I'm doing AS level music this year and my music teacher recruited all of us for the choir! I've never been in one before, what's it like? I've heard it helps massively with your aural which would be extremely helpful as well.
Jess

Fun, tiring, a good experience! I'm in a choir out of school (joined last year) and I love it. It's all of the things I've said above and more! I think it has helped my aural skills as well.

I love my choir! It's an organization with 4 choirs for different ages, 4-18. I've been in for 10 years and this is my last year!

Anyway....I'm sure you'll have fun in choir! It does help with aurals, especially if you sing an inner part (alto or tenor). Which part do you sing?

I really enjoyed singing with our school choir, but I don't think it helped me with my aural skills! Mine were still pretty dire until earlier on this year! It helps lots with sight singing, and so reading music along in your head. If that makes sense!

Hehe, my aurals were pretty bad as well, though I blame that mostly on my teacher. I agree, it helps so much with sight singing, especially if sight singing is strongly emphasized in your choir. We go to a sight singing competition every year.

Even though i haven't got any grades in singing my music teacher said i shoud join the school choir. I'm in an all boys school and it's suprising how many people are in it. I've been doing it for about 2 years now and i love it (tiring sometimes though). I've done about 8 concerts which i enjoy doing and they help with my nerves. My aural has greatly improved and choir has definately helped with my instruments.
PR

I was on the Kodaly weekend with NYCOS. Naturally there was a lot of choral singing involved. Singing helps enormously with aurals. This is why singing is part of aural tests - it is a test of what you are hearing inside you, not just the sounds you are making. And you have to listen to other parts and concentrate on your own. That's a skill in itself.

Choirs CAN help with aural skills, but it's not automatic. I know plenty of people (even singing inner parts) who sang in school choir for years, (and one or two I can think of currently singing in the summer choir project we've been doing in my town) who rely on others to know the parts, can't sight sing at all (and do not try to learn, even if they can read music), can only sing their part if they have someone who knows the part singing in their ear, and do not listen to the other parts at all because if they do they go wrong. So yes, choir singing can be enormously beneficial, if you actually make use to the opportunity to use it well.

Try and sight-sing your part - don't just rely on doing it from memory after hearing it sung. Don't try and block out the other parts so you can concentrate on your own, but try to learn to listen to others whilst holding your own part. Listen to how the different parts move and the harmonies that they make. Listen as others learn their parts seperately and see if you can sing along to their part or your part in your head. Try and be independent - practice singing your part by yourself with no one to help you out. If at all possible, practice singing your part on your own against a friend or two singing different part(s). THEN you can derive great benefit from it.

It's way too easy just to coast. Don't assume that singing in a choir will automatically give you great aural skills if you never actually make yourself learn anything from the choir sessions!

Eew singing yuck

NAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *cross voice*

We had a choir of 12 and the first year it ran,we were really good coz there were only 2 at the most who couldn't hold their part, and had to stand next to someone who did. In one rehearsal on the day of the concert, I eneded up on my part by myself, and for some reason another girl from the next part down who doesn't usually stand next to me, decided she would! I could hear her trying to sing the same thing as me, but getting confused, and so just ignored her and listened to the rest of her part. But then she turned around and said "Isobel you're singing the part wrong!" So I said as tactfully as I could that no I wasn't, I was on a different part to her, and maybe she should go stand in the middle of the part, so she didn't get confused!

The year just gone, we weren't so good. There was more people who couldn't hold a part than could (including the same girl!) and there was a coule who couldn't read music so just mimed until they memorised what the part was!

Yes Cyrilla?! *angelic look*

Nat, stop trying to look angelic. Don't forget I am a crabby old bag of a teacher and I can spot an innocent look at a thousand paces. It doesn't work!!!

Hmm ok!!

*thinks of new idea*

I'm also a teacher with a Teacher's Red Pen so please spell 'new' correctly!

Oh dear, I must have been asleep!

*goes to edit!*

Good girl!

*goes off to read Eats Shoots and Leaves and all the other pedants' books on my saddo bookshelves*

Do I get a big red cross against my name?

No, you get a Big Red Tick and a smiley face for your edit!

Oooh yay

I'm so proud

*sobs*

I love choir! I am in a local choir, and an choir at my high school. I love singing with other people and working with them. Sounds corny, and it is!!!! But still true.
-christina

Yes, it's a lot harder to get away with not really knowing your part when there are fewer people singing (though I've known people try it don't know why, surely it's easier in that situation to do everything you can to make sure you DO know it...) - in big choirs as school choirs often are it's easy to coast, which won't do that much for your aural skills except for learning to listen to someone else and try to copy them all the time I suppose...!




I love choirs and singing with people - lots of fun. Have occasionally ended up spending whole evenings sight-singing partsongs of various types. The most hilarious being when we needed a 3rd female voice and didn't have one so one of our male friends attempted it... it's hard to sing when you're laughing that hard!

lol! We did a musical at school and there was 3 of us who had to sing in parts. So instead of teaching us the part, he recorded them onto a tape so we could sing along. He sang them at our pitch, in falsetto and got the Gs and Fs which I'd been struggling to reach! It was weird!

Choir is very useful. It improves your sight reading, aural awearness and also improve your people skills.

Go for the choir!!!!!

Remember :

Bad people do not sing

It CAN improve all those things. It doesn't always happen automatically! If you make use of it, then it will.