we can all make music

come together

Group singing or singing group - there's a difference?

People make music together in many different ways. This diversity is an important part of its value and strength. Understanding these differences helps us (ie CMV) to work out more effective strategies to reach our goal - a State of Singing.

It also helps to remind us why this is our goal: that widespread willingness to engage in co-operative behaviour is essential to the health and survival of our society and its members; that such behaviour will only become widespread if it is honoured, regularly practiced (from an early age), and has enjoyable outcomes; that singing (dancing and eating) together are the most basic forms of co-operative behaviour that guarantee enjoyable outcomes.

Being able to answer the questions, 'What forms of collaborative music-making are likely to have the widest and most intense positive impact on the levels of co-operative behaviour in our society?' and 'How can these forms be most effectively integrated into everyday activity?' is therefore critically important.

The better we understand the different directions that collaborative music-making can take and the impacts that each has on its participants, the more likely it is that our answers will be useful.

Here are some of these different ways, specifically of singing:

Singing circles/sessions (led and unled / organised and spontaneous)
Community choirs and singing groups
School choirs
Workplace singing groups
Faith-based choirs
Family singing
Congregational singing
Group singing with an ulterior motive (from learning a new language to demonstrating support of a sports team)
Singalongs (intimate and mass)
Karaoke
Singing schools/lessons
Eisteddfods
Semi-professional performance groups

And that's probably just scratching the surface. All these forms have different effects, or at least, widely different intensities of similar effects. And it's not just in the impact on participants that difference can be found. There are also big differences in:

How they are formed, maintained and facilitated
The purpose / intent of the activity
The outcomes / results beyond participant impact

It is through understanding these differences that we can make wiser decisions about our actions.

Other papers in this series outline why we have chosen to steer away from 'performance singing', to focus on aural transmission, to encourage improvisation and so on. In this paper, we discuss our response to the differences between sessional singing (singing circles, Vocal Noshes, singing together) and the activities of singing groups.

Singing groups and group singing are significantly different activities in so far as the former implies the establishment and continuance of a specific group of people between which, through their singing, impacts will occur; the latter implies an activity in which a non-specific collection of people engage in from time to time.

Part of our reason for highlighting this difference is that, when we explain what we do, most people appear to think that the basis of our work is the establishment and support of 'community choirs'.

The established wisdom (in our culture) is that collaborative singing is dependent on the existence of ongoing groups of people who sing together. Arising from this assumption, is a belief that 'community development' processes occur within the group and within the 'wider community' when the group performs in public.

Our research has led us to different conclusions. We have observed that:

The most intense emotions triggered through group singing arise from the act of doing it - not through performing and not through watching performances.
The intensity of these emotions is not dependent on the activity being undertaken by a cohesive group - strangers singing together experience the same intensities.
From our perspective, it's important that the co-operative behaviours exhibited in the act of group singing cross over into the day-to-day behaviours of the participants
It is critical that the fundamental purpose of the group process be joy for all
Singing groups often show tendencies that are at odds with these last two points.

This is why our commitment is to the extension of group singing (primarily through the skill development of leaders), rather than the development of ongoing singing groups.

In fact, while as a general principle, we support the existence of singing groups (and encourage leaders of such groups to engage with us), we are aware of potential problem areas inherent in these formations, such as:

Exclusivity: one of the most effective methods of growing a sense of community within a small group is to promote an 'us against them' mentality.
Excellence: many singing groups have quality standards (musical and otherwise) which participants must meet
Uniformity: many groups see themselves quite proudly as being of a very specific demographic and/or culture

While these characteristics can be utterly reasonable in particular circumstances, they run counter to the values we promote. This does not mean that we are critical of groups that exhibit these tendencies, just that we operate in a different arena.

We recognize that closed groups allow focus, ensemble skill development and bonding around commonalities, but, unless carefully managed, these admirable intents can bring with them pain, fear and isolation.

So, our response has been to promote a sessional model: a group singing facilitator announces a session - people turn up, all are made welcome, all contributions are honoured, an a good time is had by all. Everyone goes home with the embedded memory of pleasure, conviviality and achievement.

Community (the active verb) doesn't just happen naturally. It is dependent on people's preparedness to engage with others. How better to raise people's willingness than to facilitate experiences of social engagement that always have pleasurable results.

we can all make music

come together

Group singing or singing group - there's a difference?

making a sound world together