Pagan Music Tips: Planning a Rehearsal Period www.pagansong.com

Right now, the Crow Women are practicing for our concert at Covenant of the Goddess‘ annual meeting. The weekend gathering is called Merry Meet, and includes Grand Council, where COG’s witchy business is conducted. We’ll be the featured band in the Saturday night entertainment, where the delegates can relax and enjoy themselves after a full day of meetings and workshops. If you live near Albuquerque, New Mexico (or want to travel there) you can attend the concerts even if you’re not part of the Covenant of the Goddess meetings. The lineup is SJ Tucker on August 16th, and two concerts on August 17th: the Crow Women and Wendy Rule (just added). Very exciting! Ticket information is here .

This spring and summer, the Crow Women have been having a lot of fun getting ready for the Merry Meet concert. I do a lot of the coordination for Crow Women rehearsals. I also was the choir director at a Unitarian Universalist congregation. I’ve been a member of several other choirs and singing groups, too. In this post I’ll share some of the wisdom I’ve collected about rehearsals over the course of all these experiences. If you, dear reader, are a member or leader of a musical group, I would love it if you could reply to this post with your own observations about rehearsal planning.

You need to know the purpose of the rehearsal first, before you craft a plan. Are you introducing the music, polishing songs, or working on the big picture of a performance?

Introducing music

This is the first phase of practicing a song. Here are some tips.

Teach the easy part first

When you first start working on a new song, you don’t have to run through it starting at the beginning and ending at the end. It’s best to identify a part of the song that’s pretty easy and that occurs more than once, and start with that. That part might be a chorus if the song has a verse/chorus structure, or the main melody if the song is a chant. Drill that part first, until the group is comfortable with it. Then as they learn other parts of the arrangement, this part becomes a “home base” that is already comfortable.

Do it right the first time

When first introducing a song, focus on getting the material learned correctly, right from the beginning. When you create your rehearsal plan, analyze which elements of each song are likely to be challenging. Maybe there is syncopation or there are lyrics with complicated words. Incorrect rhythms learned early are especially very hard to change later. If you have identified in advance where the trouble spots are likely to be, you can be alert to making sure those elements are learned right. Don’t let bad habits go uncorrected or you’ll be sorry later.

Include instruments

If the song will be performed with musical instruments, practice with the instruments right from the start if possible. For example, if there will be a pitched instrument such as a guitar, the singers should learn their part in relation to that instrument. If there is percussion, practicing with it will set the song in their minds the way it will be performed. And, of course, the instrumentalists need to figure out and learn their parts, too.

Polishing Music

The second phase of practicing a song is polishing it.

Drill the arrangement

As soon as the song melody is learned, incorporate the arrangement. Sometimes the hardest part of a pagan song is remembering the arrangement! One of the songs we’ll be singing in our MerryMeet concert is Born of the Elements Medley, the first track on our album Crow Goddess. It’s an overlay of six pagan chants. We have to remember how many times each chant is sung before we layer on the next one. Whew! In the song Hail Hekate (which will be on our next album) we have to keep track of when to add which harmony. When first introducing a song (as described above) it makes sense to learn things in an order from the easiest to the hardest elements, but in the polishing rehearsals, it’s best to go from beginning to end in order to drill the arrangement.

Practice the supporting elements

If there will be anything happening in addition to singing, get this in now, too. A performance is more exciting for the audience if there is more happening in addition to people standing in a group and singing. Sometimes we use props (brooms usually!) or a little choreography, acting out something in the song. Sometimes we clap while singing. It takes a lot of concentration to sing and do anything else at the same time, so practice that a lot.

Choose an effective order for practice

When I make a rehearsal plan for either an introduction stage or polishing stage practice, I usually start with something easy to get moving, then tackle the hardest song while people are relatively fresh, and finish with the moderately difficult material. Choose an order of songs that takes into account the need to warm up and settle in at first, the strong energy people usually have after that, and the way voices and minds tire toward the end of a practice.
We usually have too much material to practice every song in a given rehearsal. There is usually a triage element to my rehearsal plans. I make sure I treat the sickest patients–the songs that need the most work. Material we’ve done a lot in the past that is well learned is like a patient who can be left in the waiting room if need be. For example, we’ve been singing Away Ye Merry Lasses for twenty years or more, so it doesn’t need much rehearsal time. But beware! You can get overconfident and forget to run some of your best-known material. Even the oldies-but-goodies need practice.

Shape the song

Each song has its own arc of energy. Its climax may be at the end, in the middle, or a song may even may start big and gradually diminish, like A Long, Long Night on our Seasons album. It’s during the polishing rehearsals that the band needs to practice this. Even phrases within the piece should have a shape. All musical phrases should move somewhere; a static phrase is a boring phrase. Each phrase of the music should carry the listener forward through the song.

Clean up time!

During polishing rehearsals, be brave and confront all the little problems in the song. Is there good enough diction that the audience will be able to understand the words? Listeners get will be more connected to the performance if they can follow the lovely lyrics that you’re singing. Is everyone pronouncing the words the same way? A group of singers sound much better if everyone is using the same sound for each vowel. Are you beginning together and cutting off at the end of each phrase together? Creating clean entrances and cutoffs makes a performance much more professional sounding. No matter what was in the rehearsal plan, your ears are the best guide to what needs work. If you notice something amiss, be flexible and take time to correct it.

Overview rehearsals

The last phase is overview rehearsals, when you focus on the big picture.

Practice the concert in order

Overview rehearsals are key. It is very important that the last few rehearsals before a performance are run-throughs, doing everything just the way it will be in the actual performance. In the same way people needed a map of a song’s arrangement in their heads, they need a map of the performance. Doing run-throughs also helps you identify any errors in the set list. Maybe a song needs to go in a different place so a singer doesn’t have to do two solos back-to-back. People also need to be clear about the energy arc of the performance. When do you want to be big and exciting? When will you pull back and give yourselves and the audience a breather? Run-throughs help everyone know how the concert will work as a whole.

Practice the blocking

You don’t want to be onstage and be unclear about where to stand. In your plan, try to make a guess about who needs to stand where to be by microphones. People singing a round together should be grouped together and people singing the same melody or harmony line will do better if they are together. For us, singers usually have to change where they stand several times during a performance. In the run-through, practice with everyone in their places to get used to the blocking and identify any problems.

Practice the patter

We usually identify in advance which songs will be given a verbal introduction and we decide who will do this. In the run-throughs, the person responsible for introducing it actually practices what they’ll say. We want to make sure we say the most important things, but keep it short enough so the introductions don’t cause a drop in the energy of the concert. Introducing songs is a skill that needs practice, too.

So, as you can see, the activities at a rehearsal shift over the course of rehearsing for a concert. We’re almost ready for our concert in Albuquerque. I hope you can come hear the results of all our hard work!

What are your thoughts about the stages of a rehearsal period? Please let us know in the comments section!

p.s. I don’t care what the damn rabbit thinks, planning is everything

For more information about the Crow Women pagan choir, and access to all the blog posts by Alane and the other 9 crowsingers who have written for Pagan Song, you can visit the Crow Women author page here on Pagan Song.

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