I wonder how many choir directors find it challenging to get their choirs to sing in tune right from the start of a rehearsal. A quick survey of YouTube will quickly reveal the number of amateur choirs where the home pitch can get a bit fuzzy towards the middle of a piece, especially where the piece has any extended periods of modulation.
During my training I sang in many choirs where the directors gave a lot of attention to singing in tune, often a futile effort because the choristers hadn't been taught the basics of pitch memory. I remember one incident where an accompanied piece had a long middle section where the organ was marked
tacet. The organ duly went silent, the choir made a wonderful impression, only to find they'd gone a minor third sharp when a massive organ chord crashed in to introduce the next section. This had been a recurrent problem in rehearsals, and the most the director had done to address the problem was to berate his singers for not listening more carefully before practicing it with and without accompaniment. He got his comeuppance: the performance was a dreadful mess. I've seen many snarky looks in mirrors in my time, but that director wore a particularly pained expression on the day.
Of all the skills a choir director can cultivate among his or her singers, pitch memory is valuable and saves much angst down the road. It is a process that takes time, and it's surprising how few choir directors seem to connect difficulties with wandering pitch with failure to teach
pitch memory.
I teach pitch memory using a very simple method. You need a whiteboard, markers in a variety of colours and a heavy-duty eraser. This is vital, because the method for teaching pitch memory rests on connecting the note on the stave to how it feels to produce it.
My choral warm up includes stretching, making sirens, breathing exercises, and any other technique-based items as needed. None of this involves an absolute pitch, as it is about freeing up the sound and getting the choristers ready for the rest of the hour. The very last thing in my warm up is writing up a G on the treble clef on the whiteboard.
It takes about three weeks before this becomes an accepted part of the game. Then children (and adults!) can get pretty competitive about who can get closest to the note. After a month or two the whole group will be starting to reliably sing the note accurately on the first attempt.
After establishing a definite pitch, you can work on sight-reading drills,
solfege, scales, or any other pitch-based exercises you want to include. These exercises need to reinforce the chorister's sense of pitch, and give them confidence that they can continue to sing in tune for the remainder of the rehearsal.
One of the positive flow-on effects of this exercise is that it improves the director's own sense of pitch. Up to the point of writing the note on the board, the piano has lain silent. The first thing you do with it is to check the pitch: if you're quick, you'll soon figure out what A flat or F sharp sounds like, so you can play the note the choristers sang and lead them back to the intended pitch. You can even write the different pitch on the board in red or green (assuming you used black at first), which will reinforce the connection between the other sound and its written symbol.
There are other aspects of director behaviour that affect pitch and tuning. Posture and conducting gesture has to be given careful consideration when dealing with choirs that have endemic pitch problems. If you are not relaxed and comfortable about the occasional failure, that will metastatize into a wider range of problems if your standard response is to get angry with your singers. But most of all, lacking routines that involve achieving unanimity in pitch is a widespread problem that most choir directors would do well to address.
