Lately, I’ve been attending choir practice for our ward choir. It only took a few years and a few personal invites for me to decide that yes, I can actually make it to choir practice at 9am on Sunday mornings.
Why did it take you so long to go, Paige, don’t you love to sing?
Well, yes, I do love to sing, actually, and I’ve sung in many choirs throughout the years. And I’m a little ashamed to admit it, but I’m a bit of a choir snob.
A choir snob? What’s that?
Well, I like to sing with people who know how to sing. I feel like if it’s worth the time of practicing, I want it to sound good when we perform it, not just like a bunch of people just got together and decided to sing a song. And since I’ve had some wonderful directors, I also really appreciate someone who can really direct a choir. I admit that I can’t do that. I can lead music, sure, but directing a choir takes another set of skills, and I really enjoy following a good director.
With that as the background, today at choir practice, we had quite an interesting dilemma. The regular choir director was out of town, and had asked one of our altos (who is also extremely talented and has experience directing as well) to fill in for her, since we are practicing for Easter, ward conference and Stake Conference coming up. She started us out on the song we’re singing next week (which at the moment I can’t remember the name of the song), and it has some complicated parts in the middle, where the soprano’s split into first and seconds, the altos split, and the tenors split into two parts, and the bass and baritone split, too. When you’ve only got four or five men, this is extremely difficult, as everyone ends up singing their own part. And behind me, there were two new basses who hadn’t been there before. The one bass, although he had a rough start of it and admitted that he doesn’t read music that well, eventually got the difficult parts, but the other one just wasn’t getting it. Even when the men were all supposed to be singing in unison, he wasn’t singing in unison with them. And the choir director was doing her best to go over the men’s parts, picking out the bass and baritone’s parts specifically, asking if they needed that part one more time, and generally doing her best to be positive. One of the tenors, who DOES read music, even came over and sang that part loudly enough for anyone to follow. Still not quite getting it.
Which really made me think. This is a ward choir, where everyone who wants to sing is invited to–even encouraged–to sing. There are no auditions, no tests to take to qualify for a spot in the ward choir. The only requirements are that you are willing to sing, and you come to at least some of the rehearsals. On the other hand, we as a choir want to sound good. We want to sound like we actually know what we are doing, and bring the spirit into the meeting. If people are distracted by someone who can’t follow, they might not enjoy the song, or feel the spirit. What is a director to do?
I asked my husband, and he said if he were the director, he would take this person aside, and thank them for wanting to be in the choir, but that they really shouldn’t be there since they were obviously struggling with the music. I thought, if it were me, I might ask them afterward if they needed some extra help, or if there were anything I could do to help them learn the music, or offer to let them take the music home to study in their free time. But I don’t think I would kick them out of the ward choir.
I don’t know what the director will do. I don’t know if this person will be there to practice next week, or if they will come up to sing with us in church next week. I’m glad it’s not my call.
What would you do?
Don’t ask me……I’m a choir snob.
It is rarely worth hurting someone’s feelings. Recently, we had a couple of women complain about two loud almost-18-month-olds in Relief Society. What could we do? they asked. Could we ask the mothers to take the children out? I think the simplest and best solutions are the most charitable ones: *I* can be charitable and take those babies out myself so the moms (who obviously really want to be there) can listen. There’s a good chance that guy needs to be in choir and feel wanted and appreciated. Seriously? He shows up at 9:00 am on a Sunday morning? He must have his own reasons! And if you don’t sound like the MoTab at the end of the day, I doubt it really matters. The spirit can be there no matter what. Just sing a little louder to drown him out!
I know that I am not a talented singer, in fact I am certain I am off key at times. I only sing soprano, even though I would probably be more suited for alto, but I don’t read music well and would struggle with anything but the melody. I have even seen the choir director sort of wince when I get brave enough to attempt to sing that high “f” note. To which I apologize and vow to fake it in the future. However, I love to sing and I think I am getting better as I attend choir practices and would be really sad if they asked me to just not attend. I liked the idea of asking him if he would like some personalized help. I bet he would really appreciate the opportunity to learn to do better.
“Sing, sing a song
Make it simple to last
Your whole life long…
DON’T WORRY THAT IT’S
NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR
ANYONE ELSE TO HEAR
Just sing, sing a song.” 🙂
That’s a tough question, but as the wife of a music minister – its something you have to deal with from time to time! Usually when we were in that situation, we’d offer to give a bit of extra help to the person to help them through. Jason has a theory that anyone’s singing can be improved with a bit of instruction!
I think I’d try to help the person to improve too if he was willing to learn. If he is coming to practice then maybe he would be interested in improving too.
Ugh. This kind of stuff is so hard. We have a Tenor who isn’t completely tone deaf, but he is regularly off-key and happens to sing really loud. Practice is excruciating!!! Our director has been very good about it, and took more of your approach which is to give him as much extra help as is required not to embarrass the rest of us. But it has been my hardest time with wanting to go to choir!!
Ugh, ward choir issues are so hard. Me? I have an excuse – I’m usually the pianist. But I think the best solution I’ve seen is making practice tapes and offering them to everyone and encourage them to use them. I don’t think anyone should be asked not to come to ward choir.
I’ll let you in on a little secret though. Choir pianist or not, I’m still a choir snob. There are times I wonder why our director picked that particular song, when she knows the talent of our singers. But really, the only thing I can do is try to support her in her calling and make sure I’m doing the best I can with mine.
I’m completely in the same boat as Christine, having accompanied the choir through two different directors. When I was put in with a new director who didn’t know anything about music but was determined to learn it, she actually picked some really hard songs that we all had to practice for months. We had some people, including the bishop, who weren’t that great, or couldn’t read music. But the bishop was promoting ward choir at the pulpit! There was NO WAY we were asking him not to come! We decided to make a tape of the song with the parts split up, and one track with just the accompaniment. About a year and a director change later, I got a MIDI keyboard and made digital copies of the parts separate, together, and with accompaniment, on separate tracks on CDs for everyone. It was AWESOME!
That’s when they released me.
And, I hate to admit, they got a new accompanist and a new director and started just singing un-arranged hymns, and I stopped going.
Well, I say the guy who can’t sing should be offered some personal attention, whatever that might be. Don’t kick him out. He might stop going to church altogether.