After: what worked and where we go from here
Okay, so this is the last lesson in the module, and it's a weird one to write because by the time you're reading it, the concert already happened. You know things I don't know yet. Did the entrance in the second verse land. Did the alto section breathe out loud together like we practiced or did somebody forget under the lights. I'm writing this before all that, so bear with me.
Here's the thing though. The class doesn't actually end at the performance. That's the part people get backwards. They treat the concert like the finish line, and then the Tuesday after, there's nothing on the calendar and it feels like a letdown even though you just did the thing you worked four months toward. I want to talk about what to do with that.
First, actually look back at it
Not in a vague "that was fun" way. Specifically. Within a day or two of singing, while it's fresh, sit down and think through three questions.
What worked in the room that didn't work in rehearsal? Sometimes a section that felt shaky in the church basement suddenly locks in because everybody's nervous in the same direction and it sharpens things up. That's real and worth noticing, not just luck.
Where did you personally feel the wheels come off, even a little? Maybe you rushed an entrance. Maybe you went sharp reaching for a note you'd been coasting on in rehearsal. Write it down while you remember the feeling of it, not just the fact of it. "I rushed" is less useful later than "I rushed because I was watching the sopranos instead of breathing with them."
What do you wish you'd started earlier? Almost everybody says some version of "I wish I'd memorized sooner" or "I wish I'd worked the diction before the last two weeks." That's useful information for the next piece, and it's the kind of thing you forget by the time the next round starts unless you write it down now.
The why behind doing this
You'd think the review matters less once the performance is over, since the grade, so to speak, already happened. But that's backwards. The review is for the next piece, not this one. Singers who get better over years, not just over one concert cycle, are the ones who actually stop and ask what they learned instead of just feeling relieved it's over and moving on.
I learned this one the hard way, honestly, a long time before I ever taught a choir class. First stake choir I ever sang in, I corrected the director on a tempo marking. Told her what I thought it meant, technically, compared to what she was conducting. Here's the annoying part: I was right. She was also right, in a different and honestly more useful way, because she was conducting for the room and the moment, not for the footnote. I was so focused on being correct that I missed that the actual lesson was about how she read a room I couldn't read yet. Took me years to go back and actually learn from that instead of just replaying the part where I was technically right. Don't do what I did. Look back at what actually worked, not just at what you can prove.
An opinion I'll stand behind here
Sight-singing is overrated as a gatekeeper, and I've said that before in this course, but it matters especially now, looking back. If you didn't read every note off the page and instead learned it in your ears, that's not a lesser way to have gotten there. Plenty of people in that concert never opened the sheet music past the first two rehearsals and sang just as true as the folks with pencil marks all over their copy. If your reflection tonight is "I should've been better at reading," I'd gently push back on that being the actual lesson. The actual lesson is probably something more specific to your voice.
Where we go from here, practically
A few things worth doing this week, not months from now:
- Keep singing something, even informally. A choir voice that goes quiet for two months gets rusty fast, especially with our air out here drying everything out. Hum in the car. Sing along badly to the radio. Keep the muscle warm.
- Write down one thing you want to work on before the next piece. Not five things. One. Blend, breath support, memorizing earlier, whatever came up in your own review.
- If you're coming back for the next round, tell me what piece or style you're hoping for. I can't promise it, but it shapes what I plan.
I'll say this plainly since it's the last lesson: the whole point of this class, for me, was never really the concert. It was the Tuesday nights getting there. Watching somebody nail a part they'd been dreading for weeks, that's the thing I actually built this class around, even if I say it a little flat when it happens.
Before next time
If there's a next round of this class, come with one specific thing you noticed about your own singing from this concert, good or bad. That's the whole ask.