Count singing as a method of learning music is something I learned from famed conductor, Robert Shaw. It was my good fortune to sing under the direction of this amazing musician for many years, and one of the first things I noticed about him was how adept he was at running an enormously efficient and productive choral rehearsal. He was always careful to save voices for performance rather than squander them during rehearsal.
One of his methods for accomplishing this was to use the concept of count singing, especially during the first few rehearsals of a work. The idea was to save the words until much later in the rehearsal process, concentrating instead on the pitches and rhythms provided by the composer. Mr. Shaw’s goal was to do everything he could to ensure that we honored the composer by singing exactly what he or she had put on the page.
We would usually sing the primary beats (substituting a T for three) along with their divisions, i.e., 1 & 2 & T & 4 & for a piece in 4/4 time. Should the piece have a lot of 16th notes, we might sing 1 ee & uh 2 ee & uh, etc. While this technique might feel a bit daunting at first, it is remarkable how quickly a chorus can become acclimated to it and even look forward to using it!
If you’ve never had the opportunity to count sing, I hope you’ll be able to do it sometime. If you’re a conductor, try it out as part of a choral warmup. You can take a simple melody and have your chorus sing it on numbers. If you’re a chorus member, you can suggest count singing to your director as a useful learning tool. As you can imagine, choral directors LOVE suggestions on how to improve their rehearsals. LOL
