In our Music in Secondary Education class, we recently worked in groups to design warm-ups for Randall Thompson's Alleluia. One person from each group presented the warm-ups, with the rest of the class acting as the choir. There was a wide range of activities, but all of the groups chose a sequence that focused upon breath and range. The most intriguing practices I noticed are listed below:
1. Warm-ups physically warm up our bodies, but can also be used to put our minds into the a focused state for rehearsal. I think that this is best achieved when the conductor does not speak through warm-ups, and simply demonstrates and motions for the students to repeat the exercise.
2. Motions change the energy of a warm-up. Purposeful hand motions help students visualize the movement of air and the projection of sound that you are trying to achieve.
3. Be careful when beginning range warm-ups. We should begin with descending range patterns, and then go to ascending.
4. Be conscience of ranges. Allow students to drop or jump up an octave, depending upon their own vocal needs. For example, while your altos, tenors, and basses may need F3, there is no point in taking sopranos down to this note. Repertoire will never take them that low and you will simply take them out of their resonance. Instead, allow them to jump up the octave to F4, where they can continue to develop their resonance and warm up the part of the voice they will be using in rehearsal.
Should MS or HS students (or even college) really worry about range? Should you label students as "altos"?
ReplyDeleteThis is a great point! We have to be careful that we do not prematurely assign voice parts, pigeonholing students. Our voices continue to change well into our twenties as our bone structures finish developing. Our timbres will also change over the course of our entire lives. A high school student may not necessarily be an alto;she may just not understand how to access her head voice or resonance. This is exactly what happened to me. In middle school and often in high school, I sang alto parts. I thought that I had this low, raspy voice, when I actually just didn't understand how to use the higher registers in my voice. In my senior year of high school and in college, I received private lessons and was taught proper technique. Since learning to use my head voice, I have been trained as a light lyric soprano. It is perhaps better to assign students different voice parts each concert cycle, so they can get experience singing harmony and melody. Through this process that can also explore which range is more comfortable.
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