Hello all,
First of all, sorry for this rather longish thing - Perhaps I'm giving more information than I need to here, but I think it may be useful in understanding a rather, um, unique situation... I am seeking advice on how to do group vocal warmups.
By way of background, as mentioned previously, I have a very weird little niche as an opera singer/trumpet player/actor in my fifteenth season with the "Frantic Follies", a vaudeville show in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada. As the only formally trained singer in the rotating cast, our music director delegated me a few years ago to be the "de facto" vocal director, my main task being to direct a group vocal warmup every night that I'm on, for our cast of about a dozen, who have varying pop or musical theatre experience, including dancers, who number four on any given night. This has been a real challenge for me, especially considering my (now somewhat dated?) classical music degrees are specialized in performance, with virtually no pedagogical or choral component, which could be another one of those "wiser hindsight" rants...
It has been rather a dilemma "from day one" how to adapt my classical solo performance background to a group of essentially novice, um, "singers", particularly the dancers. I use the term loosely here, never to be unkind, it's just the reality here - This is a variety show, in a very unique and relatively remote part of the world, the dancers are hired by our producers primarily to dance and if they have any other skills such as singing, acting and playing other instruments, that's a "bonus". The reality which can occasionally frustrate all concerned is that the dancers often lack the most basic of vocal/musical skills and I lack the pedagogical/group skills to really be effective as a "teacher/director". All my own voice teachers were rather, um, "nontechnical", relying on various imagery/abstractions, etc., which seems to be the way I process... I truly admire great voice teachers who can process in different ways to meet the needs of individual students... My own solo warmup has kind of um, "evolved" since my M.Mus. '84, with my own particular dynamic vocalspiritualphysicalmental needs (along with a certain need to sort of invent new language to attempt to express this stuff...), into a certain very individual "freeform", some might say, "idiosyncratic" kind of thing. What I have tried to do is go from what I know and do for myself and somehow adapt that to a group situation.
I have a very limited time, about 10 minutes, for the warmup - details of what I presently do, in a "nutshell": - a few minutes of observing breath / various bits of body awareness/stretching stuff, kind of derived and assimilated from whatever bits I have retained over the years of tai chi, qi gong, Alexander, Feldenkreis, "voice for actors", etc. - a few minutes of kind of "freeform" bits - gentle yawning, body shaking, glissandi, lip trills, face stretching, "jungle noises", overtoning, body percussion a la Bobby McFerrin, etc...., all of which I sort of "direct" in a certain "loose" way, kind of modelling stuff but leaving them mostly to work on their own, to "direct each individual self" to "work whatever needs to be worked" at that particular time... - a few minutes of "conventional" vocalizes sung in unison, based on various scales, arpeggi, "Italian" syllables and such - something like that... I occasionally remind them to sing only what they feel is individually comfortable for their voice, given the widely varying vocal ranges and abilities of our cast. Man, has this been hard to describe in cyberspace...:o)
And now trying to finally get to the gist of this long blather - My musical director recently gave me some private feedback to effect that the dancers say they are "bored doing the same stuff" , are "lacking focus" and generally need some new and different stuff. Sort of "on the other hand", my director agrees with me that there is also a bit of a recurring "attitude problem" with some of the dancers. I suspect some of this has probably more than a little to do with somewhat intangible age/personality stuff - The dancers tend to be very young, late teens/early 20's, "want to party" kind of thing, and as I have alluded in previous posts, am a certain somewhat "monkish, suddenly-48-year-old, rather eccentric kind of introvert", maybe something like the stereotype description I've heard of "lone wolf" place-kickers on football teams...?!
Right... - So, can any of you suggest some very simple and specific warmup things I could do with such a group? I guess the other thing to consider is, this warmup in its present form is meant to also accommodate my own warmup needs, which perhaps makes things a bit tricky. It could be argued that I need to warmup up separately, but this rather presents logistical problems...
Thank you all so much as always for your patience and understanding in reading this far and for any help you can offer!
Blessings.
Michael
Michael Eckford <michaelb@y...> Michael Eckford <michaelb@y...> Green Eckcentric Introvert With Loud Voice and Would-Be Vocal Director Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada http://www.angelfire.com/me/interdependence/ Frantic Follies www.franticfollies.com
"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe." -H. G. Wells
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