Little Gems for Your Warm-Up Library Wednesday, April 13, 2016
recommended by Jen Sper, School Choral Music Specialist
Having a productive rehearsal begins with effective warm-up exercises, so keeping a library of quality resources for this purpose is invaluable! Here are just a few of our favorite choral warm-up resources:
Wander the World with Warm-Ups by Lynn M. Brinckmeyer
The next time you use warm-ups, wander the world with your choir! This collection of forty simple folk songs from twenty different countries is the perfect resource for you. They can be easily memorized for immediate focus and the recommended strategies allow the warm-ups to work for both beginning and advanced singers. Help refine students’ ability to listen to each other, unify vowels and tune chords all while experiencing beautiful and dynamic songs of other cultures.
Warming Up with Rounds by Catherine DeLanoy
Choral rounds have been used for recreational singing for hundreds of years and are effective tools for your students to understand harmony, expand their vocal ranges, and experience a choral sound that is easily accessible to them. By using rounds as warm-ups, you can teach vocal technique, music theory, application, appreciation, and history, as well as increase your singers’ understanding of scales, intervals, modes, dynamics, and terminology. “Warming Up with Rounds” includes both familiar and rare rounds that are easy and challenging, as well as serious and fun. Music teachers and their students will enjoy discovering the secrets that choral rounds offer and ultimately feel a great sense of accomplishment when they make beautiful, harmonious music together.
115 Tang Tungling Tongue Twisters by Greg Gilpin
This collection of enjoyable and challenging tongue twisters using every letter of the alphabet is set to fun music for all ages. Say them! Sing them! Use them to focus your choir’s attention! These tongue twisters are effective tools to improve diction and enunciation, while offering some amusing “icebreaker” moments. Whether used as a warm-up, warm-down or focus moment, they will taunt even the most talented in town with a tang-tungling time! Greg Gilpin has written the piano accompaniment with chord symbols so your choir can move up and down the scale with ease.
For more warm-up recommendations for your choir, visit our website or contact our Choral Department at 1.800.426.8742!
About the Author:
Jen Sper has been with Stanton’s since 2006. A former middle school and high school choral director, she holds a Bachelor of Music Education degree from Baldwin Wallace College Conservatory of Music. An active choral singer and accompanist throughout the Central Ohio area, she also enjoys good food, running (to counteract the good food…) and the Muppets.
