Christopher Machado and Dr. Ronald Staheli, School of Music

The collection of choral rehearsal strategies used in the choirs at BYU has been an enlightening project. I have discovered and documented many effective pedagogical tools, methods, buzzwords, imageries, and vocalises. New possibilities for the project have opened up as well, which will allow me to carry the research forward into the coming years.

Scheduling conflicts did not allow me to regularly observe each auditioned choir at BYU. As a result, I focused the large majority of my time on observing my mentor Ron Staheli and his choir, the Brigham Young University Singers. My membership in the choir provided me the opportunity to take some note of strategies used during the rehearsals. Another tool that proved invaluable to the collection of strategies was an archive of live recorded rehearsals from the 2012-2013 school year available online.1 I assisted with these broadcasts nearly every day last year. Watching the rehearsals online allowed me to document the strategies used in greater detail. I could listen and re-listen to vocalises used, so that I could notate them with notation software and include them in the database in visual form:

Viewing the recorded rehearsals also gave me the opportunity to see Dr. Staheli’s long term goals with some of the strategies. Some of his methods were repeated to encourage the development of good habits and proper technique. Many of the strategies were cumulative; one day the strategy would build on vocalises and techniques used the day before. A prominent characteristic of these strategies was that they were almost always derived from the literature that BYU Singers was learning and preparing to perform. This could be similar melodic, rhythmic, or harmonic material, or it could be a vocalize that incorporated a vocal technique needed to successfully navigate a section in a piece of music.

The rehearsal strategies were recorded in Microsoft Excel, and most were referenced to a specific piece of music for which each strategy was used. Vocalises were notated with Noteflight notation software. Public domain scores were obtained from the Choral Public Domain Library.2

It was originally proposed to create and submit an article to be published that would include excerpts from a score in the public domain, and rehearsal strategies that could be used to learn the song and perform it with proper technique. Since then we have determined that it would be of greater benefit to expand the article to include more of the database. Consultation with Jean Applonie, president of the Utah chapter of the American Choral Directors Association, has led us to narrow the objective of the project to be an exhaustive collection of Ron Staheli’s rehearsal strategies specifically. In over 30 years at BYU, he has built a choral program with a reputation of excellence. I am excited to continue to document the teaching strategies of this great teacher into the next year, accompanied by an expanded published resource for choral musicians across America.