What Does a Chorus Do Before a Concert?

Warming up is important for a chorus.

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There are many things a chorus must do before it is ready to perform a concert. No chorus can simply take the stage and expect to perform to the best of their abilities without first warming up. For a chorus to perform effectively as a group they must be vocally prepared and unified under a common, conscious bond.

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A chorus must warm up by singing scales. Scales are the basic building blocks of choral music. A chorus should warm up by singing scales starting with a scale that is in a low register and building up chromatically to higher and higher scales. The scales that a chorus warms up with may vary from major scales, minor scales, arpeggios and chromatic scales.

Breathing Exercises

A chorus should do breathing exercises before a performance. Breathing exercises are important for breath control and breathing stamina, as singing relies heavily on the respiratory system. Have the chorus take deep, metered breaths, ideally to a metronome. The chorus breathes in for four counts and breathes out for four counts, for example.

Vocal Exercises

Vocal exercises are important for a chorus, especially when there is a unison vowel or consonant sound in a song. A choir should run through various diction exercises before a performance. Diction exercises do not necessarily have to include music. Having a choir recite a line of dialogue from Shakespeare, for example, can unify the choir’s pronunciation of certain vowel sounds and hard consonants. If a choir can collectively execute a tongue twister in unison they will have no problem enunciating a line from a song together.

Touch

For a choir to sing together as one, they cannot have any sense of individual self-consciousness or shame. A choir should ideally become a single entity in a performance with many voices constituting the overarching voice. A great method for achieving this is touch. Have the choir hold hands and run through any scale, vocal exercise or song. This gives a choir a sense of oneness integral in performing well together.

ReferencesMusic for Church Choirs: Warm UpNorthwestern University: Warmup IdeasPhoto Credit Brand X Pictures/Brand X Pictures/Getty ImagesRead Next:

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