On Seating Placement and Voice Matching (Ensuring your ensemble sounds great before you begin rehearsal)

“Tis’ the season to be jolly! Re-Mi-Fa-Re-Mi, Re-Do-Ti-Do”

I am sure that you are wondering why I am already thinking and posting about Christmas. The Red Sox have yet to win the World Series and we are still getting bombarded with political campaign advertisements on a daily basis. Sounds like October to me!

Well, if you are reading this there is a good chance that you are a music director at a church, a school, a community organization, or my family members (Hi, all!). If you are one of those individuals, you know full well that your mind has been thinking about music, recruiting ensemble members, and you probably have begun rehearsing your Christmas production.

Since we are on the same train heading due North, I want to share a few thoughts on getting your ensembles (small or large) to sound great before rehearsals ever begin! It's all about seating placement.

Some background: addressing what it is and why it is so important for the success of your concert

We love our musicians, we love our singers, and we want to do everything we can to know that they can confidently walk onto a stage and perform with energy, excitement, and with a visible love of worship. Whether the music is being presented by a duet, quartet, praise team, small chancel choir, large chamber choir, or a huge festival choir and orchestra; you name it, you want them to sound the best they possibly can at any given moment. Consequently, the seating placement of your singers matter.

Seating placement is not a topic that is discussed frequently outside of academic literature and professional journals or conferences. The harsh reality is, seating placement takes time. If you have a choir of 45 individuals, it takes time to consider the possibilities of where each singer is placed in the ensemble. If you have a praise team of 8 singers and 24 volunteers, it takes time to consider which group of singers sound the best together. In "the real world," time is money and anything that takes away from the 120 minutes of time we have to rehearse 60 minutes of music is avoided. So, we skip it and get right to the rehearsal. After all, that's why everyone is there... right?

The logic of why placement is so important is relatively intuitive if we step back from the habits of how we have experienced rehearsals in the past vs how other teams of people experience practicing their craft. Let's take American football for example. One of my mentors, Dan Andersen, Director of Choirs at Center Grove Middle School Central in Greenwood, IN, and author of the must-buy book, Warm-Ups for the Changing Voice, summed it up incredibly well: 

“You wouldn’t let the offensive line choose their own positions. An offensive linemen isn’t just an offensive linemen, there are five different linemen and it takes a different set of skills to do each position...So, why do we let our singers sit wherever they want to?”

I love the analogy and it is why I am so passionate about placing singers and pairing musicians when building ensembles. I believe that 90% of your rehearsal work is finished after you select your repertoire, hire/recruit your band and singers, and place your choir. Two out of three of those occur before your first rehearsal and have a HUGE impact on your final performance. While the last, seating placement, will save you a tremendous amount of time trying to get that ideal sound during rehearsal. 

Why? 

1. Poor placement of singers will encourage poor singing, poor balance and blend, poor registration, poor tuning, and mismatched personalities. 
2. The best of rehearsal processes cannot fix an ensemble poorly selected and poorly placed. 

In general, great placement of singers will encourage confident singing within enjoyably productive rehearsals. In short: if you build team chemistry early on, that chemistry is only bound to become more and more energized leading up to your performance. 

A Step-by-Step Guide 

We will continue this conversation with medium to large choral ensembles in mind and encourage you to apply it to your own context. 

There are many processes that I have learned for seating placement, many of which I have experimented. Traditional choral placement processes rely on assessing the resonant coloring and vibrato tendencies of each singer. While I loved learning about these processes as a student, I found them challenging to implement as an educator and church director because they require fully developed resonance and breath management from the singers. For a professionally auditioned ensemble, these processes are great and make all the difference in the world. However, once you are including singers who do not have years of advanced vocal training, I have found that they bear less fruit. In the past two years, I have personally enjoyed learning and implementing Dan Andersen’s process for seating placement. This is a process that he has developed over years of teaching and it works really well with any group of singers. Here is what I have observed while working with Dan:

Step 1: Have a sound goal in mind before you begin by considering the technical requirements of the music that you are selecting and knowing the developmentally appropriate sound goal for your singers: 1) what are the keys of the music and how do they interact with the singers' vocal ranges and tessituras? 2) what is the style of the piece and what is required in order to obtain that style by way of sound? 3) where are the singers in their vocal development and how does this impact the sound goal of your ensemble? (a 12 year old will not and should not have the same timbre as a 30 year old).

Step 2: Create empty seating charts that match the number of singers in your ensemble before you do anything with your singers by way of placement. If you are changing riser positions between songs, map out each position for each song. While I personally enjoy using hexagon graph paper for larger ensembles, Dan will draw out seating charts by hand that match the risers exactly. Either way, it is important to know how many empty seats are in each row, per row. I have learned that taking the time to draft out your seating chart will ensure that your ensemble not only sounds great but looks great.

Step 3: Order your heights if you have large ensembles, especially student ensembles. This is as easy as telling your singers that they have 30 second to line-up according to height by section. This is particularly important in younger ensembles where heights might vary well over 12 inches between singers. Considering the height requirements of your singers before proceeding allows for the sound of each singer to freely move beyond the riser space and not get stuck behind another individual. 

Step 4: Begin listening to each singer by calling up the singers row by row to the piano. If you have 25 sopranos and your first row has 6 seats available, call up the first 6 sopranos to the piano. 

Once they are at the piano, start by having everyone sing a short excerpt of music with a limited range and in a key that matches the tessitura of each section of singers. Using the first lines of the song My Country Tis of Thee (until the words “of thee I sing”) is a notable example. It has primarily step-wise motion, with skips no greater than a third, and has a range no greater than a fourth. If you have young kids, teach them the tune beforehand or choose a tune that they might all know and that matches the melodic characteristics mentioned above. You might be tempted to sing a short warm-up vocalise on a neutral vowel (like "Ah") instead but I would encourage you to choose music with text. Why? Because the way that singers manage vowels and consonants plays a huge role in the intonation and sound quality of an ensemble. This is true no matter the age of the singer. Listening to singers on only one vowel type will skew the results of this process in an unfavorable way.

After the singers have sung together, begin listening to each one individually to assess the color of their individual voice (nasal, hooty, breathy, tense, balanced, etc). Then listen to them in groups of two, and in groups of three. Often younger or less experienced singers sound better when other singers are singing with them. Grouping in this manner allows you to listen for a more balanced composite sound: an overly nasal singer might pair well with a singer with a more hooty tone; a singer with poor registration management might benefit from being placed next to someone with great management throughout their vocal range. A singer with a timid onset might be encouraged to sing louder and stronger if they are next to a confident singer. With that said, I have also experienced scenarios that transform the might to a firm will not. It's nice, however, to know your options and if you do find a composite pair, move them together as you make adjustments to your row.

Step 5: Locate your “sound and style” leaders and use them to form the sound quality of the row. These are individuals whose voices best match the characteristics that you aspire for your whole ensemble. Once located among your singers, either place these leaders throughout the entire row or place these leaders in the center of the row and build the sound around them. That is up to you. Both can be successful and both can be detrimental to the growth and confidence of the ensemble. Use your intuition to guide you. 

Step 6: Become an eye doctor, if only for a brief moment. You will eventually get to a spot where there are two or three similar variations of your singers per row. Each variation sounds good and you need to decide what is best. Compare version A with version B by flipping the order of one or two singers. Version A might be brighter and more blended, Version B might have more fullness but you notice a slight intonation problem. In this example, my final decision always depends on how in tune and blended a row sounds; coaching a choir to sound more full is way easier than tuning a poorly blended ensemble.

Step 7: Repeat until finished. It is important to have the singers sing with each other as you sit each row. You might find the need to move individual singers to achieve a more homogeneous blend as each row is added.

_________

Dan Andersen's process has taught me a lot about listening to diverse groups of singers and developing an ensemble that considers both the needs of the individuals and the full group. If you are worried about time and still want to apply seating technique, go through the same process but have the singers only sing the first few words of your song selection. Your ear will guide you immediately towards the quality of the voice and where it might best reside. Even spending a few minutes on seating placement will benefit the ensemble greatly.

Disclaimer: It is very important to note that placement is not about "hiding" voices, it is about empowering voices to freely sing. Successful placement means that you, as the director, are as happy as the singer is with the final outcome. If a singer needs to sing at "half volume" or "breathy" manner in order to maintain the blend of a section, the placement process was unsuccessful for them. In this situation, it is advisable to redo your seating placement for that particular row or section of the choir. 

Final Thoughts

Singers need their full range of vocal color in order to portray the complex emotions of a piece of music. This is achieved through a healthy mix of voice lessons, rehearsal technique, and creative imagination. Seating placement helps create the environment where each and every singer can contribute their skills 100% of the time; it ensures that each singer has the sonic space around them conducive to singing beautifully while committing the ensemble to the goals of vocal artistry before the very first note is rehearsed. As we move headlong into the upcoming festival season, experiment with your own ideas for seating placement. Find out what works for you and enjoy experiencing the process unfold (perhaps for the first time!). Share your stories and encourage others around you to do the same. Remember: be encouraged, be inspired, be resonant.