The Ten Most Important Skills for Choral Singers

Choral singing is its own art form with its own set of skills. What are the most essential vocal and musical skills required to do this work excellently?

Several years ago, I was asked by a parent of a young student I was teaching at the time if I’d be willing to start a children’s choir for their homeschool community. It was a project I was excited about and that I thought had some potential, so we went forward with it. We formed a small girls’ chamber choir with singers ages 10-16, and rehearsed weekly during the academic year. We performed two concerts a year, singing a wide range of age-appropriate choral music (sacred, secular, old, new), most of it accompanied.

We held auditions, but only to assess each girls’ current skill level (we took everyone who was interested). Some had quite a bit of musical experience, having studied other instruments, but some had no musical background at all, and had decided to enroll just to try something new. During rehearsals, we worked on our repertoire selections, but also focused a lot on skill-building: singing in harmony, listening to each other, and how to read (or at least follow) choral sheet music, as well as some vocal technique and musicianship basics.

One of the resources I created for them was “The Ten Commandments of Choral Singing,” which mostly consisted of basic choral etiquette or rules of engagement that would serve them in any choir setting. (This was a Christian homeschool community, so the title felt apt.) Later, I expanded these commandments into a blog post. You can read the full post here, but I’ll also list the Ten Commandments of Choral Singing below, for your reference:

1. Thou shalt attend every required rehearsal with a good attitude.

2. Thou shalt be attentive to and compliant with the director’s instruction.

3. Thou shalt ask clarifying questions politely and in an orderly manner.

4. Thou shalt watch the conductor as much as possible while singing.

5. Thou shalt do thy best to sing with good posture, and to hold thy book up high.

6. Thou shalt bring thine own sheet music to every rehearsal.

7. Thou shalt bring a pencil to every rehearsal.

8. Thou shalt not point fingers at someone else’s mistake.

9. If thou art absent from rehearsal, it is thine own responsibility to catch up, on thine own time.

10. Thou shalt review thy music at home at least once between rehearsals.

Now, as you can see, most of these are not musical or vocal skills. They are things that any chorister can (and should) do, regardless of skill level, in order to contribute positively to an efficient rehearsal process. And I still think they hold true for choral singers in any setting - school, community, or pro.

Recently, however, I was thinking about some of my own choral experiences, and musing on the fact that most of the Ten Commandments of Choral Singing are second-nature to most pro singers, as they are simply basics of professional behavior in any musical setting.

But, as we know, professional behavior doesn’t necessarily mean good music-making. Someone can have very good choral etiquette, but not-so-good choral singing skills. While the former is necessary for a smooth rehearsal, it’s the latter that distinguishes high- and pro-level choral groups from student or amateur ones. And at the pro level, both proper choral etiquette AND skills are necessary for an efficient rehearsal process.

So, I started thinking to myself: what ARE the most important musical and vocal skills for high- and pro-level choral singing?

(And, as a reminder, by “high- and pro-level choral singing,” I mean settings where the singers have a significant amount of vocal training and excellent musicianship skills, and consider choral singing its own art form that has a central place in their journey/brand/career as an artist.)

The following are the ten most important skills I think every chorister of this nature should have. While I had unaccompanied singing in mind when I made this list, I believe all of these skills are necessary for accompanied choral singing as well.

Let’s get into it.

1. The ability to sing in tune without reference or "help."

This might sound obvious, but many singers' intonation is not as good as they believe it is. “Singing in tune” is not emphasized nearly as much in traditional voice training settings as it is in, say, a string player’s training. (For those who don’t know, I trained as a violinist for many years, and intonation was almost always priority numero uno.) Most people, including professional vocalists and even some voice teachers, tend to believe that you can either sing “on key” or you can’t (this is a discussion for another time), and if you can, then you don’t really have to worry about singing in tune - especially since solo music (which is what most classical singers are trained for) is almost always accompanied, and so the singer has a supporting instrument(s) to rely on to sing in tune and need not waste brain space actively thinking about it.

I’ve written before that I think this is a real deficit in most vocal training models. While a singer’s approach to good intonation differs greatly from that of an instrumentalist, it does singers a great disservice never to talk about this element of a polished, professional-sounding performance.

As a result, you end up with a lot of singers who, without being trained to listen closely for those seemingly small discrepancies in tuning the way a string player would, fall into one of two categories: a) those with wonky pitches all over the place, either due to poor coordination, poor listening skills, technical issues, or some combination of any of these; and b) those who can sing notes in tune relative to each other, but who have drifted to an entirely different key by the end of the piece and aren’t aware of it.

Both of these issues are bad news for choral singing. Group intonation drift is a common problem, of course. It’s annoying, but it’s also something that everyone can work collectively to correct, if they’re aware of it.

But I think the first kind of tuning problem - individual notes in a phrase that stick out as “out of tune” - is actually a bigger issue. It’s impossible to tune to singers who are unpredictably out of tune, and unaware that this is the case.

For good choral singing, you need to be able to stay in tune without an instrument accompanying you, or being influenced negatively by what's going on around you. You have to think like a person who plays an instrument that can’t be played in tune unless you’re actively focusing on it - because you, in fact, are. Your voice is not going to tune itself, no matter how good your technique and/or musicianship are - especially in a group setting where seemingly small discrepancies in intonation can make a significant difference to the overall sound.

Singers need to be trained to think about shades of pitch, too. There is a range of what it means to be “in tune” that can change slightly in various contexts. (And no, I’m not talking about things like singing at A=415 as opposed to A=440.) String players know this, too - how you angle your finger on the string to play a note on its own may differ slightly from how you place it to play that same note as part of a double-stop.

A pitch is like a circle, and you can sing on the top edge or bottom edge of it, and still technically be “in tune” in most cases. However, when you’re in a group, you have to be more intentional about which edge of the pitch you’re singing on and why.

You don’t need perfect pitch to be able to sing in tune unaccompanied. Any singer can build this skill.

2. Consistent tone quality. This is somewhat related to intonation, but different enough that it deserves its own category, IMO. If your tone quality and/or color are all over the map, inconsistent, and/or unpredictable, it will be very hard for your fellow choristers to blend, balance, and tune with you. Yes, choral singers should have a wide color palate when it comes to tone, to be sure, but you need to be able to access and moderate those colors *intentionally* and in a way that makes sense for the style of the music.

To me, consistent tone quality means that your vowels are well-aligned, and you can carry the same color from the bottom of your range to the top. This IS emphasized in traditional classical vocal training, but takes a bit of an adjustment to apply in a choral setting, where the tonal requirements are often different and your choices are informed by the collective element.

3. The ability to sing consistently and sustainably at medium-to-soft dynamic levels. When it comes to choral singing, projection and dynamics are not necessarily about volume. (You could also make this case for solo singing, but that is a discussion for another time.) It’s not about loudness; it’s about subtlety. The goal is to be a part of the texture, not cut over it. A lot of solo singers feel like they often have to sing “softer” in choral settings, but I think it’s useful to reframe “softer” as a tone that is lighter, leaner, and more agile. It’s essential that you know how to set the big, bright, chiaroscuro sound aside, and access something that’s going to allow you a bit more flexibility. Don’t try to navigate a huge cruise ship through tight waters when a rowboat will do just fine.

While solo singers are trained to sing at a variety of dynamic levels, including piano, most solo music doesn’t require singing softly for long stretches of time. Furthermore, dynamics are pretty relative, and what suffices for piano from the opera stage is still probably going to be too much sound for an ensemble setting. Choral singing requires adjusting your definitions of forte and piano and creating a dynamic scale that is calibrated appropriately for a group setting.

4. The ability to sing with no, or limited, vibrato.

Yes, I said it.

Look - I am no senza vibrato purist. The perpetually, rigidly straight English boy-choir sound for every choir context ever? Ew. (Sorry for any musical Anglophiles I’ve just offended, but this sound is simply not my preference, nor do I think it sounds right when applied to anything other than traditional English choral music. Yet another discussion for another time.) Few things drive me more crazy than directors who believe vibrato is antithetical to choral singing. There are plenty of choral works that warrant various amounts of vibrato, and choristers, in general, should be able to make their own decisions about how much to use and when.

However, I do believe that senza vibrato singing is a useful - and even essential - color for most kinds of choral singing. Even if you’re singing with some vibrato throughout most of a piece, a straight tone is a useful thing to access for moments where balance and tuning need to be extra precise.

This, again, is a color that can be accessed by any singer, regardless of voice type or size. People tend to think that smaller, lighter voices can access this color more easily, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I’ve seen light-voiced singers who struggle to find this quality, and I’ve seen bigger-voiced singers find it very easily. It all depends on how flexible you are willing to be with your own voice.

5. An internal sense of tempo. You'd think this is another no-brainer, but alas - much like intonation, singing with a consistent tempo is something that most classically-trained solo singers aren’t very good at. If you’re used to singing only accompanied music, where the supporting instruments are in charge of driving the tempo (except, perhaps, in a handful of cases where the singer might take the lead on this), you’re probably not used to taking personal responsibility for really feeling a tempo.

This becomes really clear really fast in choral contexts where the singers are sight-reading, and get too bogged down with notes, text, and rhythm to pay attention to the conductor’s desired tempo. They almost always drag. Or, in cases where the music gets exciting and the adrenaline starts pumping, they begin to rush.

There’s also a difference between internalizing the conductor’s tempo, and simply passively receiving it just by watching them wave their arms around. Don’t be a passive receiver of the tempo. Take responsibility for it yourself.

5a. Rhythmic accuracy. This is related to, but different from, tempo. The ability to subdivide and keep the pulse going internally while sustaining long notes, for example, is crucial for rhythmic accuracy and overall musical energy ensemble-wide. Things like sloppy dotted rhythms or carelessly executed over-the-barline ties cause the tempo to drag, so don’t be sloppy, okay?

6. The ability to sight-read *anything* with 90% accuracy or higher. Most people understand that this is important, but what they’re missing is the “why.” The point of being a good sight-reader is not simply to be a good sight-reader. It’s so that you can synthesize the music quickly, and start making meaningful musical and interpretive decisions sooner. Good sight-readers aren’t simply solfeg-ing or interval-ing their way through their own vocal line - they’re ditching the tunnel-vision and constantly looking for visual and auditory cues that will help them understand how the line they’re reading fits into the whole.

Mistakes are allowed, of course, but you can’t let them derail you. If you have good sight-reading skills, you’ll be able to keep on truckin’, unaffected by the error you just made (which, of course, you will circle with your pencil so you can fix it for next time).

If you can’t hold your own while singing difficult or complex music one-to-a-part in an ensemble setting, you’re not actually as good a sight-reader as you believe you are. #isaidwhatisaid

7. Vocal flexibility. You’ve got to be able to adjust your tone at the drop of a hat, based on what’s going on around you. That could mean you adjust your sound’s color, weight, quality, intensity level, or any number of other things. Most traditional classical solo music doesn’t require this degree of flexibility, or as wide of a color palette, as choral singing does. This is why you’ve got to have not only good vocal technique, but a deep knowledge of both your own instrument and the fundamentals of singing, so that you can make choices that will be sustainable for your own voice AND contribute positively to the overall ensemble sound.

8. The ability to make proactive musical and interpretive choices. Of course, do whatever the conductor tells you (even if you disagree with it), but in the absence of any instruction, you should be able to sing musically from the very beginning, using phrasing; clean, expressive diction; and articulation that makes sense for the style and is congruent with whatever the composer has given you in the score. Doing so in a way that your fellow choristers can hear and respond will begin to create ensemble unity, and allow others to make their own choices as well. Don't be passive - be a contributor.

9. Musical and vocal self-awareness. Good choristers are constantly listening to what’s going on around them, and making adjustments based on what they hear. They strive to be conscious at all times of how their sound is fitting into the whole, making sure they are being leaders and followers at the same time. You have to have a good deal of self-awareness and confidence in order to do this, as well as a healthy dose of humility. If your tone or color choice isn’t working for the group, don’t dig in your heels. Set it aside and try something different. If you think you might be singing too loud, then scale back. Always air on the side of calibrating to the group, rather than expecting the group to calibrate to you. Choral singing is a collective effort, requiring singers to know when to assert themselves and when to defer.

10. Attention to detail. Consonants (initial, final, and intervocalic), vowels, register choices, diction, balance, blend, tone quality, tuning, dynamics, vocal technique, stylistic musical choices, listening skills - there are always so many details to be balanced at nearly every moment. The more you do this kind of work, the more second-nature some of them will become; but no matter what, paying close attention is key. Choral singing is a setting where you typically can’t go on autopilot, because a glitch on your part could affect the entire group - so stay attentive!

So, friends, I ask you: what do YOU think about this list? What would you add or subtract, either from the Ten Commandments or the list of skills?