Summer Professional Development for Church Musicians
Summer is here!
And with that comes all the things we love about this time of year: trips to the beach, cold beverages, snack suppers on the porch, and farm-fresh vegetables.
But as musicians and educators, summer is also a great time to develop our craft, hone our skills, and learn something new.
How are you spending your time this summer?
Maybe you’re attending a conference, catching up on professional development, learning a new skill, practicing your instrument for fun, or getting a head-start on your planning for next year.
It’s been such a strange time to be a music director or music teacher. The past 15 months have challenged us, stretched us in ways we couldn’t have anticipated, and tested our ability to be flexible and respond to the moment.
As you look toward the year ahead, I encourage you to reflect on what you’ve recently experienced. How have the events of the last year changed us as teachers, as musicians? What will we do differently going forward?
“How have the events of the last year changed us as teachers, as musicians? What will we do differently going forward?”
It’s normal to feel a little burnt out after the year we’ve just had. It’s normal to feel tired or frustrated or lost. But what have you learned? What strategies will you keep? What strategies will you change?
If you’re looking for professional development that will inspire you and help you build your skills as a church music director this summer, I have just the thing.
Curate your own learning experience by selecting from a range of online seminars, mini-courses, and full courses on a variety of topics — all designed to help you lead, teach, and inspire others with creativity and confidence. Certificates are available upon request at the completion of each seminar or course.
All courses and seminars are taught asynchronously, meaning you can start whenever you’re ready and work at your own pace. I'll be setting aside weekly office hours inside the course platform to answer your questions and share ideas and suggestions.
Enrollment is officially open! See below for a list of this year’s offerings.
See you inside!
Mini-Seminars ($32)
for children's choir directors
45-minute online seminars (from Directing a Church Children's Choir 101) with built-in workshop time for you to put what you’re learning into practice.
Each seminar includes 2-3 in-depth lesson videos on the given topic and a collection of PDF worksheets with notes, resource links, and templates.
Mini-Courses ($129)
for church music directors2-hour online mini-courses designed to help you develop the essential leadership skills and teaching strategies you need to direct and lead your choir with creativity and confidence.
For the Adult Choir Director
For the Handbell Choir Director
For the Youth Choir Director
Summer Discount: Save $10 on any mini-course with code SUMMER-21 through 7/28
“Great launching pad for those starting a new choir as well as some great reminders and insightful ideas for the more experienced director.”
Full Courses ($219+)
for children's choir directors & music educators
“It was far above my expectations. I felt like we were taught every step we need to take to plan, prepare for and create a successful children’s choir.”
Directing a Church Children’s Choir 101 — A 4-week (or work-at-your-own-pace) online training course for children’s choir directors in church settings.
Summer Discount: Save $20 with code SUMMER-2021 through 7/28
Piano duets are one of the most enjoyable ways to make music with another person—whether you're adding something special to a worship service, planning a studio recital or informance, or just looking for an excuse to sit down at the piano and play with a friend or student.
In my experience, most piano students love the chance to perform together, and even small churches have at least one person in the congregation with some playing experience. Often, people just need to be asked and invited to participate.
If you're like me, you first learned solfege from Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. This 1965 classic is still beloved today—it's a favorite among my elementary piano students!
Solfege is a useful tool for developing sight-singing and music-reading skills. It’s beneficial for teaching ear-training, harmonic function, and tonal relationships. It also promotes good vowels when singing, as each solfege syllable is a pure vowel sound.
The phrase score-study takes me right back to music history at 8 a.m. on Wednesdays (you, too?). Grout anthology in one hand, class notes in another, marking cadences and phrase structure and German augmented sixth chords.
Don’t worry—I’m not suggesting you analyze your ensemble music quite to that degree. However, the practice of studying a score—before teaching, rehearsing, or performing the piece has its merits.
Making progress, learning, improving. A sense of accomplishment and achievement.
Whether you’re leading a choir, chamber group, studio class, or classroom ensemble, you know what a good rehearsal feels like—focused, efficient, and productive.
There’s energy and momentum and everyone’s engaged and working together.
Call and response is a form of musical dialogue: Someone sings or plays a musical phrase, and someone else (or a group of people) responds, either echoing the phrase back or providing a musical answer.
Call and response stems from a variety of musical traditions, including African, Cuban, folk, and early church music (think cantor and congregation). (source)
Call and response can be a useful teaching tool, as it gives young children an opportunity to listen, imitate, explore the voice, and gain confidence in their singing.
Who doesn't love a Christmas party in September (even if it’s still shorts weather)?!
A Christmas choir party is a fun and festive way to welcome new members, build community, and generate excitement for the season ahead. Whether you're leading a church choir, community chorus, or small ensemble, this kind of event sets a warm, enthusiastic tone for the year and offers your choir members a sneak peek of what's to come.
Handbell choirs are a wonderful opportunity for community, creativity, and collaboration. And starting a new group is much less intimidating than you might think.
Whether you’re a church musician, a classroom teacher, or a community music director, you can bring people together to make beautiful music—even if they’re mostly beginners. The key is choosing flexible repertoire, using thoughtful teaching strategies, and creating a welcoming, supportive learning environment for all.
Are you an introvert or an extrovert?
Society often makes us feel like we’re either one or the other. But these personality traits are actually opposite ends of the same spectrum.
And the reality is that most of us fall somewhere in the middle (source).
Susan Cain, researcher and author of the New York Times bestseller, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking noted, "Extroverts need higher levels of stimulation to feel their best” while "introverts prefer quiet, minimally stimulating environments." (source)
From August or September until May or June, choir and ensemble members of all ages gather in communities across the country week after week. They sing, they smile, they learn, but most of all, they give their time to be part of something bigger than themselves.
It’s a commitment, and often one that includes the whole family. This alone is something worth acknowledging and celebrating.
But then there’s the wonderful work that you do together throughout the year—the music you learn, the songs you sing, the services and programs and concerts you present, the community you build.
Here are five ways to celebrate the end of another wonderful year and show your appreciation for your choir and ensemble members this spring.
You know what it feels like:
Uninspired.
Laborious.
Boring.
It’s easy to slip into a rut in rehearsals from time to time, but I think we can all agree: these are not things anyone wants to feel or experience.
You don’t want to feel like you’re just going through the motions each week; you want to feel excited and energized to sing or play and learn and make music together.
Have you ever thought about how you give praise and offer encouraging words in your teaching? Is there a way to do this that promotes learning?
How can you use your words to foster the development of intrinsic motivation and a positive self-image in your students?
If you’re a church pianist or organist, you likely have lots of opportunities to use hymn arrangements and creative hymn-playing techniques (like, multiple times in every service!).
But knowing what to do, finding well-crafted hymn harmonizations, and accessing published resources can be challenging. In some cases, these resources aren’t available at all.
The good news is, you don’t need to rely solely on published resources to add creative hymn arrangements and harmonizations into your service-playing. You can learn to do some of this yourself.
Rhythm pattern cards are a great way to teach new rhythmic concepts, reinforce familiar patterns, and build that all-important music vocabulary (the ability to understand and create your own musical patterns and sequences).
There are lots of different types of rhythm pattern cards out there - some you can buy, some you can download and print for free (like the set I'm sharing below!), and ideas for making some of your own.
They don’t have to be fancy! The ones I'm sharing today can be printed at home on white cardstock and cut into quarters (postcard-size).
It's one the greatest musical skills you can help your choir develop: singing and reading music for themselves with musical understanding.
Just like learning to read language, music-reading comes after listening and interacting with music aurally and developing a musical vocabulary of tonal and rhythm patterns (these are like words in language).
Think of how you learned to read: You probably spent a lot of time following along in a book as you listened to someone else read to you. Eventually, you started finishing the sentences and pointing to the words as you went along.
You learned simple words like, go and dog and identified them in other books.
Learning to read music is no different. We learn to recognize tonal and rhythm patterns like familiar words in books.
'Tis the season to be jolly (in July, as you plan music for Advent!)
Am I right?!
As a church musician, you know it's never too early to be thinking about Christmas, so today, I thought I'd share a few favorite choral anthems for the Advent season.
I've mentioned a few of these in previous posts (Favorite Anthems for the Small Church Choir and Fifty More Favorite Anthems for the Small Church Choir), but I thought it might be helpful to compile everything in one post for easy reference.
Are you looking for books you can sing or chant in your elementary music classes, group classes in your studio, or children’s choir rehearsals?
You know the ones: books that either have lyrics to a familiar children’s song or hymn, or stories with text that can be sung to a familiar tune, like “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”
What does it mean to be a leader? And what does it take to be a great one?
Leadership has been defined as “the art of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common goal.” (source) Thus, a leader is one who inspires and directs that collective action.
This requires a certain set of skills and character traits, though experts say you can learn and develop these skills with time and experience.
You don’t have to be born with all of these skills and traits to be a great leader.
Take a moment to think about the choir directors you’ve had during your lifetime. What was your first choir director like? If you sang in a choir during high school, what was that director like? Think about the directors you’ve had as an adult, whether in a university, church, or community setting. What were those directors like?
Each one had a different style, right? A different approach to leading, conducting, organizing, and communicating with the choir. What makes one director a stronger leader than another? Which communication style is most effective?
Each one had a different style, right? A different approach to leading, conducting, organizing, and communicating with the choir. What makes one director a stronger leader than another? Which communication style is most effective?
As you wrap up your school-year commitments and make plans for those lazy, hazy days of summer, now is the perfect time to start organizing a summer choir.
Here are three unique ways to organize and structure a summer choir at your church, plus some helpful strategies for making the most of your time together each week.
Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday are big celebrations in the life of the church and since they come back-to-back in the church calendar, it's one of the busiest weeks of the year for church musicians! Here are a few anthems to consider for your choir this year.
Music publishers often present reading sessions at conferences, clinics, and professional development workshops. Clinicians sometimes curate their own reading sessions with some of their favorite works, too. If you’re a director, this is a good way to learn about new repertoire and choose music for the year ahead.
In this post, you’ll find a list of reading session picks I’ve curated through the years for elementary (K-6) choirs. Some feature opportunities to introduce part-singing and include other instruments: organ, flute, handbells or handchimes, and rhythm instruments. This is a great way to develop musical independence in your singers and help foster their listening skills.
One of the most creative parts of worship planning is finding unique ways to incorporate music into your services. From introits to benediction responses, prayer responses, moments of transition in between things, and even underscoring.
Handbells are a great way to do this!
When I directed bell choirs, I loved coming up with creative, meaningful ways to include handbells in worship, beyond the traditional prelude or anthem slot.
Lent. A time of reflection, sacrifice, prayer, contemplating, and grace.
It's a time of stripping away, going without (for example, the practice of "burying the alleluia" during Lent), and quieting the heart and mind.
There are six Sundays during Lent, plus any services that take place during Holy Week (the week between Palm Sunday and Easter).
If you’re looking for a few new Lenten anthems to add to your library this year, here are a few of my favorites for SAB and SATB choirs.
In March, we celebrate Women's History Month around the world. And for those of us in music, we often celebrate women in music, as well.
There are festivals honoring the contributions of women in music, concerts celebrating repertoire by women composers, and publications about women writers and creators who have been relegated to the sidelines throughout history.
In church music, there is a rich history of women composers and authors sharing poetry, hymns, anthems, and service music. To celebrate Women in Music Month, here is a collection of church music written by women.
In February, we celebrate Black History Month—an annual observance in the U.S., Canada, Ireland, and the U.K. (and perhaps other places, as well) honoring the history, achievements, contributions, sacrifices, and struggles of African Americans.
Musical underscoring in worship (traditional and contemporary) is a creative way to elevate spoken texts, connect musical elements that may be separated by reading or prayer, or highlight a drama or moment of prayer in the service. Today, I'm sharing a step-by-step guide to creating your own musical underscores for worship using handbells.
Remember in college when you'd get into the practice room in the morning, unpack your books, and launch into a warm-up sequence? Maybe it was scales, chord patterns, or arpeggios. Maybe it was a finger-strengthening exercise. Maybe it was a technical etude.
Whatever your routine, warm-ups were an important part of each practice session.
Singing is a full-body activity (source). And we know that movement is a valuable tool for helping children understand and engage with music.
This is why so many children’s choir directors and elementary music teachers teach songs and anthems with hand, arm, or body movement of some kind.
Sign language is a natural choice.
Fall is here, which means the return of Georgia football (Go Dawgs!), puffer vests, and apple everything (sorry, PSL).
It also means lots of repertoire planning and rehearsing for Christmas programs, musicals, and holiday concerts.
I recognize that some of you are in positions where you may be programming a holiday concert or program, whether that's a school or community setting or an interfaith musical celebration with area churches. If you're looking for choral music that touches on various Winter holidays and celebrations, I hope the list of anthems below is helpful to you.
Choir is a meaningful way to build community, promote unity, and bring people together.
Whether you direct a community choir, a church choir, or work with a professional choir, combining with other groups can be a memorable, enriching musical experience for all involved. It's also a practical way to expand what's possible on a concert program: more voices, more opportunities for divisi, and a bigger sound than one group could create on their own.