By GALA Expert
November 29, 2023
Congratulations on joining a GALA Chorus! This page offers tips for rehearsal preparation, etiquette, music reading and score-marking.
Chorus Rehearsal Preparation
- Stay hydrated before and during rehearsal
- Warm up your voice by humming or singing gently on the way to rehearsal.
- Arrive early to get settled
- Bring a pencil to mark your music
- Use a choral binder, three ring binder, or tablet to organize your music
Rehearsal Etiquette
- Silence cell phone when you arrive at rehearsal.
- Watch the conductor and hold your music up so that you can see the score and the conductor at the same time.
- Avoid excess chatting
- If you are struggling with a vocal part listen to the voices around you and sing quietly until you have the part down.
- Avoid wearing scented products or smoking right before/during rehearsal
- Stay home if you’re sick and consider masking if appropriate.
Music Reading
Learning to read music is like any other language or music skill, you need good tools and plenty of practice to be an excellent music reader. Your chorus may provide music reading classes for singers who are new to music reading. The resources below also offer lessons and exercises to practice music reading on your own.
DataDragon offers a series of lessons on reading the score, clefs, note and rest values, dynamic markings
This WikiHow explores music reading in more depth including an exploration of keys.
A number of Apps are available to help you learn to read music.
Many choruses are now making part tracks available to help singers learn and memorize music. You may wish you look at Choral Tracks, Part Predominant Recordings, or Rehearsal Arts.
Singers who are visually impaired might consider learning Braille music. Others prefer to learn by part tracks and/or use lyric sheets
Tablets in Rehearsal
Some choirs are now utilizing electronic tablets for storing and marking scores in rehearsal. See Technology in Rehearsal.