Rubric for rehearsal pacing: using my special 'almost legible' writing
This is the first of a series of posts about efficient rehearsal techniques, about ways to get maximum bang for your rehearsal buck. The ones that follow are about the Intervention and Enforcement Cycles, which I keep mentioning with a promise to get around to blogging about them one of these days. That day is nearly here, but talking about rehearsal pacing is a useful set-up, so I’m doing this one first.
This diagram gives a usefully quick and dirty way of assessing the pace of a rehearsal by mapping patterns of activity on the choir’s experience:
So, long periods of talking will slow down the pace of rehearsal, and if combined with short bursts of singing, will send your singers home bored. Short periods of talking, conversely, give less opportunity for the singers to disengage. Combined with short bursts of singing, you get a fast-paced rehearsal, or with longer spans of musical time it becomes more relaxing.