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From:  Michael Eckford <michaelb@y...>
Michael Eckford <michaelb@y...>
Date:  Mon Aug 20, 2001  2:11 am
Subject:  group vocal warmup - LONG


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



  Replies Name/Email Yahoo! ID Date Size
13796 Re: group vocal warmup - LONG Lana Mountford   Mon  8/20/2001   4 KB
13797 Re: group vocal warmup - LONG Craig Tompkins   Mon  8/20/2001   3 KB
13800 Re: group vocal warmup - LONG Naomi Gurt Lind   Mon  8/20/2001   3 KB
13802 Re: group vocal warmup - LONG DIANE M. CLARK (MUSIC DEPARTM   Mon  8/20/2001   2 KB
13803 Re: group vocal warmup - LONG peggyh@i...   Mon  8/20/2001   6 KB

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