Childrens Choir

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joellemoe
Posts: 2
Joined: 07 Mar 2006 16:06
Location: Evian France

Childrens Choir

Post by joellemoe »

Bonjour everyone,

I'm starting a little children's choir in France and although am used to direct adults choir, i'm a little apprehensive to work with kids. Do you have any ear training and vocal exercises/games to suggest?
I'm especially afraid of losing control of the choir if the children are rowdy, have any immediate attention grabber?

Thank you for any advice,

Joelle
cHoRuSgEeK52
Posts: 11
Joined: 27 Sep 2006 19:10
Location: USA

Post by cHoRuSgEeK52 »

hello!
well, i was in a commmunity children's choir, and one thing our conductor did for ear training was this:
he gave us the chord, then the solfege symbols, at random, and we had to find the note and intervals between each one with no help from the piano or anything else. It helped me with my perfect pitch, to fine tune it, and was great for ear training with intervals in music. For example, say you would play a D major arpeggio. then, give the symbol for, let's say, "fa", and the kids would sing the solfege you gave them, and work on intervals to the next one.
he also would immediately start playing the accompaniment to get our attention. If we talk during the accompaniment, he would start over until we stopped talking. Eventually, we would get the hint and get tired of hearing the same intro over and over, and we stopped. If some of the kids were really rowdy, he would simply take them out of the room, and if you didn't get the idea after a while, you would be kicked out of the choir altogether.
I'm not sure what age group you are teaching, but our choir was from 2nd grade through middle school, which made things difficult sometimes with such a big age span. Our conductor ran all 20-30 of us by himself, and he was even the accompanist for us as well. Hope this is understandable, and if it isn't, just let me know and I'll tell you in a better explanation. Hope it goes well!

~kelsey
"...a taper in a rushing wind..."
joellemoe
Posts: 2
Joined: 07 Mar 2006 16:06
Location: Evian France

Thanks

Post by joellemoe »

I hadn't thought of the ear training bit, some sort of game with that could be fun!

The children are from 8 to 13 yrs old, i'm not quite sure how many will show up yet.

Thank you for the advice

Joelle
NateHowe
Posts: 2
Joined: 07 Mar 2007 21:38
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Post by NateHowe »

For children's choirs, one of the easiest and most effective ways to help them gain part independence is through the use of rounds and partner songs. There are hundreds of them available, and even if you buy a book of rounds, you only need one copy for yourself, as you will teach by rote. Also, you can divide the choir into sections and have each do a different ostinato, like so:
(the / symbol is the barline)

Start with the second Altos. Have them do half notes:

Do___, Sol___, / Do___, Sol___, / etc.

Have the first altos come in over them on quarter notes:

Mi, Sol, Fa, Sol, / Mi, Sol, Fa, Sol, / etc.

Second sopranos come in over all that with a dotted half and quarter pattern:

Do______, Ti, / Do_____, Ti, / etc.

First Sopranos form a melody above them all, perhaps with a measure of 8th notes followed by a measure with a whole note:

Mi,Fa,Mi,Fa,Mi,Fa,Mi,Re, / Do_____________ / etc.

Have fun and improvise together, using the hand signs.
Most of my sheet music and recordings are free to download at gratemusic.com and ldsmusic.us.
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