020710 First Lesson of Semester 2!

Hi Everyone,

It's Wen Ye writing this blog post again! We just had our lesson with Grace Orchard Choir on Friday, and it was more successful... than usual.

All of us were there at 3pm sharp, and due to the coming open house, Benjamin was busy decorating the choir notice board during the two hours. The rest of us were in the room, teaching the choristers Tone and National Day Songs.

We started off with a sharing session amongst the choir, and we got the choristers to share their holidays with the rest of us, and while it took a while to get the ball rolling, we managed to get some of the quieter choristers to speak up. Also, it served to get the choristers to remember each other after the month-long break. We have to work on getting the choir members to be braver and feel good about speaking and singing, as performing in front of an audience will be more terrifying for the choir members especially if they have not had a chance to experience public speaking.

After a short sharing session, we moved on to Warmups. This time, we only did the physical warmups, like stretching and humming.

Next, we devoted quite a lot of time to teaching tone and breathing techniques. Basically, tone is the term used to group the sound of what we sing. For example, singing with the nose would result in a nasal tone. Singing too deep, would result in a darker tone. Breathing techniques would serve to benefit the choir by imparting skills to help them sing better. When performing on stage, these basics need to be firm, as the choir would not sound nice without developing their tone.
To start on tone techniques, I first demonstrated an example of bad choral tone. I slouched down on my seat, and sang without opening my mouth wide enough. Right after that, I sat up straight and opened my mouth wide. The choir members could tell the difference and they knew which sounded better. During the bad example, the sound produced was thin and soft, while during the good example, it was loud and rounded.
I gave them some things to remember:

1. Open your mouth wide - Think that you are yawning or swallowing a hamburger.
2. Sit up straight, and look forward.

However, this was still not enough to develop tone. We needed the choir to sing with a bright tone, to sound like a children's choir. To do this, I had the choir sing with an unhappy face. They scrunched up their face and sang "I scored zero marks"(13531). They described their sound as a sad and dark sound. After that, I got the choir to sing "I scored one million"(13531) with a happy face. Instantly, they knew that they sounded brighter and happier. To get them to go even further, they sang "I scored one Billion"(13531), with a happy and shocked face. (Open mouth and raised eyebrows and cheekbones). By the third time of "Billion", the choir could tell that the sound they produced was more suitable to their age. We decided to teach through simple expressions, as we did not want to get technical with all the raised cheekbones, etc, and instead told them to feel happy.

Next, we did breathing techniques, and had the students put one hand on their hips, and the other on their stomach. I demonstrated the bad way of breathing - breathing through your lungs. Then I did the right way - breathing with your stomach, expanding with breath and contracting with singing. On the first few tries, most of the choir had not grasped the method, and we did a pair activity, where each pair would feel each other to see how they were breathing. Most still did not grasp the method, and we will be spending more time next week with new exercises to teach this method.

The whole session of teaching basic foundations were quite successful, and we summarised the key techniques:

1. Sit up straight
2. Open mouth wide
3. Happy facial expression
4. Breath with stomach

We reminded the choir to try it at home, see their reflection in the mirror and sing - Bad example, then Good example, and try to make the techniques their own.

We were running short of time, and thus we jumped straight into We Are Singapore. We decided on teaching the song completely without the transposition. If later lessons permit, we may increase the difficulty of the song by adding a canon first, then maybe even transposition. We were quite fast with this song, as most of the choir learnt the song very quickly. Its a simple song after all.

We then had a 10 mins break, and we spent some time interacting with the students. Darren went on the Singapore Flyer! =)

We then had a short energizer activity, titled "Back from Break"! We did the ball throwing activity, but this time with the techniques taught above. And we took photos.

We then moved on to a more difficult song, This is Home. It features more lyrics and complex rhythms. We started by asking the choir what they feel is home. The answers we got were:

1. A place to stay (mine)
2. A beautiful place
3. A house
4. A big room
5. A house with staircases and lifts
6. Mum and Dad (Mummy and Papa - Darren)

I then asked them, does Singapore contain all these things that you said was home? So isn't Singapore your home too? (unanimous nodding) I then demonstrated the song once, and then we got the choir to sing each line slowly. When we came to the line "Where my dreams wait for me", we got the choir to give a list of things they felt was dreams(aspirations). We got some answers:

1. Grace Orchard Choir to perform well! (mine)
2. Score well for exams
3. Have fun during holidays

So, when we sang that line, we reminded the choir to think of their dreams, so that they can infuse emotion into this song.
We continued going through the lines, and stopping the choir at another two lines.

1. As my senses tell me - What are my senses, how do we know its Singapore?
2. I won't be alone - Why? Family and Friends

The reason for going through the lyrics line by line was to help the students understand the meaning behind the song. Compared to the patriotic We Are Singapore, this song is delicate and more emotional, and we want the students to bring about this emotion when singing.

Next, we got them to sing the song once through, and after a few more tries, we removed some words, replacing them with drawings(pictograms), and got the students to try to remember the words.

Finally, we ended the lesson with a lesson recap, and asked the students to recap on what we did.

1. Breathing techniques (see above)
2. We are Singapore
3. This is Home

They also remember the fun activities that made them laugh, and we will try to do more of this in the next lesson. They also prefer We Are Singapore compared to This is Home, thus we will try to focus more on This is Home. We will also see how far they have developed after practicing at home on their own. Also, we have to keep in mind not to take pictures of the students during lessons, as it is a major distraction. Many of the students are camera-shy (unlike Benjamin). Lastly, we will need to work on boosting their courage and giving them an experience of public speaking, so that they will not freak out when performing on National Day.

Signing off,
Wen Ye