In our first tape, we talked about sound.
Primarily.
Listening to the sound.
Making sure that beautiful sound is always the goal of our conducting.
There are three kinds of sound and we talked about that.
The ideal sound, the real sound, and that imagined sound.
Then we talked about the content of the sound.
The accuracy of pitches and rhythms and dynamics and tempi.
Tone quality, blend, balance, nuance, style, intonation, diction.
All of those things are content of sound.
Then we talked about how we got at the sound.
Always remembering that we're listening with our mental ears even as we look at the score.
And keeping that ideal sound that we want our group to make in our mental ears.
When we talked about getting at the sound, the first thing we mentioned was score study.
Our own study as conductors before we ever meet the choir with that particular anthem in rehearsal.
We talked about marking the score, about suggesting that we make a graph.
So that we can get a bird's eye view of all the changes that take place.
Entrances, dynamic changes, tempo changes, so forth.
And then we talked about techniques, manual techniques.
After we have done our score study, we're ready then for the body language that we use in front of the choir
to communicate the signals that will help them make that beautiful sound.
A choir is like a mirror. It gives back to us what we ask for, what we put in to their minds with our gestures.
And if we listen to the real sound that the choir makes, we can sometimes know best how to handle the gestures that we make.
I like to say that there are some basic communicating techniques that we all ought to know about.
And we talked about those. We call them the FLIRT. F-L-R-R-T.
Those are simply initial letters of words that have to do with communication.
Long before we ever start looking at the diagrams in the conducting books of beat patterns, so to speak.
F is for focus, where the choir looks at us to get the signal.
L is for level, where those pulses occur with our hand and arm.
Range is how big that pattern is. It governs the volume, actually, the dynamics of music.
Rebound, which is the bounce off of that imaginary level.
There's a fast rebound and a slow rebound, and that governs the style.
And tension. And every piece has tension.
We want to make sure we have the appropriate amount of tension in our communicating person for that particular piece.
Not too much and not too little, but we always have tension.
So now on this tape, we're ready to talk about another one of the manual techniques, and that is the beat patterns.
Frequently in the conducting textbooks, there are pictures or diagrams of these beat patterns because
beat patterns are traditionally uniform across the world.
They are a universal language among musicians, so that no matter what verbal language we speak,
we can go anywhere in the world and use those traditional so-called beat patterns,
and we will be understood by the musicians that we're conducting.
I don't want to spend a lot of time talking about what you may already know or can read out of conducting books,
and we'll provide with this video a list of books, some of which I'm sure you may have and know,
that deal with the art of conducting.
There are traditional patterns like 4-4 and 2-4 and 3-4, which I expect that you know.
There is 6-8, which is called a compound meter because each beat has three little beats in it instead of two little beats in it,
like 4-4 and 2-4 and 3-4. 6-8 has 1-2-3-4-5-6.
Those two big beats, 1 and 4, are apparent beats and they each have three sections.
So what I would like to say primarily about the patterns is that it's possible to use two levels
with beat patterns so that you can keep your gestures pretty much in front of you.
I like to say that when I beat 6-8, I use an upstairs and a downstairs level.
Instead of beating 1-2-3-4-5-6, which is one of the diagrams you find in the conducting books and which is perfectly okay,
I prefer to use an upstairs level with the downstairs level and beat as if I were using two measures of three.
So it would look like this, 1-2-3-4-5-6.
Then all of the gesture is right in front of me and I think it sharpens the focus for the choir a little bit.
A word about, in addition to downstairs and upstairs level, those meters that we see more and more frequently now,
like 5-8 and 7-8 or 5-4 and 7-4, those are simply composite meters made up of 2 and 3 or 4 and 3.
A measure of 5 may be 1-2-3-4-5, which would be like a 2, 1-2-2-2, 1-2-2-2.
If I beat it slowly, I would beat the 5 downstairs and upstairs like this, 1-2-3-4-5, 1-2-3-4-5.
But if it went faster, I would get awfully busy with my hand and arm if I tried to beat 1-2-3-4-5
and the music would come back to me very choppy and not really very musical.
So I would merge that 5 into an uneven 2 like this, 1-2-3-4-5, 1-2-3-4-5.
So that the primary accent, which is what we call the downbeat, the first beat of the measure,
is the big one down on the lower level.
And the secondary accent, and you have to study the score to find out whether it comes on 3 or 4 in a 5 measure,
comes upstairs, 1-2-3-4-5.
Or if it's a 2-3 division, 1-2-3-4-5, 1-2-3-4-5.
And whenever you beat a beat that has three parts to it, 3-4-5,
I use a sharper rebound and what my teacher, Dr. Lloyd Fouch, called a float.
3-4-5, 3-4-5, not 3-4-5 because that's no float.
That gets the hand up too fast and ruins the rhythm.
1-2-3-4-5, 1-2-3-4-5.
7, if you beat it fast, becomes like a 3.
Here's the way I go from a slow 7 to a faster 7.
I beat, suppose it's a 4-3 subdivision.
I'll beat 4 downstairs and 3 upstairs at a smaller range.
1-2-3-4-5-6-7, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7.
Do you see how that merged into 3?
The 5-6-7 was the beat that had the uneven number in it
and that's the one that took the fast rebound and the float up.
I think that's easy for the choir to see if you use an upstairs level
and not have to spread all the beats out on one horizontal plane.
Now, another technique that has to do with our gestures
has to do again with the pattern.
It's the matter of preparatory beats.
Actually, what the choir needs to see the most
when they look off the score with one eye
onto the conductor is the first beat of the measure
and the last one.
The first one is going to be what we, I'm afraid, badly call a downbeat,
but it usually is a vertical stroke downward.
I hate the word beat because that's not a musical word.
It's an ugly sounding word and music is not ugly,
but for want of a better one, that's the one I'm going to use.
It's the one we all know, isn't it?
The downbeat and the upbeat, which prepares them
to come in on the next downbeat.
Those are the two they want to see.
Now, the preparatory beat is almost more important
than the beat that follows it because what we're doing
is sending the signals to the choir in the preparatory beat
that tell them how to get ready and what kind of sound
to make on that beat that's coming.
Suppose I were going to conduct a mighty fortress,
which is in 4-4, but it doesn't begin on one.
It begins on four.
A mighty fortress is our God.
It begins on four, therefore, I'm going to give the choir three
so that they'll have a full rhythmic beat to get ready in.
So if I know the pattern and the traditional pattern for 4-4
is down, in, out, up.
Down, in, out, up.
If you're left-handed, down, in, out, up.
And I say it doesn't make any difference whether you're left-handed or not.
Beating left-handed is fine as far as I'm concerned.
But I would give them three.
Now, where is three?
It's out.
So I would start a mighty fortress like this.
A mighty...
Did you see the three that was out here?
Now, if that's in rhythm and in style with the proper rebound, that is,
and in tempo, then the choir knows everything they need to know
to come in on four to make their entrance properly.
So it's the preparatory beat that is extremely important for entrances.
It needs to be in rhythm, in style, and at the right dynamic.
So there's a lot to convey in that preparatory beat.
I was also taught, and I think very wisely,
that it's well to prepare the choir for endings as well as entrances.
Sometimes we call those cutoffs.
If they know rhythmically where and how that ending is going to happen,
then they'll be prepared to make it
and will not have to wonder where it's going to be.
Here's the end of a mighty fortress.
On earth is not his equal.
Did you see the preparation?
I made a kind of a letter C because that's an L consonant,
and it is a slow voiced consonant, so I don't want a sharp cutoff like that.
I want a slow rebound cutoff.
But I did like this.
Quo.
There was a gesture with my eyebrows and my face.
My hand went up and there was the L.
If I were going to end with a T,
Silent night.
I'd give them a preparation for that T.
Suppose it was in six.
Silent night.
The preparation was on five, right on five,
and it was with my face and with my hand.
I made an abrupt stop because the T is a very fast unvoiced sound.
Silent night.
And if they see five in the right style and in the right rhythm,
they'll know exactly where to put the T on and end that little subphrase.
So preparatory beats are very important.
They have to do also with cueing.
If various sections of the chorus are coming in at different times,
as if they were singing a four-part round,
you would want to cue each section on the major beat ahead of where they come in.
If we were singing row, row, row your boat, which is in four,
I would practice that this way.
I'd tell the choir, your section one, section two, section three, section four,
and I will tell only the first section to enter,
and then you have to find out when you come in by watching.
All right, you will be the entering section, section one.
Ready.
Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily life is but a dream.
Did you see the preparatory beat was always the beat ahead of the entrance of that section
and was accompanied by my looking at that section on that preparatory beat?
You can practice that with a mirror at home.
Preparatory beats sometimes include what we call a pickup note.
I'm thinking about it came upon the midnight clear,
which is in 6-8, but which we usually beat in two.
It came upon the midnight clear.
And that begins on that little subdivision beat, that little eighth note, six,
which we're not actually going to beat.
If we did it, it would go like this.
It came.
There would be a little stutter beat, and it would be confusing to the choir,
and they might not know where to come in.
So I say give them the major beat ahead.
The major beat ahead, if we're going to beat it came upon the midnight clear, is two.
One, two, it came.
You don't need to give them the whole measure, just give them two.
Two, it came.
That's that sharp rebound with the float.
It came.
Another technique that becomes a manual technique or a body technique has to do with diction.
Now I like to tell choirs that there are only two problems with diction, vowels and consonants.
With vowels, there are two kinds.
The pure vowels, that's why choirs love to sing in Latin,
because Latin is only pure vowels along with consonants, of course.
And what you might call the impure vowels, that is, the blended vowels like diphthongs or triphthongs
that have two or three vowel sounds that are all made on one syllable.
Now we can't do much with our hand and arm where vowels are concerned, but we certainly can with our face.
I don't like to mouth words all the time because I think that's a bad habit.
I think choirs frequently mimic what we do and sometimes we don't make the right vowel formation
with our mouths ourselves when we're conducting.
Besides that, sound travels so slowly that if the choir is following our mouthing,
then they'll be late coming in.
So I like to mouth vowels only when I think an important vowel that might be mispronounced
is coming up and I try to do it ahead of time.
If I were going to conduct, Oh come all ye faithful, I'd want a good oh on the very first note.
And so I would telegraph that vowel myself.
Oh come.
And then I wouldn't mouth anymore until I got to another vowel sound that I thought might not be clear
if I didn't remind the choir of it with my own facial gesture.
What you don't want to do with beginning and ending vowels is to give a sharp attack,
a fast rebound attack.
Oh!
Is an ugly sound and it does harm to the vocal cords.
So I would always use at something that began with a vowel as the word as for instance,
as it fell upon a night, not as it fell upon a night.
That's about the only instance I can think of beginning and ending vowel sounds,
in other words, where the hand and arm comes into play.
Otherwise, save the hand and arm for the consonants.
Now, there are only two kinds of consonants, voiced and unvoiced,
and that's where you can help them with hand and arm.
Those beautiful slow voiced consonants, L, M, N, NG, some TH's,
V and Z, take a long time to make and they include a humming sound,
so they have to be sung very intensely.
Frequently, we don't hear them because they're not intensified enough by the choir.
We can help them with those if we use a slow rebound.
With a voice of singing, with a voice of singing,
the slow wrist or the slow rebound will telegraph to the choir,
if you can manage to do it, some of those slow consonant sounds.
If you conduct this way all the time, those hummed sounds will not be heard past the second pew.
We think they will because we hear them, but they do not communicate because they're humming sounds.
With the lips closed, will not project, so it must be intensified by the singers,
even more so than the vowels that are on either side.
So a slow rebound can help with those beautiful voiced consonants.
On the other hand, the fast unvoiced consonants like C or K, the C that sounds like a K,
F, P, T, S, those occur very quickly and they need a fast rebound, stroke with the hand.
Or F or P or T.
If you do this, you'll hear all through the choir, you'll hear, and especially S's are ugly.
If you use a slow rebound, you'll get S and not a very clean S.
So the hand and arm can help a great deal with consonants, voiced particularly.
Unvoiced, yes.
Vowels are more easily dealt with with the face, with the mouth.
So those are manual techniques, the flirt, the patterns, the preparatory beats and cues,
and the diction.
The second kind or collection of techniques has to do with rehearsal, and we'll just talk a minute about those.
I like to have a lesson plan, and I know conductors who have much more complete lesson plans than I do.
For each rehearsal, and some conductors, some very successful ones that I know,
make a copy of those and give them out to the choir so that they will know exactly what's coming,
what sections they're going to be working on, how to mark the music and so forth.
What are some of the things that go into rehearsal?
Well, certainly our plan that we have very carefully laid out.
What order are we going to do the music in?
What measures are we going to work on first?
We certainly don't need to work from beginning to end of every single anthem at every single rehearsal.
Some parts require more rehearsal than others.
A change of pace, a change of style, a change of meter, a change of tempo,
so that we won't do a string of anthems that all sound alike to the choir.
That makes the choir tired very quickly.
We need to make sure in our rehearsals that everybody is involved.
I don't like to leave one section sitting idly for very long while another section works on its part.
I will ask this section, for instance, to sing the bottom, hum the bottom note of the accompaniment,
or some other part in the score, or to hum quietly,
or to listen very carefully so they can give a grade to the section that is working on its part.
Anything to keep all the folks involved, so that not only will that cut down on talking and restlessness and fatigue,
but it will involve everybody in knowing what's going on in other parts than their own.
So we're really teaching all the time we're doing that.
Warm-ups, do you use them? Which ones do you use?
Do you use warm-ups that pertain to the music that you're about to do?
Do you keep your warm-ups confined to a very small period of time so that you can have the rest of the time for rehearsal?
I know one conductor who has said recently to me, and I agree with her, and I think I'm going to start doing it,
she likes to start every rehearsal with a chant.
Now that's something unthinkable for many of us because we haven't been used to doing it.
I think we need to do more of it.
In many of our hymnals we have chant melodies like of the Father's Love Begotten, for instance.
Some of us even have an old Scottish chant, which is like Anglican chant of the Lord's Prayer.
That gets the choir not only in a certain frame of mind,
but it gets the tone quality and the phrase line established so that choirs don't come in beginning to punch everything that they sing.
All of these things plus the room that they sing in.
How can we emphasize how important it is to have an attractive room with everything neat and set up ahead of time,
preferably a room that has resonance in it and not carpet or a lot of soft fabric that absorbs sound?
We want a room that has some ring in it so that we get reverberation.
We'd love for our churches to be that way and many of them are not,
but an ideal choir room would have some reverberation and very little cushions or carpet, I should think.
It makes singing much easier and less tiresome in rehearsal when the acoustic of the room is good,
because as Margaret Hillis says, the acoustic is 50% of the sound.
With a bad acoustic, or what we call a very dry room, it's very hard for the choir to make a good sound and be able to hear it themselves.
So that's what goes in very briefly to rehearsal planning and rehearsal techniques.
And finally, Roman numeral three in my outline of conducting always is the same as Roman numeral one, listen to the sound.
Listening to the sound in our heads and then the real sound that the choir makes is the alpha and the omega,
the beginning and the end of what we're doing with our techniques.
And that's what makes for beauty, which is what it's all about.
Thank you.