Here are a few articles by choir committee member and bass Dave Bradley that you might find useful if you’re new to singing with a choir or need a refresher on musical notation, vocal range etc.
Some tips and tricks on looking after your voice, avoiding strain, and what to avoid eating immediately prior to a rehearsal or concert.
There are lots of words and phrases that may not be familiar to those new to choirs or music in general. We’ll update the glossary as new terms arise or if members have suggestions for new definitions.
Dynamics: The Choral Volume Control
This item discusses musical dynamics and how the musical director and the score guide us in terms of expression when we sing.
Rare is the song that you sing that simply starts at the beginning and finishes at the end, there are repeated sections, choruses, verses, variations, and codas. This article explains how to navigate your sheet music.
Musical Intervals as easy as Do-Re-Mi
An introduction to basic musical scales, the gaps between the low and the high notes, the intervals, and some examples of those intervals from well-known tunes.
The basics of reading music, the “dots”, the sticks, the bars, the marks on the sheet music. We have an additional, separate article on note lengths and rests.
A few notes about vocal technique and vocal range and how to work out if you’re a soprano, an alto, a tenor, or a bass…or somewhere in between adjacent standard ranges.
Some more notes, this time about chords and what they mean in the context of singing in a choir.