ISO: Online Music Literacy Series for Choir Members
  • MaestroMark32MaestroMark32
    Posts: 62
    Hello Esteemed Colleagues!

    I serve at a retirement community parish in Sun City West, AZ. We have a wonderful choir that usually has balanced voices. I have members mostly 55 and older. It's a mix of very capable and literate musicians, and those who are not musically literate.

    Someone suggested that I put educational material in the choir handbook to assist members with their musical literacy. However, as we all know, music learning is a communal activity, and no amount of detail in the written work can substitute for the interactive nature of music learning. I think that an online interactive resource would help them best.

    I myself grew up with a Lutheran Church in town that had a week long music camp every summer. The local University, NIU, had a community school of Music which had music camps as well in the summer. In the early days of the personal computer, we had a delightfully simple computer software called "MusicAce."

    Is there any series of YouTube videos that you know about that may help them?

    or Any websites (free or subscription) that may have a set of music lessons (similar to MusicAce) that I could offer for them to use to learn some basic music literacy?

    Thanks!
    ~Mark
  • Jenny Donelson
    Posts: 284
    Hi Mark,

    The first topic in CISM's online Fall 2025 workshop series is aimed at musical literacy within the Gregorian modes (it won't help with modern notation/rhythm). It's on Mondays at 5:30-6:30 p.m. Pacific time via Zoom, for 9 Mondays, starting Sept. 15.

    More information is available here.

    Thanked by 2CHGiffen canadash
  • Jeffrey Quick
    Posts: 2,193
    Sight Reading Factory looks like something with a lot of potential, but it's a paid product. It can allow for self-assessment, is self-paced, and you can know if people have done the work. How that works into a volunteer church choir program is maybe another question. Another paid product, but for music theory in general, is Three Minute Theory.

    For free stuff, the last time I looked, there were some things online, especially interval identification trainers. I think these have some usefulness (women tend to have issues between 4th and 5ths, esp. descending), but a bit like "whole word" literacy.

    Chris Munce's Choralosophy podcast has a category of episodes about teaching literacy. He's big on not accompanying sight-reading because it becomes an exercise in speed-listening. This is maybe even more true if one leads from the throat rather than the keyboard. I'm generally singing a different part, so it's less true for us. And they've gotten good at chanting, so I can lay out. (In the beginning, if I stopped singing, we'd have cacophony within 6 notes.) Also, Munce's listeners get a price break on the resources mentioned above.

    Maybe the most important thing is to establish a culture in which reading is normal. My group is responsible for full Gregorian propers, so it's hard to avoid. Most have been through at least one annual cycle, so even the hard chants get easier with time. When we do polyphony, I ask, "Where's Do?" They've been taught the rule for that, and maybe they're actually learning it. I might warn them about things coming up that might be more difficult. Then we read the piece, and don't stop unless things totally break down. They hate both solfège and count-singing, but need both. I learned the scale before I learned syllables, so I hate it too, but I do use it, and the question "Where's the half step?"

    I do have a few people who are still mostly aural/oral and want learning tracks or at least a YouTube. I edit a fair bit of music and have idiosyncratic programming tastes, so they don't always get what they want.

    I'd love to hear from people who are trained choral music educators. Pedagogy is A Thing, and a lot of us in the field didn't get it in a formal way.
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