Fundamentals of Choir Leading Basic Conducting Technique · Fundamentals of Choir Leading Basic...

Fundamentals of Choir Leading Basic Conducting Technique

Workbook

This workbook comprises the worksheets and checklists from all the lessons in the Basic

Conducting Technique course. You can access all the lesson documents individually on

the lesson pages.

This book is intended simply to be a convenient way to download the materials if you

wish to view them offline, for example on a tablet or smartphone, or printed out.


Lesson 2 Posture

Why is good posture important for conductors?

• It sends the message to our choirs that we are confident and in charge of the music;

• It unconsciously invites our singers to mirror our good posture, which in turn improves their singing;

• It helps us to conduct without strain and tension.

Exercises for good posture

We’ve put together some gentle exercises to help you release tension and adopt good posture.

NOTE: You know your limitations; we don’t. Please don’t do these exercises if they cause you any pain or

discomfort. If you’re in any doubt, always consult your doctor.

You can listen to these exercises as audio tracks on the lesson page.

Relaxation

1. Roll your shoulders forward in a circular movement three times.

2. Roll your shoulders backward in a circular movement three times.

3. Shrug your shoulders up while taking a deep breath in, release when you exhale.

4. Gently turn your head left, then right, three times.

5. Raise your arms above your head as you breathe in. Gently bend to the left as you exhale, then straighten up as you inhale, repeating the process on the other side.

Posture

1. Be a ‘raggy doll’ - slouch as much as you can, bend your knees and, if you’re able to, flop over from the waist into a forward bend and let your neck release. Then slowly ‘grow’ back up, uncurling your spine and straightening until you’re fully upright.

2. Stand with your knees about hip-width apart. Shift your weight forward and back, side to side, until you feel that you’ve found a place of balance. If you’re able to, slowly rise up onto balls of your feet as you breathe in, then lower your heels as you breathe out. Keep your weight just a little bit forward so that you feel balanced and ready for action.

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3. Stand in front of a mirror and critically assess your posture. How do you look?

4. Find a balanced centre on your feet, then think about drawing up your thigh muscles so that your legs

are strong but your knees aren’t locked back. Draw your naval towards the small of your back and feel

how your pelvis tilts under.

Lift up through your torso so that you create maximum space between your naval and your solar

plexus (but without sticking your bottom out!), then broaden across your upper chest and allow your

shoulder blades to move down your back. Elongate the back of your neck, so that your chin drops

slightly. Finally, imagine that you’re being drawn up by a thread from the crown of your head, lifting

you vertically.

4. Gently circle your arms one at a time, forward then backward, to warm up your arms and shoulders for

conducting. With you arms by your sides, breathe in and lift them sideways to shoulder height, then

exhale and lower them. Repeat a few times.

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Remember Good posture and gentle movement are your best weapons against tension and strain in

your conducting.


Lesson 3 Starting from stillness

Why do we start from stillness?

• It’s good discipline for the choir;

• It gives you time to prepare to conduct.

How to start from stillness

1. Resist the temptation to shout or call for silence;

2. Stand with good posture;

3. Raise your hands to give the signal to the choir that you are ready to conduct;

4. Smile and look expectantly at the choir to leave them in no doubt that you are expecting them to be ready to sing;

5. Wait*;

6. When the choir comes to silence, give any necessary instructions (if in rehearsal), take a moment to ready yourself, then begin.

*We know that it can be very daunting to do this, especially if you have become used to shouting to get your choir’s attention. It will take a bit of courage and practice, but once you get used to it, this method of getting ready to sing will save you time and save your voice.

Tips for a stress-free start

The moments before you begin a piece can be stressful. You have to think about tempo, dynamics, preparatory beats and the piece ahead. It’s very easy to miss something and start off on the wrong foot. To help you start from a place of stillness and control, it can be useful to jot down a few notes at the top of your score (or whatever you’re conducting from) to jog your memory in those moments before you begin.

Here’s an example:- 4/4, in 2 Entry on fourth beat Tenor lead Quietly and smoothly

Once you’re very familiar with a piece, you might not need to refer to these notes, but they make a helpful ‘safety net’ when you’re beginning.

Remember Starting from stillness may not come easily to you or your choir at first, but will pay

dividends in rehearsal and performance.


Lesson 4 Right hand position

Why beat time with the right hand?

Most conductors use their right hand to beat time and the left for expression, dynamics

and to give specific directions to the choir. If you find beating time with the right hand

uncomfortable, there’s no reason why you can’t use your left. It’s not a hard and fast

rule, just a convention. However, if you have no particular preference, we suggest using

the ‘traditional’ approach.

A good right hand position

1. Start with good posture, with the chest gently lifted and the

shoulders back and down;

2. The hand is roughly horizontal, palm down;

3. The hand is relaxed;

4. The fingers are closed;

5. The thumb is in a natural position, not clamped to the hand;

6. The wrist is neither floppy nor rigid, with the hand an extension

of the forearm;

7. The movement comes from the shoulder, not the elbow;

8. When the choir comes to silence, give any necessary instructions

(if in rehearsal), take a moment to ready yourself, then begin.

Practice points 1. Practise ‘painting a fence’ as demonstrated in the video.

2. Watch yourself in a mirror or, preferably, video youself practising (it can be

uncomfortable to watch yourself on video, but you’ll soon get used to it and it’s by far the

best way to assess your own conducting).

3. Conduct the two-beat pattern shown in the video for a few minutes to some music. Do

you notice your form slip as you get tired or lose concentration?

4. Practise your right hand position regularly. Begin to build a conducting skills routine

that you run through daily. The more you practise these skills, the more you will be able

to employ them unconsciously when you’re conducting your choir.


Lesson 5 Beat & ictus

What do we mean by ictus?

‘Ictus’ simply refers to the point of stress of a beat. Without it, the beat has no form and a

singer can’t tell exactly where the beat lies.

What is the ‘right’ ictus?

The ictus is a bit of a ‘Goldilocks’ thing - too much and it’s aggressive and stilted; too little

and it’s vague. We need to find an ictus that’s just right. Don’t forget that ‘just right’ will

not always be the same. It will change with the music and the singers.

Developing the ictus

1. Begin by beating time with a circular motion.

2. Gradually, let the circle become ‘heavier’ at the bottom, as though gravity were

working on it. The bottom of the circle becomes the ictus, the top the rebound.

3. You will probably find that the circle has become more of an ellipse.

4. Practise making your ictus more pronounced, even aggressive, so that you’re really

‘hitting’ it, then reduce it until you feel that you’re gently ‘tapping’ the ictus point in

the beat.

Making beats slower or faster without altering their size

There are lots of reasons why you might want to change the size of a beat, but there’s no

need to do so just to change the tempo. In other words, your beat doesn’t need to travel

further in order to be slower.

Think of how easily your arm moves through the air. Now imagine that it’s moving

through water. It will take longer to move the same distance because of the resistance of

the liquid.

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You can introduce that feeling of resistance into your conducting, so that to conduct a

slower tempo without increasing the size of the beat, we imagine moving our arm

through water, or something more viscous like syrup or chocolate.

We find this approach much easier than simply concentrating on slowing down the beat.

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Practice points 1. Follow the video lesson and practise developing a clear ictus and beats of different

speeds.

2. Record yourself on video (or watch in a mirror) as you practise the following two-beat

patterns, trying to keep the beats roughly the same size:-

i) 8 bars through air

ii) 8 bars ‘through water’

iii) 8 bars ‘through syrup’

iv) 8 bars ‘through mud’

3. What do you notice about your conducting? Is the ictus of your beat vague, aggressive or

‘just right’? Does the size of your beat change when you speed up or slow down?


Lesson 6 Beat patterns

Why do we use beat patterns?

Beat patterns are by no means compulsory, but they do represent part of the recognised

vocabulary of conducting. Even if your personal style departs from that vocabulary, it’s

useful to understand it and be able to employ it when appropriate.

General characteristics of beat patterns

Beat patterns obviously differ depending on the meter of the music. However, they share

characteristics.

The first beat is always the downbeat. The final beat is always the upbeat. The

penultimate beat is always ‘out’. However many beats you conduct in a bar, you begin

with ‘down’ and end with ‘out, up’.

The obvious exceptions to this rule are one- and two-beat patterns, which have no ‘out’

beat.

Another shared characteristic of all beat patterns is that they never stop - there should

always be movement.

Rebound

The rebound of a beat is the movement away from the ictus after it has been struck. It

becomes more important as we conduct at slower tempos. It can help us to slow down

the beat without making giant gestures.

Tracking beat patterns

When you’re learning to use beat patterns, it can be helpful to have a mental picture of

the track of the pattern. On the next page, you’ll find diagrams showing you two-, three-

and four-beat patterns. Keep them in mind as you practise.

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2/4

3/4

4/4

2

3

Practice points We’ve created practice videos* for this lesson which you can find on the lesson page (1.6

Beat patterns).

Try to practise with the video exercises a few times a week until the patterns feel like

second nature.

As with previous lessons, videoing yourself will be very useful.

*You’ll notice in the video exercises that Victoria mentions ‘passive’ and ‘active’ beats to begin each exercise. Don’t worry about those at the moment. We’ll get to them in Lesson 7. Upbeats and entries, after which you’ll return to the exercises. Just focus on the beat patterns for now.


Lesson 7 Upbeats & entries

What is a passive beat?

To put it simply, a passive beat is any beat that isn’t an active beat. We use a passive beat

to prepare the choir for the active beat to come.

What is an active beat?

An active beat is used to bring the choir in. To make a beat active, we do the following:-

• Give a more pronounced ictus;

• Breathe in;

• Make eye contact and show in our faces that action is required.

These three characteristics, when added together, give the choir a clear signal to begin

singing.

Active beats at different points in the bar

It’s intuitive to bring the choir in on a downbeat. In a 4/4 time signature, we would give a

passive beat 3, an active beat 4 and the choir would begin singing on beat 1.

It’s also quite straightforward to bring the choir in on an upbeat. In that case, the passive

beat is beat 2, the active beat is beat 3, and the choir sings on beat 4.

So far, so good. Things get much harder when we need to start the choir on beats 2 or 3.

It is particularly counter-intuitive to put the passive beat on the downbeat. It will take

some practise for these entries to feel natural.

Passive beats as placeholders

If you conduct your choir with a soloist, an accompanist or other musicians, you can

employ the passive beat to mark time during a passage that doesn’t require any

direction on your part. A good example is a long introduction. You might want to simply

bring the accompanist in to set the tempo, then give passive downbeats just to keep the

choir in touch with you until it’s time to sing.

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Practice points 1. Practise your active beat, making sure that all three elements are present.

2. Practise a passive beat followed by an active beat. Take care that the passive beat gives

none of the elements that signal an active beat.

3. Work on placing the active beat at different points in the beat pattern.

4. This is an area where videoing and mirror work are particularly helpful. It’s very easy to

give your choir mixed messages by making a passive beat too active and vice versa.

5. Return to the video exercises from Lesson 6. Beat patterns, incorporating the passive

and active beats.


Lesson 8 Left hand gestures & independence

Why do we need our hands to work independently?

Beating time with two hands gives no more information to the choir than beating with

one. If we learn to use our left hand independently, we can open up a whole range of

expressive and directional gestures that we don’t have when our hands are ‘tied’

together.

This is undoubtedly one of the hardest things any conductor needs to learn.

Where to start

If you’ve been ‘mirroring’ with your left hand (ie, using it to make the same gestures as

the right) or you’re just starting out, a good place to begin with left hand independence is

simply to get it out of the picture. Put your left hand in your pocket or at the side of your

body.

Get used to gesturing only with your right hand. You can actually give the choir all the

information they need with just one hand.

Introducing the left hand

An easy way to start using the left hand is for cues. Gesture to the choir, or section, when

you want them to come in (combining the gesture with your active beat). When you’re

not cueing the choir, let the left hand rest.

Developing the left hand

When you’re confidently using your left hand for cues, introduce it to show a crescendo

(getting louder) or decrescendo (getting softer). Try working with the left hand alone for a

while before combining beat patterns and expression.

You’ll probably find that your left hand gestures are jumpy and stilted at first, but

smoothness will come with practice.

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Practice points 1. Continue to practise your beat patterns from Lesson 1.6, with your left hand out of use,

either in your pocket or at your side.

2. Introduce the left hand for cues. Practise with your current repertoire or with a

favourite piece, beating time with the right hand and cueing the choir with the left.

3. Practise a crescendo and decrescendo with the left hand only.

4. Combine a right hand beat pattern and a left hand crescendo and decrescendo.

5. Keep practising until the left hand works smoothly. It may take some time!


Lesson 9 Eye contact

What’s the point of making eye contact?

Our faces communicate a lot to our choirs about the emotion and expression in the

music we perform. We also want to encourage the choir to make eye contact both with us

and the choir, so it’s essential that we look at them.

A large part of successful eye contact is having the confidence to look at other people

without feeling uncomfortable. For singers and choir leaders, this is something that

becomes easier over time.

Ideally we should strive for the following:

• Be prepared – know your music well enough that you don’t have your head buried in

your score. Even if you know the piece well, it can be tempting to use it as a ‘security

blanket’. Work on getting your head up and looking at your singers. Work from

memory if you can.

• As you conduct, make eye contact with each part of the choir regularly. Remember to

include the singers who are not right in front of you.

• Don’t linger on any one face, even if you feel comfortable doing so because someone

looks particularly friendly or engaged. That person will start to feel uncomfortable

and might think you’re singling them out because they’re doing something wrong.

• Good eye contact will boost your leadership. You will appear more confident and in

control. If you’re staring at your score, your choir may think you don’t know what

you’re doing.

• At the end of a piece in rehearsal, continue the eye contact as you praise your choir or

move to something new. It will help to avoid escalating chatter.

• Remember, your choir doesn’t know what’s going on in your head. Your gestures,

posture, facial expression and eye contact are how you communicate. Let them speak

volumes!

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Practice points 1. If you struggle with this and feel embarrassed when you look directly at your choir in a

sustained way, try experimenting outside choir rehearsals. Next time you make a

purchase in a shop, make a point of looking directly at the person serving you and

smiling. You may realise just how much you shy away from making eye contact.

2. At your next choir rehearsal, conduct a piece from memory and concentrate on looking

at the choir. If you can’t manage a whole piece from memory, you could use a round or

part-song in your warm-ups.

3. Take particular care when you finish a piece in rehearsal not to immediately drop your

head and start studying your score. You break the choir’s contact with you and have to

re-establish it when you want to move on.


Lesson 10 Mouthing the words

Why is mouthing the words a problem?

That question is best answered with another question - whose words should you mouth?

If your choir is singing something wholly homophonic (everyone’s singing the same

words to the same rhythm at the same time), it’s easy, but if the music is polyphonic

(different parts singing different rhythms at different times), which words do you

choose?

If you follow one part, you’re neglecting the others. If you hop about from part to part,

you’re going to confuse your singers.

Another problem that arises when you mouth the words is that your choir comes to

expect and rely on it. We want our singers to be independent and to learn the text

(whether or not they have scores in front of them). If they rely on you to show them the

text, and you forget or make a mistake, their performance will suffer.

The best approach is not to mouth the words at all.

What should I do instead?

It’s important to breathe with the choir (see Lesson 7) and helpful to breathe in the

shape of the vowel that they’re about to sing (and to encourage your singers to do the

same).

If the choir or a section of it has a particularly tricky entry where the words are often

forgotten, you could cue them by mouthing just the first word. Resist the temptation to

go beyond that.

Singing along

Singing with the choir or with particular parts can help during the learning process, but

you have to be able to stop doing it when appropriate. You certainly don’t want your

singers to rely on following your voice (and, again, whose part do you sing?)

Another consideration is that singing throughout rehearsals can be very hard on your

voice. It’s useful to find strategies to rehearse the choir without singing for when your

voice need a rest.

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Practice points 1. If you’ve got into the habit of mouthing the words with your choir, or even singing along,

it may take some time and practice to stop doing so. Whenever you catch yourself doing

it, gently stop yourself. Don’t worry or get hung up about it - change comes with time.

2. Your choir may feel a little abandoned if you’ve been feeding them all the words and you

suddenly stop, particularly if you’re close to a performance. Try incorporating your new

style gradually, preferably when you begin rehearsing a new piece.

3. If you’re a singer who does a lot of demonstration in rehearsals, make sure that you are

not carrying that into performances by singing along. Think about how you could direct

your choir without using your singing voice.


Lesson 11 Gesture size & dynamics

Why is gesture size important?

Our conducting gestures convey meaning to our choir. While it is common to use the

right hand to beat time and the left to indicate expression, we can also convey a lot of

expression in our right hand by varying the size of our beat.

We know that we don’t need to increase our gesture size to show a slower tempo (see

Lesson 5), so we can use gesture size to indicate dynamics - the larger the gesture, the

louder the music.

We have to take care not to use an overly large gesture as a matter of course. If we do

that, how can we indicate to the choir that we want them to crescendo (get louder)?

The conducting ‘frame’

Stand ready to conduct. Now extend your arms comfortably to

the sides and above you to create a large circle around you.

This is your conducting frame, within which you contain your

gestures.

Reaching outside this frame will tend to throw you off-balance and

be tiring.

Doing too much

When you see conductors using large, expansive gestures regardless of the dynamic of

the music, it’s often a sign that they lack confidence. They fear that the choir won’t follow

them, so their gestures become emphatic, even aggressive, as though they were trying to

drag the music out of the choir. Apart from being exhausting, that simply won’t get the

results they want.

If you’ve got into the habit of making your gestures too large, you may find it quite

challenging to scale things back. It’s definitely worth it though, both musically and for

your own well-being.

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Practice points 1. Do some work in front of a mirror or, preferably, on video. Choose a beat pattern and

practise increasing the dynamic solely by increasing the gesture size. Conversely, show a

decrease in volume with a smaller gesture.

2. Combine the idea of resistance to show slower tempos with gesture size to show changes

in dynamics by practising:-

• a fast tempo with a loud dynamic (conducting ‘through air’ with a large gesture);

• a slower tempo with a loud dynamic (conducting ‘through water’ with a large

gesture);

• a fast tempo with a quiet dynamic (conducting ‘through air’ with a small gesture);

• a slower tempo with a quiet dynamic (conducting ‘through water’ with a small

gesture).

3. Add a variety of gesture sizes to your regular practice routine.


Lesson 12 Ending a piece

The end is as important as the beginning

It’s easy to overlook the importance of ending a piece properly. Make sure it’s a conscious

part of your preparation process for any piece.

Gesture

When we bring the choir off, the gesture should be definite, ie it has to have an ictus

point (see Lesson 1.5), but it shouldn’t be aggressive or snatching.

Don’t rush it

Try not to end a piece in haste in a ‘thank goodness that’s over’ way. Take a moment to

allow the choir and the audience to enjoy a short silence before you drop your arms to

indicate that the piece has finished.

The end isn’t always the end

The point at which the choir stops singing isn’t always the end of the music. If you’re

working with an accompanist, they might continue playing. Even if you choose not to

conduct them and you ‘hand over’ to them to finish, your performance, and the choir’s,

isn’t over until the music has stopped.

If you’re singing to recorded music, there may be an outro. The same principle applies -

you’re still part of the performance until the music finishes.

Holding the final note

If you want a final note to crescendo (get louder) or decresendo (get softer), you can show

that with your left hand (if you’re still beating time with the right) or with both hands.

If you want to hold a final note without any dynamic change, experiment with a gentle

outward (but level) gesture with both hands. You should never be completely still during

the music.

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Practice points 1. Do some work in front of a mirror or, preferably, on video. Practise showing the end of a

piece as demonstrated in the video lesson.

2. Practise holding a final note, getting louder, getting softer and with no dynamic change.

3. Add final notes to your regular practice routine, so that when you practise your beat

patterns, you consciously end each one as though you were bringing the choir off.


Lesson 13 Pauses

Introducing pauses

Pauses, or fermatas, can be a particularly tricky area for new and inexperienced

conductors. In a musical score, they are usually indicated by this symbol, or a

variation on it:

A pause simply requires that the tempo of a piece is suspended briefly and more time is

given to a particular note or chord.

Learn and practise these three methods of creating a pause and you’ll be well on the way

to being able to tackle pauses with confidence.

Caesura fermata

In a caesura fermata, we bring the choir off completely and reset with a new active beat

(see Lesson 7).

Release-in-tempo fermata

In this case, the release from the pause becomes the active beat that cues the next entry.

Continuation fermata

Finally, this type of pause is simply an elongated beat. The music continues afterwards

with no active beat.

Practice points 1. Practise each type of pause, varying the length of the pause. Experiment with changing

the tempo after the pause with the caesura and release-in-tempo fermatas.

2. Find a piece of music in your existing repertoire or elsewhere that contains pauses.

Experiment with the different types of pause. Is it obvious which one is suitable in each

instance?

3. Add pauses to your regular practice routine.


Lesson 14 Working with an accompanist

Here’s a checklist of things to remember when you’re working with an accompanist

Give them adequate time to prepare;

Give them clear instructions;

Give them time to respond to instructions;

Make sure they can see you;

Never criticise them in front of the choir;

Include them in the music by looking at them and directing your

gestures to them, particularly at the start of a piece or where

there are changes of tempo;

Consider setting the tempo, then ‘handing over’ to them so they

can play instrumental section without you conducting;

Make sure the choir is disciplined and respectful when the

accompanist is playing an instrumental section.

Remember A good accompanist will make all your rehearsals easier and more effective. Help them out

as much as you can and always be respectful.


Lesson 15 Conducting to a backing track

Here’s a checklist of things to remember if you choir sings to a recorded track

You’re not setting the tempo;

You’re not leading the music, you’re leading the choir in following

the music;

A recorded track is relentless. If something goes wrong, you’re

entirely in charge of getting back on course;

Prepare thoroughly so that you’re confident about tempo

changes, pauses, number of bars intro etc;

Don’t feel you need to ‘conduct’ intros, outros or instruments. You

can simply mark time, remain in performance mode, then begin

conducting when you want to start leading the choir;

Make sure the choir stays disciplined and in performance mode

for the whole piece, not just when they’re singing.

Remember Leading a choir to a recorded track is a very different skill to conducting with an

accompanist or other musicians.

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