Think about every sports movie you've ever seen. When the team is not playing up to its potential, the coach always has the players work on fundamentals. Basketball players dribbling and passing, football players running drills and sprints, and baseball players fielding grounders and hitting batting practice. Every time.
Good choirs do the same thing. They work on scales, vowel sounds and tuning chords until they have the sound they are looking for before they apply it to the music they are going to learn. Ward choirs never, ever do this. Why is it that every ward choir director feels that it is his/her calling to perform the most complicated arrangements to the most random songs in all Christendom? I would rather hear "The Spirit of God" straight from the hymnal sung in tempo and on pitch, than "This is the Christ" or "O, Divine Redeemer" or "His Hands" or any other over-sung Mormon tune. Let's get back to the basics, people.
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ReplyDeleteMan, oh man.
ReplyDeleteAmen to everything you just said. If you're ever choir director I want your choir to practice scales like Herb Brook's 1984 US Olympic Hockey team team skated up and down the ice rink
I want you to stand there in front of everyone with a whistle, like Kurt Russell in "Miracle." Blow it and say, "Again." Then repeat that for the whole hour. Then think about how good "The Spirit of God" would sound. I would come join your choir.
I completely agree (and I love your blog). Hence why I quit ward choir after a change in leadership.
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