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Ideas that work for virtual rehearsal

The year 2020 changed our profession as we know it, and as intimidating or frustrating as online choir can be, it is crucial that choral conductors are able to create the best possible experience for our singers as the world navigates the pandemic.

As I write this, I have completed roughly half of my semester entirely online. For context, I teach two auditioned choirs—one large and one chamber ensemble—at Fullerton College, which is a community college in Orange County. The experience has been more positive than I was originally expecting, and though I certainly yearn for the day we can all be together again in the same room, I am grateful for the opportunity to continue to make music and further the precious sense of community our choirs have always fostered. The students are learning and progressing in their skills, and I do genuinely feel that they have benefitted from this experience, despite the fact that things would be much easier were we together physically.

I have learned many lessons and tricks along the way, some through failure. I hope that sharing these lessons and tricks with the CCDA community may make the prospect of teaching choir online less overwhelming and yield a higher rate of efficiency and success within each rehearsal.

The broad brush: General suggestions

 Don’t forget the reason we’re doing this in the first place. If I have learned anything at all from this

By Nicola Bertoni Dedmon

pandemic, it’s that choir exists for reasons beyond just performances, festivals, and awards. Of course, these are important goalposts for students in normal circumstances, but they are not the reason people want to sing together; otherwise our rosters would currently be empty. I encourage my colleagues to view choir right now as an activity that provides personal and mental enrichment, rather than a competitive sport of sorts. Your choir/program is the only one that matters right now, and comparing your process or product to another school or organization is a dangerous road to travel. Some programs have far more resources than others, and their finished virtual product will look cleaner as a result. Some programs will be permitted to return face-to-face sooner than others, which opens up a clear competitive conundrum. We are entering a time during which the playing field is even more skewed than it usually is, so try not to get lost in all of that. When designing your online choral curriculum, it’s important to focus on the unique needs of your singers—for example, how much repertoire can they handle while still feeling successful? Perhaps it is much less than usual. We have to be okay with that.

 I find that teaching choir synchronously (in a live, scheduled manner) is much more effective than doing so asynchronously. It is important that singers come together and connect at least once per week, since connection/community is one of the pillars of choral singing. In March, I tried giving my students assignments to complete on their own, and the results were quite poor—it was a lonely experience for the

singers, and the higher purpose of what we were trying to accomplish was completely lost on them. As a result, students were unmotivated. After switching to synchronous, live rehearsals, students have expressed to me that they are much happier and feel more motivated.

 No matter what you have planned for the day, always leave 5-10 minutes at the beginning for pure socializing in breakout rooms. It’s good to give them a question to start the conversation, but just let them do their thing without micromanaging them. I started one lecture without it, and the energy was remarkably low. Remember that virtual interaction and engagement is unnatural, so it takes more coaxing to get singers to a place where they can feel comfortable participating fully in a virtual setting. It is well worth the time to get the singers to a place where they are far more engaged and comfortable in front of their screens during the remainder of rehearsal.

 Balance live instruction with activities they do on their own time. Live instruction gets pretty exhausting, and their attention spans will be limited. I typically rehearse with participant microphones muted for about an hour of our 85-minute class time, and I leave the final 25 minutes for their daily assignment, which is due at the end of class. During the activities they’re completing at their own pace, keep the Zoom on! It is helpful to field their questions on the chat as they work, and sometimes they will find significant musical issues as they record and you can be right there to fix it as those come up.

 Try to keep assignments during scheduled class time in order to keep homework to a minimum. A colleague and friend of mine, Eliza Rubenstein, put it perfectly: When this period of time is over, we want our singers to say “Choir really helped make that more bearable,” not “Choir just added to the stress.”

 Pay special attention to new members. I’m figuring out now just how ridiculously challenging it is to learn how to sing in a new choir for the first time, especially for students who are still developing their rudimentary skills. It is much easier and faster to build these skills in person. I held a few rehearsals with just the new members, and that seemed to be helpful. Another option is to use breakout rooms to give new members some private, real-time feedback on their rudimentary skill development. If nothing else, just be sure to give them special praise in front of the rest of the class to acknowledge that their journey is indeed more challenging, and they should be proud of the progress they have made, as frustrating as the process may be. Sometimes it can make all the difference just to have that validation.

The details: Rehearsal-specific tips  One online program that has been crucial to our choirs’ success is Soundtrap. Soundtrap is an online Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) that uses streaming technology so that students can sync their tracks with others in the class in real time. This enables everyone, both singers and conductor, to hear the composite recording of all voices together much, much faster, and it removes the process of the conductor having to download files and manually line them up in their own DAW. (Bandlab is a similar online DAW that is free, but I have not used it.) I use Soundtrap as a tool to gauge student progress very quickly. After each rehearsal, or during my prep hour, I listen to the composite recording on Soundtrap and make a list of what to rehearse for that piece the next time. It’s not a perfect replacement for in-person feedback, but it is so much better than not hearing anything until an end-of-unit assessment. It’s important to note that with Soundtrap, more than about 20 people on one project at once can overwhelm the system, so for my large ensemble, I break everyone into smaller groups.

 If you do use Soundtrap or Bandlab, create rehearsal time to listen to the previous rehearsal’s composite recording with everyone singing together. Allow students to give their input on what they think they did well and what they can improve. The process of hearing themselves as a group is incredibly rewarding in itself, and also, this helps them continue to exercise their critical listening skills—this is a huge missing component when you take away the live experience. Use Google Forms! Tons of students will have tech issues with either Soundtrap or Bandlab or even Zoom. So, make a form they can fill out when they have those issues, and you can see all the results in one place. Students will also have music questions after class, so make a Google Form where they can submit those and you’ll see all the results in one place. Your e-mail inbox will thank you.

 Try to keep the singers moving as much as possible. Physical warm-ups like “shake outs” or jumping jacks are great. When working on sections of music, particularly when it comes to phrasing, I ask my students to show me their phrasing with their hands

as they sing. Sometimes I will even choreograph a phrase, which, of course, is a commonly used in-person rehearsal tool. By flipping through their videos as they do this, I can tell fairly well in real time how well they understand the phrasing.

 I’ve found that only focusing on one piece per rehearsal has been quite successful. Of course, this might change over time, but I am okay with taking a slower repertoire pace if it leaves the students feeling more successful and less filled with chaotic energy at the end of each session. Zoom is exhausting and lonely, and it really does take its toll. I think instructors should recognize and accept this.

 During live instruction with the students muted, try “looping” small sections of the piece where you repeat that section several times, playing a different voice part every time, but still ask the students to sing their own parts every time you repeat. For example, if I wanted to rehearse measures 1 through 8 of an SATB piece, I would “loop”/repeat those measures four times, one for each voice part, but ask each singer to sing their own part four times in a row. Repetition in rehearsals is always good, and this method requires that they balance it against a different part with each repetition.

 People sing much better with human voices than they do with piano/midi tracks. If there is any possible way to get them recording with human voices, it will yield a much better result. Plus, if you get some excellent singers to do it, they can have the opportunity to sing with and model after professionals—something they usually wouldn’t be able to do. Silver linings! You can also use these tracks during rehearsals to aid the learning process. I typically share my computer sound (without sharing my screen) and I have them sing sections of the piece using tracks I created on Garage Band. This is particularly useful when I want us to hear two parts at one time. For example, if I wanted to isolate the soprano and bass parts of one section, I would go to that section, click “solo” next to the soprano and bass tracks, and have the singers sing along with that. When I am rehearsing one part at a time or working on a specific phrasing or articulation marking, I tend to sing it myself live and have them sing with me. Either way, human voices elicit a much better, much more musical result from the singers.

 Take the time to compliment your singers. As you listen to your tracks and you hear students who do a particularly good job, or who have jumped a large hurdle, send them an e-mail telling them so. Don’t just do it as an assignment comment—end them a very short e-mail that says “Hey, I just wanted to give you this affirmation: you did XYZ so well on your recording. Really good work!” Recording parts by yourself is a skill that requires a level of confidence many students do not have, so they need our positive reinforcement more than ever.

Atypical live Zoom rehearsal for us might look something like this:

Total rehearsal time: 1 hour, 25 minutes 5-10 minutes: Breakout room socialization 5-10 minutes: Announcements and warm-ups ~45 minutes: Live rehearsal (using a balance of pre-recorded tracks and live singing) 20 minutes: Student Soundtrap recordings (on their own time)

Remember, experts in virtual choir classes simply don’t exist yet. Continue to be easy on yourself as a conductor and teacher, because this is not normal. What works extremely well for one choir may not work for another. Trial and error is okay. Small and even large failures are inevitable. Don’t judge your skills as a teacher from this impossible scenario—the most important thing to remember is that if they are gathering and singing, they are learning.

If you have any questions or would like to further discuss this topic, feel free to reach out to me via e-mail: NicolaBDedmon@gmail.com or NDedmon@ fullcoll.edu. 

Nicole Bertoni Dedmon is currently on faculty as a Choral/Vocal Professor at Fullerton College, where she coordinates the Choral Area and conducts the Concert Choir and Chamber Singers. She also teaches Applied Voice lessons and Music Appreciation. She currently serves on the board of ACDA Western Division as an R&R Coordinator. Professor Dedmon is a graduate of James Madison University (BM) and Westminster Choir College (MM).