Rehearsal Scheduling

Ben

I'm just getting down to scheduling a regular rehearsal time for my (first) schola, and taking everything into consideration, it's a near-tie between Tuesday and Friday, but Friday might get us one or two more singers (out of about 8 or 9). However, as I'm sure you know, extra social events are much more likely to pop-up on Friday, which could lead to a lot more absences.

Anyone have experience with this sort of thing and think one would be better over the other long term?

Carl D

This scheduling is always a problem, and there's no best answer. For the long term, realize that you may be married to this schedule for many years - the members will structure their lives around it. If you're thinking that Fridays may become more problematic in the future, or be a barrier to younger members joining, that might be a vote against.

ClergetKubisz

Carl is absolutely right: there isn't a perfect solution. I would go with having rehearsal earlier in the week, because you are correct about extra social events coming up on Fridays that you can't foresee. Of course the very same thing could happen on Tuesdays but it isnt as likely. We did the Tues thing for a while and eventually went back to our Sun rehearsals. I know that isn't an option for everyone but it works for us.

Liam

You should check with other churches in town to see what the local custom is - there is a reason for a local custom: namely, choral singers tend to be involved in secular singing efforts, and those secular organizations will schedule rehearsals on the non-church nights. In my experience, church choirs tend to rehearse on Wednesday or Thursday nights, and secular groups on Monday or Tuesday nights. No one is self-sabotaging enough to preclude recruitment by commandeering Friday nights.

expeditus1

The one plus about a Friday practice, is that retention of the material is less of an issue. If, however, you possess the good fortune of having members who actually look at their music outside of rehearsal, those people might make use of those extra study days between Tues.-Sun.

canadash

Is it mostly youth? If so, you could make social part of the post-schola activities encouraging more folk to join your vivacious and exciting group.

Musicteacher56

One of the hardest things for me is to schedule rehearsals because we are such a small parish and so many people, including most of my singers, are in multiple ministries. I do agree, however, that Friday is a great day for retention of material, but, since most singers are volunteers and have full-time jobs, Friday nights are usually the start of their weekend and it's been hard to get them then. We rehearse on Thursdays and it's been great. No extra ministries at that time, and close enough to the weekend for retention.

canadash

What I meant to add was, socializing is good on Fridays, so it may be a great night for a rehearsal, especially if it is early in the evening... I would have joined if I was in university! It is true about the jobs though... My jobs were always on Sunday mornings!

bkenney27

For what it's worth: When I was at a Congregational Church, the previous director had moved rehearsals to Friday nights because she was in school for her Masters at the time. When I took over after she left, I just kept it because we had a decent group that could make it. It didn't grow much... but it didn't shrink either. They were also a mostly older group. I understand they have since changed rehearsal to Thursday nights under their new director.

MaryAnn Carr Wilson

Fwiw, I'm in agreement with Liam re local custom and why it's important. Church choirs are also Wed or Thurs nights in my area.

I would caution against Fri night. Lots of singers, especially early music singers, will have frequent conflicts.

melofluent

Friday's? You can pretty much write off attendance from high schoolers.

marajoy

I would definitely not do Fridays (unless, for some reason you can do a particularly early rehearsal, like 5:30 pm?) It sounds good in theory, but I do believe you will run into a lot more sporadic conflicts than people think.

theloniouslopez

I rehearse with my Youth Choir on Wednesday evenings, 6:30pm-8:30pm. Its a good time and I hardly have anyone miss. There are many benefits from having it on midweek. I agree with majority though, if you have a Youth involved, forget about having a productive practice on a Friday.

lautzef

We rehearse on Fridays because the paid choirs are all on other days. We are totally volunteer, but we can sometimes get people who sing in the other choirs for special masses because our choir night is not the same as anybody else's in the area. It's just very practical in this town - each place is probably different.

Hilary Cesare

If you have lots of friends who are nearing young parent age, schedule it beginning at 8pm. That way they can get there if they can get their babies in bed early enough. I would NEVER be able to go to a practice between 5-8. Ours are from 8:00-9:30 - thanks to Arlene. : )

Also, it seems like weddings would frequently conflict with Friday practices.

mjballou

I've done Monday evenings for a number of years for my small group. Many have church rehearsals on Wednesdays and community choruses on Tuesdays. We occasionally run into problems with Monday holidays, which are pretty much meaningless to me because I'm self-employed, but we've always been able to miss a week now and then without suffering too much.

Ben

Thanks for the input everyone. This forum is awesome.

I decided on Tuesdays, and first rehearsal is tonight!

Musicteacher56

MJB--Mondays would work fine for professional or semi-professional choirs that don't need to worry about retention and mark music correctly. For less professional people, I would think Monday is too far out. I used to have Monday rehearsals also, and there was always one piece on Sundays that suffered.

Adam Wood

MT56 I've noticed the same thing.

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