Keeping Rehearsal Moving
A fast-paced rehearsal is exciting and satisfying. Much is accomplished, and the time seems to pass more quickly for everybody. One way a director can speed up rehearsals is to create his own conventions and "verbal hotkeys". A convention is a miniature "tradition" that everyone is familiar with. A hotkey is a single key action, word, or phrase that conveys a common message to the choir. Both speed up rehearsals because they save words and reduce non-singing time.
Below are a few of my favorite conventions, and a few of my favorite verbal hotkeys:
Convention: Preface any remarks with a label indicating who should listen. Example: "TENORS, I need more volume from you. CHOIR, let’s begin on page seven, letter B. SARAH, don’t forget to sing the obligatto this time.
Convention: Use the same "place-finding" heirarchy every time. Example: Everybody, let’s start on page 9, second line, third measure; Now let’s start on page seven, first line, fifth measure.
Convention: Begin rehearsal in a predicable way, at a predictable time. Example: Dr. Patterson used to always begin his choir practices on the dot, be there one or ten people. We always began with sight-reading hymns, so when it was time to begin, we automatically reached for the hymnals.
Convention: Train your accompanist to listen to your instructions to the rest of the choir, and to automatically play starting pitches for you. This saves time, and keeps the momentum of rehearsal going.
Hotkey: When you teach a principle, latch on to a meaningful phrase or gesture that represents it. For example, Say you were teaching the choir to have untense jaws by placing their hands on the jaw muscles to feel the tension. The gesture of placing your hands on your jaw muscles should suffice to remind them of the lesson, even in the middle of a performance. One Ward choir director would say "pear shaped vowels" to remind the choir of a vowel lesson. Lane Cheney frequently uses group physical gestures and movements to unify phrasing and to eliminate vocal tension. If the phrasing ever goes bad, or the choir sounds tense, he says "do something physical", and the choir knows what to do.
Hotkey: Imagery can be invoked by hotkey phrases. Dr. Patterson tells his women to attach helium baloons to their words in order to hold them up. Thereafter, any reference to "balloons" is instantly understood. Dr. Cooksey often personifies the characters in the story of the music, in order to draw a characteristic sound from the choir
Hotkey: build "subroutines" that you use a lot. I occasionally loop a difficult phrase to isolate it: The first time, I explain "Sing measures 8 to 13, over and over, five times. In other words, Pretend that there are repeat signs around measures 8 and 13 and repeat five times." The first attempt is usually a little awkward, but thereafter, I only need to say "Let’s do mm 3-8 eight times", and the choir knows what to do.