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blog: Choirs Without a Conductor

Okay- so I've been a bit slack about Blogging lately.  Not that I have been idol- there is so much to Blog about but 24 hours in a day a full time job and more music than I can ever learn to play means there  isn't enough time!   In the l...

blog: Are you tone deaf? Very unlikely!

[A version of this article first appeared as a post on my Blog From the Front of the Choir]   Very, very few people are tone deaf. Tone deafness is an abnormality of the brain which can also affect the understanding of language and certain spatial ...

blog: Why the Singers in your choir still love you even though they look bored

[A version of this article first appeared as a post on my Blog From the Front of the Choir]   Even though I’ve been teaching for almost 30 years, I still get affected by that glum-looking face in the third row.   ... and it's no...

blog: Why learning songs with foreign lyrics need not be scary

[A version of this article first appeared as a post on my Blog From the Front of the Choir]I teach songs from all over the world, often in foreign languages. But people are always asking me for more songs in English. Why is this? Especially since ...

blog: Singing is about people, not musical notes

[this is a version of a post which first appeared on my Blog From the Front of the Choir]   There are many choir leaders whose priority is to create as perfect a rendition of a written musical score as they can (see Music lives in flawed humans and...

blog: Ear Training - from the Directors viewpoint

(adapted from a post in The Stairwell Carollers Choir Blog) David Rain, tenor:  How on earth  do you hear everyone, including our mistakes, while Singing Along at full throttle?   Pierre: I'm not sure, but you're definitely right...

blog: Finding out about songs: don’t believe everything you read!

[this is an updated version of a post which first appeared on my Blog From the Front of the Choir]   I was in the middle of planning a workshop and was checking through a few songs to make sure I had the correct lyrics, source, meaning, backgr...

blog: Does your choir respond to where it's based?

[this is a version of a post which first appeared on my Blog From the Front of the Choir]   I lived in Coventry in the Midlands of the UK for almost 13 years (gosh, doesn’t time fly!), although I’m originally from South London. In 2010...

blog: Ask questions – your choir leader (probably) won’t bite!

[A version of this article first appeared as a post on my Blog From the Front of the Choir]   When I was a student, I’d sit in lectures scribbling down everything that the lecturer wrote on the board. Like most people there, I understood...