Hi Singers!

I am writing to you from a desk covered with music scores.

This is the time of year when all the music for my various groups comes in and I get to dive in to the fall season's repertoire.

Where to begin?

Some of the pieces are old friends, and some are in a style I know, but some are totally uncharted territory.

And although I know that those are the ones that obviously need the most work, I have a curious aversion to practicing them.

It's more fun to polish up the stuff I already know!

Who doesn't want to make something sound good?

I am tempted to ignore the new pieces until the first rehearsal so I can "hear how they go."

Unfortunately, giving in to that temptation will result in a chaotic and unpleasant first rehearsal, in which I'm floundering around, and only after which I'll have a clue regarding how to approach the music in question, giving me less time to learn them before the performance.

It would be better to use my early practice sessions to do a little basic work on the pieces I don't know at all, and leave the polishing of the familiar stuff until later in the rehearsal process.

It reminds me of when, ten or fifteen years ago, my husband and I were considering trading in our old Camry for a then-sort-of-cutting-edge hybrid car.

I told an ecologically-minded friend about our possible purchase, and she told me that in the big picture, Camry drivers moving to Priuses wasn't going to make much of a global difference - the real key was to get Hummer drivers into Camrys.

Improving the worst stuff makes a bigger difference to you and to your choir than polishing up the good stuff to make it perfect.

So if the wise way to approach this pile of new music is to do a bit of musical bushwhacking on the Hummer pieces, here are some helpful tips, even if you have no clue of how the music goes.

In fact, you can do all of these without singing a note!

• Open the score and just look the whole way through. Make note of the following AND MARK THEM:
  • Places where you don't sing (solos, other voice parts), and . . .
  • Large sections or whole movements that seem to repeat - these first two things just help you get a sense of the actual amount of music you're responsible for learning.
  • Places where the system you're following shifts (when solos come in or out or voice parts split) - even if you don't know your notes, at least you won't accidentally be trying to sing the tenor soloist's line! If you're a person who highlights, go for it. Otherwise, use an arrow or a line to guide your eye.
  • Places where another part goes above or below yours unexpectedly. I'm a soprano, so I mark places where the altos cross above me.

Just that one pass through will prevent the lowest tier of mistakes - remember how we used to be told that you could get a few hundred points on the SAT just for writing your name? You did it!

Want to upgrade even a bit more?

Pre-mark your mistakes!

Some of the most common sight-reading errors are also the most easily avoided - you might be able to catch them before you even sing them out loud (whoa!).

• Write the first note AND WORD of a page at the end of the previous page.
• Write where your final consonant goes at the end of sustained notes.
• Write which beat you enter on after a rest.
• Circle repeated notes (most melodic lines move up and down, so if you sing a pitch twice, put a loop around the two note-heads so you can see they are the same).
• Circle and write an arrow if:
  • The line switches direction after a long time in one direction or . . .
  • The line skips after mostly stepwise motion (it is amazing how much music is just moving up and down the scale, so don't miss skips!).

Congratulations!

You are now sight-reading at a Camry level, with plenty of time to polish it up in to a Ferrari by performance time.

Yours bushwhackingly,

Laura