Sight Singing Preparation
Introduce and practice solfege and the solfege hand signals. Singers don't have buttons or keys to push to produce various pitches. The kinetic aspect of making those hand signs while producing each pitch is surprisingly helpful for our brains. At the start of each day you can have them:
- Follow your hand signals/solfege and sing. Start moving by step and then see what they do when you skip from "sol" to "mi," or "mi" to "do," for example. Gradually add wider leaps. See if you can stump them, then work on those new intervals. "Fa" gives my singers trouble, so we practice getting to "fa" from "do," and then add a variety of other syllables. ***challenge*** When you are getting good, put one syllable in one hand and another in the other and divide the group each following one hand. You may have to practice that too.
- Sing solfege patterns to them and have them echo-sing right back to you. They become familiar with the solfege syllables, and also the sound of each in relation to one other--for example, how "do" sounds final, how "ti" is not a stopping place, how "fa" wants to resolve to "mi" etc. Eventually, use "la" as your tonic point so they get used to minor tonality. Sing on solfege familiar tunes so they get used to the syllable and the intervals.
- Switch to your "hand staff" hold your hand up, palm facing you. Show them how the fingers correspond with the five lines on the staff, the spaces between are the spaces of the staff. Have them sing solfege with you as you point to your hand staff. Call your pinky "do," and go from there, change key by putting "do" in a new place.
- Add to your sight-reading repertoire with a method book. There are a variety of methods out there for this. I project the sight singing exercises onto my smart board.
Avoid doing the same thing day after day. Ask your singers to think and listen as you alter and challenge them with different, or slightly changed patterns, and focuses.
It is beneficial to start with upper pitches descending. "Ee" vowels work well as they have a natural air resistance and a secure resonance. Teach about the tongue and teeth vowels; long A, long E, short I, the jaw vowels: Ah, awe, short A, and the lip vowels: long O, long U, and have fun with tuning those vowels using their faces along with pitches.
Sing rounds to get your students singing successfully in unison first, and then in parts. Engage your singers so they are able to match pitches and vowels together to produce a beautiful unison, and then to be able to hold their own part while they hear other parts. Besides just the basic fun of harmony, they will recognize how different intervals sound together. Practice both consonant and dissonant combinations.
Often beginning boys don't feel comfortable singing upper pitches, they want to stay down in the "basement" in their lower "manly" range. Do lots of warm-ups where they start up in head voice and slide down. Ask them to become aware of where their voice does its register switch from head to chest voice. Encourage them to sing using their entire range, not just the part that is already practiced and easy--where we speak, but the whole possible range. Challenge the ladies in the same way, have them experiment with their head voice and go on up to their whistle register--Mariah Carey style. The idea is to bring the light sparkly quality of the upper registers down to enrich the rest of the range.
Teach them about how their total sound equals the space they have in their mouth, throat, and head mixed with the resonance that they produce, the ring, the nasal or lip buzz feeling they get on the bright vowels. That's always fun to play around with. Have your singers inhale through their nose and sigh/glide down from upper pitches. Have them raise their eyebrows as they warm up and sing. This moves their production from speech-like to a singing quality, with a lifted soft palate.
Repertoire
Teach your students the importance of working on music with a wide variety of tempi, languages, emotional content and styles so they become well-rounded musicians. Too much of one thing is boring and stagnant. Spread the joy through variety. Pieces in Latin or Italian are a great opportunity for getting the kids to sing pure vowels; to leave their preconceived ideas of singing our spoken language. They more easily adjust from speech habits to producing beautiful sounds through beautiful vowels. You may be the only person in their life to expand their musical experience.
Music selection, I find, is one of the most challenging and important parts of the job. We want our singers to experience quality music that has value in its own right; that the students can learn from musically. It isn't too soon to be thinking about music you will use for festival in April. Select quality tried and true music. If you have questions, visit with your peers in your district; visit with other music teachers at convention! For festival soloists, get any of the awesome new Italian solo books; solos for specific voice parts have great material. Avoid popular songs, most Broadway, and other "light" music. Use those for your spring concert!
Changing Voice
Teach the kids in choir about the changing voice; that when a boy's voice changes his larynx actually doubles in size. This explains why sometimes they'll be talking in a lower register and then pop up unexpectedly. When girls' voices change, their larynx gets bigger, but not as significant a change as a boy's larynx. Their change announces itself with a more breathy sound; all this while the musculature adjusts and grows to keep up with the larynx.
If you have any unchanged boys in your choir have them sing the soprano or alto part. Pave the way for them so that they don't feel out of place, singing where their voice is now. The rest of the group needs to welcome and encourage them in their high singing. It can be socially embarrassing to "have" to sing with the girls, adjust those attitudes; at present they "get" to sing with the girls! They need to enjoy that rich high sound they can freely produce as long as they can because soon enough (maybe not soon enough for them) they won't be able to make those sounds in the same way.
Now for the big boys...get them all around the piano, and go around doing target practice with the pitches. Often they will feel comfortable around bass clef c up to f. Do some testing and see who your pitch matchers are, and who needs to practice more. Place your best pitch matchers in the center and the pitch searchers by them. Let your matchers help out the searchers. They can signal the direction to the desired pitch.
Use the piano and have them match pitches going down to around low F, and up to middle C and above. Also, have them flip up into head voice, starting around a treble clef A or G and descending. Your young men can produce that head voice easiest on an "oo" vowel. I like to have them just sing the word "you" it starts them with a brighter buzzy "ee" quality. Bring that high quality down on a slide and see what happens with each voice, where do they shift to chest register? Do they switch with a big leap in pitch? Some boys will have a "black hole" in their range; they can produce head tones, and low pitches, but nothing in an area from near middle C down to A-flat. They need to continue singing sigh-glides (glissandi) from their head voice down until their muscles develop and they can connect those dots.
It is often more difficult for women teachers to model a pitch for beginning men, they will want to sing it in a funny octave, or have a harder time matching. To help and encourage the boys to match pitch, use your pitch matchers. Also, bring in the football coach, or principal, or shop teacher, or bus driver (if they are men) to model a variety of pitches for them. It often helps if the student trying to match pitch sings a pitch first and then you; or your best pitch matcher, or your "guest pitch artist," or even the rest of your choir.
The voice is so connected to our sense of self worth; kids are very protective about not sounding dumb. Some boys are at first not willing to even try higher pitches. We can continually work to put them at ease, to let them know that we are all in this together and that this perceived weakness of our human voice becomes a strength when we are brave enough to be vulnerable and produce the wide variety of sounds our voices can produce. And no matter what, those sounds are just sounds. We have the ability to produce amazing sounds of quality and emotion with our voice. Our voice is the only instrument that is made of living stuff, as unique as each individual.