Sneaky Teaching from the Whiteboard

by Darcy Morrissey, R&S Chair for Children's and Community Youth Choirs

You are now wrapping up your school year and looking forward to next year.  Here is a fresh idea to add to your tool box.

Materials Needed: a whiteboard and a dry erase pen.  

1) Before class starts, write down the titles of each song you plan to rehearse on said whiteboard.
2) Convert one letter or word per title into IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet), don't forget to surround the IPA letter with brackets!
3) Have students get music out in order as usual, don't say anything about the IPA unless a student asks, then just shrug your shoulders and avoid answering and/or look at them like they are crazy and say, "What strange, bracketed letters?  I think you are seeing things!"

4) Continue to mess with your students' heads each day in the same manner, converting different parts of the titles into IPA until curiosity is bulging out of their skulls.
5) A few rehearsals or weeks later, explain to them how the modern American-English alphabet is obsolete and ludicrous and should be replaced with a better system based exclusively on phonemes.  Back up your rant (see below) with the examples for the "ooh" sound by writing:

shoe
true
new
gnu
too
two
to
through
fruit  

Teacher Rant:
"REALLY?!?!?  All of these letter combinations represent the "ooh" sound?!?!"  
"No WONDER English is one of the most difficult languages to learn!  If you did not speak/read English, how might you pronounce these?" (allow students to try to pronounce the words through this foreign perspective).
"There is an alphabet that is used all over the world by linguists (people studying and documenting languages), actors, news anchors and singers!  Yep that means us!  IPA or the International Phonetic Alphabet will be our tool to help ensure we are singing foreign languages accurately and will even help us to sing songs in English in a more unified manner."  
“The beauty of IPA is that only ONE letter equals a sound, so ...” (write the following):

shoe= [ ∫u ] 
true=  [ tɹu ]
new= [ nu ]
too= [ tu ]
two=  [ tu ]
to= [ tu ]
through= [ Ѳɹu ]
fruit= [ fɹut ]

"Notice, you must surround IPA in brackets...ALWAYS!"

6) Hand your kids an IPA chart* to guide them through the rest of the school year, which eventually, may include sight-singing a song in IPA like the example below!   

7) Continue writing your song titles, letting the IPA take over more and more until eventually, you are exclusively writing the titles in IPA.

How to keep them challenged:
The students will start to memorize the titles in IPA and the challenge will be lost, so instead of writing the titles, write the composer/arranger's last name in IPA.
Another way to mix it up is to choose a bit of the lyrics in the middle of the song.
Do fill-in-the-blank IPA where you leave an IPA letter out and a student fills it in.

*E mail me if you want a copy of my IPA chart: damorrissey@comcast.net

September 4, 2011

Only the Very Best for Our Kids

by Darcy Morrissey, R&S Chair for Children's Choir and Community Youth Choirs

Greetings fellow choir nerds!  I am so honored to take on the R&S Chair for Children & Community Youth Choirs. My predecessor and dear friend, Jenny Price is now in a sunnier place...Pasadena, CA and we all wish her the best!  I hope you will feel free to email me with any questions pertaining to your teaching situation and I will do my best to help and/or connect you with someone else who can.  I may also call upon you for advice and favors, so let's keep on friendly terms!

A bit about me: There is a special place in my heart for elementary choirs and private/community choir organizations.   As a child, I benefitted from a wonderful choral program within the Northshore School District; sang and eventually taught training choirs within the Columbia Choirs organization;  I conducted multiple elementary honor choirs within the Lake Washington School District along with teaching various music courses and age levels,  and now I am the conductor of Amabile, a training choir within the Northwest Girlchoir family.

Enough about me, let's talk about you. Its August, the choir season is about to pick up again and if you are like me, you have a big pile of octavos that must be whittled down to meet your repertoire needs for the year.  Often, in the music selection process, there are so many practical considerations cycling through our heads that we lose sight of the most important aspect about the piece:   Is it a high quality work of art that is worthy of our choristers?  Often we compromise this most important element because we just don't look hard enough for quality repertoire or we don't have the budget to purchase a piece, so we choose a piece in the stacks that should be recycled.  Be snooty, extremely choosy when you are planning the repertoire for the year.  If you are on the fence about a piece, ask yourself the following questions:

1)  Can I read through the lyrics and not feel uncomfortable, uneasy? i.e."rainbows are magic, with glitter and bows."  Does the text stand alone as a worthy, age-appropriate piece of prose?  Does it have a deeper meaning, does it inspire, does it touch a common truth, does it speak to the soul?  

2) Take away the lyrics.  Does the music stand alone as a well crafted arrangement or composition? Does it have its own aesthetic merit?  

3) When you put the lyrics and music back together, are they even more powerful when united?  Is the result almost magical?

If you answer "no" to any of those questions, then don't choose the piece and please don't purchase the music in the first place!!  It just encourages composers, arrangers and music publishers to continue to produce lesser quality music.

Still questioning the merit of a piece of music?
Here are more things to consider:

4) Do I really want to spend two months rehearsing this piece?  Would I be chomping at the bit to tackle the next layer of the piece and would my students be equally excited?

5) Do I want to do a thorough score analysis of this piece?  Will I find deep layers of compositional considerations that will be fun to uncover with my students?

6) Will this music stand the test of time?  Am I buying the latest pop hit or Disney arrangement so that I can recruit/retain choir kids?  Doing a well crafted pop arrangement once in a while is perfectly fine, but if the majority of your repertoire is popular music, then you are doing your kids a disservice.  They hear and sing this type of music throughout their day, it is our job to expand their musical experiences and find connection to different styles and historical eras of music.          

7) Am I choosing a sub-par piece to fit a theme?  Just because a fourth grade classroom teacher is doing a unit on fractions doesn't mean you need to do a contrived piece of music about fractions.  It is nice to support your staff through music when your can but, you should never compromise the quality of your program and waste precious musical time with your students.  Sometimes you might select a theme for your concert for creative reasons.  That's great, so long as you have a wealth of high quality songs to choose from within the umbrella of the theme.

8) Am I choosing the very best choral setting for the lyric?  It is easy to be so enthralled with the lyrics that you think the musical setting is equal in quality.  Just because the lyrics are Shakespeare, Dickinson or Blake does not mean the music is automatically worthy. Be especially picky with music set to common Latin texts.  Nearly all of the greatest composers have set these texts so when you find a brand new, modern setting of Laudamus Te for example, it had better be amazing!  I put it in direct competition with Vivaldi's Laudamus Te.  Does it stack up? If the answer is no, don't do it. Why not do the Vivaldi?

9) Arrangements are really sticky.  Is it true and respectful to the original composition or folk song or is it watered down in order to be accessible and marketable?

10) If you are still questioning the merit of this piece, ask a trusted colleague their opinion.  Or ask yourself WWRSD?  aka What Would Robert Shaw Do?

As you know there are many more aspects to consider while putting your repertoire together for the year i.e. pedagogy, audience, variety of styles, genres, languages or cultures, musical ability of your students, vocal range etc... but I do hope that you will put quality of music as your first priority.  

Some thoughts from Zoltan Kodály: