piece over and over and over again. It doesn't actually make us sing it any better when we keep making the same mistakes. In fact, it probably makes it worse because we learn it the wrong way.

Love,
me.

Comments

[antisoppist]

Oh dear, that sounds dire. Both of them???

It is also dead boring when you spend the whole rehearsal sitting listening to the conductor rehearsing the same three bars for the tenors over and over again but not addressing mistakes at all isn't ideal either. Our previous conductor used to bring in a friend to run a sectional rehearsal early in the rehearsal schedule but I found that dead boring as well because I'll learn it better with the other parts and if I need note-bashing, I can do it at home on the piano.

This makes me realise that our latest conductor is actually very good at this kind of thing. He often makes all of us sing the same bit at the same time (because if it's a tricky chunk of fugue, we're probably all going to get it at some point) or does "now basses on their own at D, now basses with tenors, now basses with sopranos, now everybody" by which time the basses have got it and the rest of us haven't fallen asleep for too long. He is also open to people sticking their hands up and saying "could we just hear that alto jump at bar 57 because we're not getting it, and that's where it's collapsing". We also have a brilliantly alert pianist who will casually play the part people are getting wrong Very Loudly.

[cahn]

Yeah, both of them, which is what makes it so grindingly obnoxious. It's one thing to suffer through it on Sunday rehearsal, but then to go to a completely different rehearsal on Thursday for a different choir and have the exact same thing happen... and I've been doing this for a while, but it's especially terrible this week because we're gearing up for Easter and neither choir is ready.

Though yes, I hear you on the running one section over and over because they Just Don't Get It... Thursday choir does that sometimes with the basses. I've taken to bringing whatever fic I'm working on that week to edit while the basses are running their part, which I'm aware is kind of terrible and rude (I mean, I'm always ready to sing when they're done, they're kind of slow). I suppose the latest trend towards just running it over and over may be partially in reaction to that.

Your choir director and pianist sound awesome. I'd like to be a director like that. Or have directors like that, that would work too :)