The Voice!

This past Monday, instead of teaching a trumpet lesson, I taught a choral warm-up. Needless to say it was once again, interesting.

After teaching my warm-up lesson, I realized that I could have done a lot more than just sing a scale with solfege. There was a lot that I missed that could have vocally warmed up my students. I originally had on my lesson plan after we sung a scale; I would have had my students sing thirds (Do Mi Re Fa, etc). I used to do them as a small warm-up for my sight-singing class just because it got us thinking about solfege and it was fun to do. Perhaps for next time I decide to teach a warm up, I could have used syllables that could have helped more than solfege.

I enjoyed the fact that I was able to talk less and do more in order to achieve what I wanted. If I added more, I felt as though I would be more implied to explain more and do less. I should have used more exercises, but then again it’s just a warm-up. How many exercises can you do before it becomes too much and you have less time to work on repertoire? It seems as though there is a delicate balance between the two. I find this problem sometimes when I’m teaching my flute and clarinet students. Sometimes warm ups take a little too much time, but it can be productive when I ask for my students to play with a good tone. With a choral warm-up there’s just more to it than singing scales. I should have known that after taking choir as an undergrad with an amazing choir professor. With more exercises that dealt with keeping the right “technique” for singing, the more I could have accomplished.

There’s always room for improvement and this lesson gave me an eye-opening look into what I should work on before I teach again.