Building A Good Choir

1. Treat the choir as your ‘flock’ or ‘family of singers’.  Love them.♡
2. Pray about the music.  Pray for your pianist and choir.🙏
3. Pick music within the realm of your choir and time constraints.🎼
4. Start and end practices on time.🕙
5. Acknowledge and thank your pianist and choir every week.👏🏻
6. Promote. Ask, ’Why do I want to be in this choir?”  What are the benefits? Announce in bulletins & Invite.  Repeat.  Send weekly emails.💬
7. Choose a variety of styles and interesting music.🎶

Seek Improvement – Try New Ways … but Remember, Repetition Builds Confidence

Your choir may need help with expression and phrasing more than a metronome.  Experiment with one or more of the following conducting concepts:

FLOAT – treading water at different depths (light & sustained)

WRING – wringing a beach towel (sustained and heavy)

GLIDE – smoothing wrinkles in a cloth (sustained and light)

PRESS – pushing a car (sustained and heavy)

FLICK – dust lint from clothing (light and quick)

SLASH – serving a tennis ball (quick and heavy)

DAB – tapping on a window (quick and light)

PUNCH – boxing (quick and heavy)

(the above are known as “Laban Efforts”)

EMBRACE Your Choir With Your Conducting – conduct forward not just laterally

FULL Arm and Chest Conducting 

BREATH – open your mouth to breath and hands right before you start a song

Warmups (1-5 minutes of focus)

• Stretch & Awareness
• Stretch neck, roll shoulders, ; run in place
• Expand the rib cage with wide breath;  low moan and sigh
•     Breathing
• Long slow breaths (wide chest openess);  blow out candles or count. 
• Breath combined with a vocal noise (Julia Child talk)
• Hum a warm up (lips barely touch) or buzz lips.
•       Ears, Sound, Brain
  • “ING-A” exercises
  • Solfege (use your songs for reference)
  • Musical line with accompaniment (ball throwing – use arm motions)

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Choirs [Handbook 19.4.5]

Every ward should make an effort to have an active ward choir that sings in sacrament meeting at least once a month. Ward members may participate voluntarily in the choir, or the bishopric may invite or call them to participate.

In a very small branch, a choir might consist of the entire congregation. In a large ward with many resources, the bishopric may call choir officers, such as a president, a secretary, a librarian, and section leaders.

Church choirs are encouraged to use the hymnbook as their basic resource because the hymns teach the truths of the restored gospel. Hymn arrangements and other appropriate choral works may also be used (see 19.4.2).

Information about using the hymns for choirs is provided in Hymns, pages 381–83. Additional information about conducting choirs is in the Conducting Course manual, pages 73–83.

Auditions are not held when organizing ward and stake choirs. Rehearsals usually do not exceed one hour.

In addition to the ward choir, Relief Society, priesthood, youth, children, and family choirs may be invited to sing hymns and other appropriate musical selections in Church meetings.