Zoom is the go-to program for online singing, as the audio quality seems to be better and the timelag between us seems to be manageable. Using it well for choral singing isn’t obvious, so I’ll share some tips as we go along.
I’m pleased that Jenny Johnston has agreed to help us out with some group lessons. Sooner or later, we’ll come out of this crisis and our voices will either be knackered from lack of use, or we’ll be fighting fit and ready to resume rehearsals and concerts. We want to make sure it’s the latter.
I don’t want to overdo any one activity. Other choirs have met online and it’s a lot easier to get bored and frustrated. So I want to alternate sessions with Jenny and some sessions where we sing through stuff ourselves. And maybe only meet alternate weeks and for just an hour until we get a feel for things.
What we mustn’t do is to rummage through our music bags and decide to sing Beethoven 9 and Verdi Requiem just because they’re there. We’ll be singing without a conductor, an orchestra, an audience, or each other. We’ll all just end up realising this isn’t as good as doing it properly, and it’s a fast way for us to make ourselves unhappy.
In my other life in Welsh male voice choirs, there are choirs who’ve dropped from 90 members to about 15, and choirs where they’re just meeting to sing through core repertoire for want of any focus. By contrast, we’ve been rehearsing once a fortnight for the last three months. We’ve just started learning our fifth new piece since lockdown began.
The point is that there are tricks we can use to make this time productive. Mostly, our priority should be to make it fun to be back together, even if only on screen. Sooner or later we’ll be back on stage, so we want to make sure our voices are fit and well when that happens.