Teaching Video Analysis #2

My post-midterm teaching video captures a forty-five-minute rehearsal with the

Advanced Treble Choir students at Broadway High School. My lesson began with
physical stretches and breathing exercises followed by vocal warmups and a brief sight
reading exercise. After warmups, I rehearsed the piece “How Can I Keep From Singing,”
focusing on notes and rhythms of the descant portion in the middle section of the piece.
Next, I rehearsed the piece “Sanctus,” focusing on intonation and cutoffs. My class
concluded with a run through and general spot-check of the piece, “Music When Soft
Voices Die.”
At this point in the semester, I began conducting breathing exercises differently,
having the students inhale over one beat and exhale over four, eight, then twelve beats. I
felt that inhaling over one beat was more accurate to how they breathe when singing most
of their repertoire. My sequence during vocal warmups was strong, following a theme of
breath engagement. First I had students sing a sequence only on a “vv,” engaging their
diaphragm, then they opened to a “va,” and finally sang a warmup spanning an octave to
apply the engagement to a more challenging exercise. My warmup sequence was much
more concise and time efficient. To help the students who were preparing for District
Choir auditions, allowed ten seconds to review the sight reading exercise before
practicing it, as they would in the audition.
While rehearsing “How Can I Keep From Singing,” my instructions were more
direct, and I insisted on a fast paced rehearsal, which kept the students on their toes.
Because sopranos and altos sang the same exact part at different points in the piece, I
optimized rehearsal time by having both parts sing their common line at the same time,
and splitting their parts later. I also broke down difficult lines of music by working from
the end of the phrase to the beginning. The students learned the lines by singing small
chunks and gradually adding material until the phrase was completely learned. To help
with intonation in our rehearsal of “Sanctus,” I had the students sing each phrase on
solfege before adding text, which allowed students to become more familiar with the
intervals. In addition, because this rehearsal happened to fall in the middle of our Ear
Training Unit, I made a point to incorporate interval recognition while singing each piece
by asking students to identify particular intervals both in harmonic and melodic context.
While rehearsing heavily with one particular section, I noticed that I often didn’t
provide instructions to engage other sections. Next time, I would plan activities such as
humming, hissing, or writing in solfege to maintain engagement with each section at all
times during rehearsal. In addition, because there were some tricky notes and rhythms in
the sections of each piece we rehearsed, students would have benefitted from more
repetition and singing particular sections in context. During some points of rehearsal, I
noticed that I moved on too quickly before a particular section of music had really
solidified. This is problematic, as it will create more work for the director in the future
when polishing the piece. While rehearsing cutoffs in the piece “Sanctus,” adding a
kinesthetic element of snapping for each cutoff would have helped to unify the ensemble
on each ending consonant. Finally, during our full runs of each piece, I should have
looked up from my score more often to make eye contact and breathe with my singers,
which would help them to feel more confident with their entrances.