I have been asked by my local church to get a bunch of us together to do some singing at the Christmas eve service - they will be singing two carols in harmony on their own, SATB, although there are only about 10 of us! I have led children's choirs before but not adults - I have a little repertoire of warm ups I do with youngsters, but have any of you got some good fun ideas to warm up adults? They are not particularly musical, and do not ever sing anywhere else!! I feel quite nervous!

A male voice choir I accompany allways do an ABC warm up. If you don't know it it goes;

ABCD
EFG
HIJK
LMNOP
QRST
U&V
WXYZEE

Sung to a downward major one octave scale. We start on Bb, but any note will do as long as the whole scale is within the singers range. It is sung in unison first, then the highest voices start again with the second highest voices coming in with A when the highest reach H, then the rest (lowest voices) come in with A when the first lot reach Q. Usually the choirmaster then gets the audience to join in the last time through.

Hope this all makes sense - it works for us, and gets the audience immediately involved.

Three blind mice and frere jaques work as two parts as well

Mike Brewer's Warm Ups

Has everything you will need!

If I've understood this correctly (1 pitch per line, and probably in 4 time) I expect ZEE should be on a separate line rather than leaving the choir suspended on the supertonic.

The conductor of a choir I joined recently sometimes includes a brisk scale-based exercises that starts at the bottom of a major scale (I think usually C) and builds up to an octave, numbering the notes:
1
121
12321
etc. up to
123456787654321
I think of the rhythm as crotchets and quavers, with the 1 at the end of each line a crotchet and all the other notes quavers.

If I were using that exercises I think I would also want to try it with the solfa names.

I've done it both ways in choir - it tends to fall to pieces with solfa (because the people in my choirs are less accustomed to it), but it's much more fun that way. We also do them backwards, so:

8
878
87678
etc.

And we do them both in rounds a lot as well, it all gets wonderfully confusing.

Mea culpa - ZEE is on it's own line.