we can all make music

singing together is fun

What happens at Vocal Noshes and singing circles

You've decided to take the plunge. What are you likely to find?

Welcome: it is expected that there will always be new people, including ones that are complete strangers. Arrivals are individually acknowledged, made to feel welcome, put at ease, introduced (including latecomers). Every effort is made to encourage participants to feel safe, comfortable and energised.

Warm-up: leaders have developed diverse approaches. Most have in common:

the use of call and response techniques
creation of soundscapes (humming, heightened speech, vowel chanting) that often lead into improvisation opportunities
lots of physical movement (clapping, stamping, body slapping)

Key points: letting go of 'external' worries, becoming a group, seeing and hearing each other.

Leadership: team leadership - both of specialist functions (eg, catering, promotion, song-leading) and of sharing functions (eg, welcoming, cleaning up and even song-leading - often there will more than a few participants that lead a song). The leader's function is to facilitate engagement and release, to build confidence and to maximise collaboration.

Introducing a song: every song is contextualised; where it comes from, what it means to its makers; how the leader learnt the song.

Conducting: songs are conducted very visually; that is, the leader (and it may be different people during a session) not only indicates tempo and volume with their hands but also melody. It is also very much an eye contact thing - the leader is always aware, and obviously aware, of each participant's engagement level.

Learning a song: by ear/call and response/line by line accretion. A leader might introduce a song like this: 'first I'll sing you the whole song' (often, it's only three or four lines long); 'now I'll sing the first line, listen and then we'll sing it together'; 'let's do that again'; 'and again'; 'now here's the second line - I'll sing it, then we'll sing it together'; 'now let's try the two lines together'. And so on.

Once everyone is comfortable with the whole, variations will be introduced; these might include: harmonies; singing the piece as a round; introducing overlays of new words that can be sung simultaneously; introducing another snatch of song that matches the original; improvisation.

Key points: a song that contains a minute's worth of lyrics can provide half an hour of engaging and enjoyable singing; the group sound-making hardly ever stops - 'learning', 'rehearsing', 'performing' are seamlessly intertwined; there is no pressure to achieve a standard; ultimately, the pleasure is in synergy - participants make different contributions to the whole - the 'total' sound is not just an aggregation of everyone singing the same thing, but of parts that combine.

Repertoire: the expectation that there are newcomers in the room, and the desire that absolutely no-one feel left out demands a unique repertoire (combined with a teaching process that is not boring for those that already know the song). This creates a 'level playing field' - everyone is in this together and starting from the same point. The material is short but with a capacity for complexity.

Eating and conversation: there's usually a break from song in the middle for other forms of interaction.

More singing: the journey continues.

Closing: Noshes always have a focused ending - a song that acknowledges the good times that have been had, the collaboration that has occurred and that now it's time to return to the world. There's no homework and no pressure on participants to commit beyond the moment they have just experienced (but our guess is that you'll have enjoyed it so much that you'll be eager to come back).

we can all make music

singing together is fun

What happens at Vocal Noshes and singing circles

making a sound world together