This week, I got to briefly live a dream. I got to teach music.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I loved teaching English, and I truly enjoy my work as a principal, but I have been a musician in one way or another almost all my life, just not a very good musician. While I don’t have enough talent to be an full time music teacher, I am just capable enough to step into a music classroom and even teach the kids a couple of things.
This was prep week for our annual K-6 Vocal and Band Christmas Concert. Mr. Warren Stafford came in to play accompaniment while Mrs. Jessica Shank directed. When Mrs. Shank had to step out, Mr. Stafford graciously requested that I step in to “direct” the kids as best I could.
Now I have been directing kids in drama productions for a long time, but never before had I had the pleasure of directing a choir, even one of youngsters. It was a bit of a dream come true. I recalled all the choir directors I have had in my life and I imagined what advice they might offer the young Hill City singers.
I didn’t have a baton, and I didn’t know exactly what to do with my hands. As I said, I know I am no music teacher. There is a difference being able to do something and being able to teach others how to do it. I have given enough mediocre guitar lessons to know that that is not my calling. I can follow a conductor, but a conductor I am not. I marvel at the talent and coordination it takes to lead a group of vocalists, and we are fortunate in Hill City to have such gifted music educators.
However, from the first note, I realized that there was one thing I could teach these kids. No, it wasn’t pitch, or tempo, or volume, or dynamics, or breathing. They were doing great in those departments. Mrs. Shank has these kids so whipped into shape that Mr. Stafford and myself weren’t really needed. At one point, Mr. Stafford couldn’t find the sheet music to a song, and so the kids, without missing a beat, sang the entire song acappella, from memory, and with perfect pitch. Well, at least as perfect as any group of K-2 students can have.
No, I could only improve their performance in one way: I told them to smile.
This occurred to me as they were belting out “Joy to the World,” so serious, so determined. The anthem rang like a military exercise. I was impressed, but also a little intimidated.
“Smile!” I yelled, “This is a JOYOUS song! Show joy! Be happy!”
They followed my lead and I was dazzled by the cutest, warmest, most personable smiles you will ever find assembled in one place. Their little faces glowed as the words poured from smiling mouths. The singers seemed to soar with the music then, and they went from mere singing to truly expressing the joy of the season and the joy of the song.
Now, when I was in choir, we were told to smile for two reasons. First, and foremost, it lifts the soft pallet – the upper part of your mouth – to turn the mouth into a sound chamber. “Pretend you are an orange on your tongue,” I remember being told. “The bigger the space between your teeth, the bigger the sound!”
The second reason to smile was for simple aesthetics. “Your Aunt Bessie didn’t come all the way from Des Moines to see you frown!” I clearly remember one colorful choir coach colloquializing. “She wants to see your pearly whites!”
Or something like that. I’ve had so many directors that I can’t remember exactly all their advice, but I do know that people tend to like you better when you smile. Also, smiling tends to make you feel better when you sing.
So with Mr. Stafford handling the musicality - “Let go over those four bars again, shall we?” - and I handled the “feel good about yourself” department. I had the kids standing straight, chests out, hands either at their sides or behind them, bodies still (or as still as some of the more squirmy ones could get), chins held high and mouths opened big. Most of all, though, I had them smiling.
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