Hello. My name is Tony Leach, and I'm
professor of music and music education at the Pennsylvania State
University. We call this place the Happy Valley because it is gorgeously
green right now. I'm responsible for undergraduate
and graduate courses in choral music education, and to that
end I also conduct two choirs: University Choir,
which is our largest mixed ensemble, and Essence of Joy,
which focuses only on music by African and African-American
composers. I'm going to do two parts of
the session for the CIC project that Dr. Ann Clements is
coordinating. The first focuses on my approach to the choral warmup
period. The second involves me teaching by rote
a traditional gospel piece that would be
used with my choirs or in my church or with
audiences in the USA or across the world. We always
begin our choral warmup period with physical things.
We stretch. We lean.
We rotate.
We do massage, the base of the
skull, the face,
this can be very very very involved, especially when
we're multitasking.
Then we go right from physical things into breathing.
Take in a breath on four counts, let it out on a hiss. Breathe.
2, 3, 4, shhhh.
Breathe, 2, 3,
4, sssss.
Imitate me. Ch ch ch ch
ch.....
Sss...
Move with me. 1, 2, 3,
4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Chhh...
Sss....
Your turn!
And then we go from the breathing to what I call
speech to song. Imitate me, please.
Hello!
I'm fine.
Really? Uh huh!
Oh my!
Hehehehe.
You!
One.
Two. Three four five.
Six.
Seven.
Eight.
Nine.
Ten.
*sings* One.
One two.
One two three.
Four.
Five.
Six seven eight.
Nine.
Ten.
And then we go into song one. Song one starts
in the middle part of the range and descends.
We can do it with a hum or
we can use a syllable to initiate the sound and the air.
*hums*
Song two starts at the bottom of the range and moves up into
mid-range. *sings*
And then we go into what I call a
diction warmup. In this case, I'm actually going to teach
the first go-round of lyrics that we will eventually
learn as a piece of music. Repeat after me please.
This. This is.
This is the day.
This is the day. This is
the day that the Lord has made.
I will.
Rejoice. And be glad
in it. I will rejoice
and be glad in it.
This is the day that the Lord has made.
I will rejoice and be glad in it.
Rejoice.
Rejoice. This is the day.
This is the day.
Now the whole thing: listen to it, and
then you will do it with me. This is the day that the Lord has made. I will
rejoice and be glad in it. Rejoice. Rejoice.
This is the day. This is the day.
Your turn. This is the day that the Lord has made.
I will rejoice and be glad in it. Rejoice.
Rejoice. This is the day. This is the
day. Here is the rhythm. This is the day that the
Lord has made. Your turn.
I will rejoice and
be glad in it.
This is the day
that the Lord has made.
I will rejoice
and be glad in it.
Rejoice.
Rejoice. This is the day.
This is the day. Your turn.
Rejoice, 2, 3, and go. Rejoice.
Rejoice.
This is the day.
This is the day. We'll come back to that in a little
bit. At this point, then we start to do
some part singing.
We can start in the middle of the range and go down. We can start
in the middle of the range and go up. We can take a
familiar phrase and just add pitch to it. The goal
is to get everyone singing and then eventually to do something in parts.
We're not going to do anything with This Is The Day. We're just going to continue
in the way that we've been moving so far. *sings*
Your turn, ready, and then the choir would go with you,
doing the whole exercise. Once we have
everyone singing that, then I may have only the kids over on this
side of the room to start, and then I bring in group two, or I may
say Sopranos, I may say Altos, I may say Tenors,
Basses. I may say guys start; treble start.
Whatever situation in which I find myself and as long
as the singers are being successful. The point is to take that unison song
and expand it into something that involves independent parts.
The next part of the exercise would then be to
to go into range extension. Sopranos and Tenors
would start on the unison pitch and go up the interval of a fifth
and Altos and Basses start on that same unison pitch and go down a fourth.
We come back together. Sopranos and Tenors, sing
after me. *sings*
Altos and Basses:
*sings*
Everyone together, now:
And, to make it harmonic,
we might do this. We do an ascending pattern starting on
sol, sol la ti do, and then go back down the
triad and eventually we have the Sopranos to stay on the upper do, the Tenors
to sustain the sol, the Altos to sustain the
mi, and the Basses do the entire pattern. What does it sound like?
It sounds like this. *sings*
That's major. Everyone sings it as a unison song. Ready?
Go.
*sings*
And starting here, on this pitch, then I would tell. Sopranos, you stay on the do.
Tenors, you sing the pattern. Stop on the sol as we're descending.
Altos, to the mi, Basses do the whole pattern. You have a
chord that resolves. We're in a major key but we mix it up and
we do minor. It just depends what the repertoire calls for and
if you've already had a pretty good balance of major and minor
triads in your warmup period. Once we do the
range extension, then the final part is what I call
a warmdown. It can harmonic
or it can be a unison thing, depending on the sophistication
of the choir. *sings*
Another closer that I do
for my mixed choirs: I have the Sopranos
to do a descending pattern - sol, fa, mi,
re, do. *sings*
Then the Sopranos sing. Altos sing
do, do, do, ti, so.
*sings*
Sopranos and Altos -
Altos then do their part - then I put the Soprano and Alto together. Tenors
are singing sol, la, sol, fa, mi.
Then the Tenors do their part, we do the three parts
together, and Basses start on mi and ascend. Mi,
fa, so, so, do.
Basses then do their pattern; we put it all together and we have this
wonderful chordal choral thing that
resolves. Again, Sopranos start on sol,
and then descend by step, Altos start on do,
do, do, do, ti, sol. Tenors start
on sol. Sol, la, sol, fa, mi.
Basses start on mi and ascend on step - mi, fa, sol,
octave sol, and come up to do. Then
we are ready to go into our repertoire for the day.