Words, Words, Words

Last Tuesday was the concert for Roosevelt Middle School. The "concert" was split into three parts, one for each grade starting at the hour that corresponded to their grade level. The concert went well in my opinion. I got to conduct all of the pieces. I learned a lot about conducting from this as I realized that the students couldn't follow a pattern. It was not that they couldn't have learned to follow it but the majority of them had never been in a choir where the music was conducted. Their best way of staying together was to listen to the piano and follow that. My job became very different then. I still conducted a pattern and I cued the students with my hands but I it was the words that they really needed. We performed the whole concert memorized and that was just fine for the most part. Sure there were a few mistakes in rehearsals but I was able to help that with my conducting. I learned how to lip sync the whole concert so that I could mouth the words to them as I was conducting in order to remind them of how the words went. When doing it, I had to mouth the words earlier than they arrived to give the students time to learn them. This really tested my memory of the music and forced me to study it hard and think a lot. I would say that it was actually harder to conduct in this way and also much more effective for helping the students than simply waving my arms. I also began incorporating unusual gestures such as rubbing my eyes to show the word crying or faking laughter to represent the word laughing or pointing at my ears to represent the word hear. This way of conducting a group is perfect for a middle school or elementary school. When the groups get into harder music such as high school and college level works, it is more important to show the other musical aspects and only mouth the words at a tricky or new part. Knowing what my choir needs will be important and I find that situations can often vary by location. When I conducted the concert for Xavier's ninth grade boys, they began forgetting the words at one point. I wish that I would have had the forethought to mouth the words for them. This is another trick I will add to my tool box and use when I find it useful.

This first video is a song I would NOT like to try and mouth for a choir.

and this one is something I would love to do! (and it is a little similar to what I did)