Djana Gabrielle, Hannah Fredsgaard, Zac Scott, Debbie Armour, Penny Stone
Reflections & ideas on the process of collaborating to create new songs for community singers & choirs
We’re currently getting ready to launch our five Love Singing songs to the public; we’ll be sharing the beautiful recordings of our five choirs singing their own songs alongside learning resources including scores, lyrics, video and audio files.
We spoke with our songwriters about their experiences during this project and have distilled their thoughts and learnings into this short guide. We hope both songwriters and choirs will find it useful and interesting.
Curiosity & collaboration
Be curious of the people in the group: their ideas, the way they frame ideas, their contributions, but also the questions they ask. Questions are often more telling than answers. As the professional artist in the room, there is a tendency to think that we must have all the answers but listening can be an effective creative tool. It can open the door to interesting tangents and new discoveries. The choir collectively represents a wealth and depth of diverse experiences and people are the experts of themselves. Soak it all in.
Generosity
There is no substitute for time and effort of course, but generosity in this context is also linked with empathy, authenticity, and emotional openness. We can’t expect anyone to contribute and engage in an honest way if we don’t model that experience and create a space for people to step into. We do it as singing groups all the time, opening ourselves up to rich emotions. There’s no reason to leave your whole emotional ‘self’ out of the creative room. It can point towards vulnerabilities, but as people we are intrinsically vulnerable in different ways and acknowledging this can be liberating.
Build in time to respond
One of the surprising outcomes of having to develop new work in isolation through digital Zoom and email was the built-in time lag. In real-time workshops we often feel the need to make decisions in the moment, these decisions help us feel we’re making progress, moving forward. This can often leave the more reserved at a disadvantage. But with a slower exchange of ideas there is an opportunity for everyone to contribute at a pace that suits them. Some people are ‘jump-inners’, some are ‘reflective responders’. In terms of equality of access and opportunity, and ensuring everyone is included, a slower, measured process of dialogue and exchange can be effective. This is something to consider when designing projects.
Trust & patience
This goes both ways, and sometimes a bit sideways. Don’t panic. Trust that the answers will come. Trust in your judgement as an artist and that your artistic reflexes will kick in and tell you where you need to focus. And when you’re sharing drafts of material and ideas, do trust and value the responses that come back at you, even if it’s not what you want to hear. If it doesn’t work for most people, it’s likely to not work at all. Creating good music for people to sing must transcend scribblings on the page – you only know what you’ve got when people actually sing it, so keep your antenna up and keep an open mind.
Songwriting is a practice & you have to practise it
Whether or not we all think we have a great song in us (like a great novel) it doesn’t come down from a cloud. It’s the result of practise, and there are nuances in the writing process that relate directly to writing for community singers: experiencing how people take to written material, what they find hard and what comes easily, what is unnecessarily complex and could be achieved to a similar effect in a simpler way, the more practical aspects of vocal ranges, thinking about breathing, and about how loud or soft people can sing at different registers of their voice. This is learned and the more you do it, the easier it will become.
The local & the universal
We all want our songs to be widely shared and writing for a particular group can sometimes feel like it is too specific, that ideas might not travel well beyond the making and sharing process. There is a balance to be struck here. How specific are lyrics to the group’s experience? How specific is the arrangement to the make-up of the group, is there a need for an alternative flexible score or one that imbeds flexibility in it? What is both useful to note and also reassuring is that when songs capture and reflect an honest and authentic experience it will mean something, and we can easily spot the authentic as opposed to the fake. Authenticity comes with an inbuilt universality. One person’s authentic experience will be heard and is likely to translate widely to others.