Perhaps in a perfect world it’s possible to conduct a rehearsal without a single mistake. But experience and human nature suggest that this goal is a fantasy, no matter how devoutly we might wish otherwise. In the real world, mistakes are a part of life. Despite our best efforts to prevent them, mistakes will still happen on a regular basis.
What we do when they happen, of course, matters a lot. It is vitally important to deal with errors humanely, in a way that doesn’t dishearten or discourage our singers, by clearly differentiating what people do from who they inherently are. We are not what we do. We may make mistakes, but we are not mistakes.
Even so, mistakes are traditionally the stuff of which rehearsals are made. The good news is that there are two effective strategies which can actually minimize (if not eliminate) the number of mistakes our choirs make—strategies that are simple to implement but often overlooked.
First: Bring your best stuff, and use it. Every time. All the time. No exceptions. Bring and apply your best alignment from the soles of your feet to the top of your head. Bring your best breathing, allowing the mechanisms of inspiration and exhalation to function freely. Bring your best phonation to the creation and release of every vowel. Bring and apply your best articulation to every consonant you sing. Above all, bring your best audiation and ensemble listening skills to every note, word, and phrase you perform.
In short, make your best technique the baseline. Use it as the habitual starting point for all the music you make. If you do, you will make substantially fewer mistakes.
Why is this so? Because “50 percent of this game is 100 percent mental,” as Yogi Berra once observed. Poor technique ties up breath and inhibits body energy that needs to flow freely. Poor alignment creates unconscious insecurity on the somatic (body) level; as a result we feel out of balance and brace ourselves, tightening up our breathing and our throats. Tight breathing and blocked energy impede our ability to phonate freely, causing pinched vowels, flat intonation, and on and on the vicious cycle swirls.
Want to minimize mistakes?
Bring your best stuff to every rehearsal, and use it.
Second: Get your focus clear, and keep it. The so-called “law of attraction” is rooted in a psychological reality that every parent already knows: if you tell a two-year old, “Don’t put your finger in the outlet,” what the child hears is “Put your finger in the outlet.” The human mind has difficulty processing the negative, and delivers the positive instead. What we flow intention and energy toward is generally what we get (“as a man sows, so shall he reap” is one traditional expression of this). Focus really does matter.
I was recently reminded of the power of focus while teaching an undergraduate sight-singing class. The students were reading a moderately easy melody and singing it badly. Rather than prolong their agony (and mine), I asked them, “What are you thinking about?” Immediately, one student replied, “I’m trying to not do it wrong.” “Okay,” I responded, “Don’t change anything except your focus. Think about singing this tune as well as you possibly can. Think about doing it right.”
The consequences were dramatic, instantaneous and immediately noticeable: they committed almost no mistakes whatsoever. Instead of focusing on “not being wrong”—which the mind hears as “being wrong”—my students focused on doing it right, or doing it better. They replaced motivation rooted in fear of failure with an attitude of expectant success. When they did, the results spoke for themselves. Fear is useless. What is needed is trust.
Why does this matter? Negative focus raises the “noise” in the brain’s signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio. Audio engineers know that there are two ways to improve transmission quality: boost signal strength or reduce the noise level. By focusing on doing things right, we gain interior calm and increase the brain’s processing speed and throughput capacity (bandwidth). As a result, the odds of actually doing things right are significantly increased, because precious mental energy is suddenly more available for the immediate task at hand.
Want to minimize mistakes?
Get your focus right, and keep it there.
Although these suggestions apply to singers in an ensemble, the conductor has a part to play in both of them as well. We must model what we want rather than what we don’t want. We must consistently demonstrate the best technique we can, as we conduct and rehearse. Our visage, attitude, physical presence, and pacing will speak far louder than any words of correction we may offer.
Leadership determines attitude. We are the ones who ultimately set the tone for our ensembles. By modeling excellent technique and demonstrating a clear focus on what we want—and by remaining patient with amending our singers’ imperfections as the journey toward the perfect continues—we can create and sustain a rehearsal environment in which fewer and fewer mistakes are encountered.
Dr. Gerald Custer is a choral conductor, award-winning composer,
teacher, and author. You can email him at custer@wayne.edu.
