Directing a volunteer choir often means fixing the same issues: rehearsal after rehearsal. Ever felt like a broken record explaining “stand tall, take a low breath, and open your vowels” ten rehearsals in a row?

Constant repetition eats into precious rehearsal time.

What would you spend your rehearsal doing if you never had to repeat an instruction? You could focus on refinement, on shaping sound, on cultivating beauty, on creating magic!

You can eliminate repetition instruction. The answer lies in:

1. understanding why volunteer singers do not create permanent skill growth with a once-a-week group rehearsal and
2. tools you can leverage to create the permanent skill growth outside of rehearsal.

Why Volunteers Don't Grow With Weekly Group Rehearsals

The problem isn’t the singers; it’s the system. Without a way to reinforce core instruction outside of rehearsal, a volunteer singers' growth relies solely on what happens during a 90-minute rehearsal.

Which involves un-personalized, un-reinforced group instruction.

Group rehearsals pull very few of the levers that stimulate neurogenesis (which is the creation of neural stem cells that then mature into neurons...also known as: skill formation!).

The small bit of neurogenesis that is actually stimulated during group rehearsals is lost in the intervening days before the next rehearsal, with no reinforcement and encoding.

So what if, instead of just a group rehearsal, your choir system massively stimulated neurogenesis? And resulted in incredible skill growth for your volunteer, untrained singers? To do that, your system would need to include:

• Rapid, accurate feedback loops
• Personalized instruction
• Daily reinforcement to access overnight brain encoding
• Layered lessons that keep the singer squarely in the challenging-but-not-overwhelming bucket
• Novelty
• Digestible, fun approach to build a consistent routine

And if your choir system had those, you would entirely eliminate the need for repetitive instruction.

Your rehearsals would become free to focus on the higher art of choral direction, not simply remediation.

The Solution: Automate the Fundamentals with Asynchronous, Daily, Bite-sized Trainings

Choir Snacks is a resource designed to solve exactly this problem. You can use it, or even create your own suite of asynchronous trainings. Provide your volunteers with world-class voice training in bite-sized, 5-minute daily lessons. Short, focused exercises that cover the core fundamentals that every singer needs to know, designed to be easy to use for volunteer singers at any level.

It's a vastly improved model of leading volunteer choirs: it's an evidence-based model to create vocal mastery in volunteers who otherwise would not grow.

Here’s why it works:

1. Consistent, Daily Practice: By practicing every day for just five minutes, your singers build muscle memory and develop their technique steadily over time. Neural stem cells do not mature into permanent circuits unless there is reinforcement and encoding. Encoding happens every night when you go to sleep, but encoding can't happen without reinforcement!
2. Offload Core Instruction: Instead of spending precious rehearsal minutes explaining the same concepts, use asynchronous training to handle the repetitive instruction. Just imagine the level you could take your choir to, without repetitive instruction.
3. Flexible, Fun, Accessible: Singers can complete the lessons at home, on their own schedule. This flexibility makes it easy for busy volunteers to stay consistent with their training. This is crucial to adoption by your singers.
4. Group discussion: Some singers taking asynchronous lessons can feel unmotivated. A weekly group discussion sharing insights and learnings completely reverses this dynamic: singers are drawn into a compelling shared experience. 

By leveraging asynchronous lessons, you’re not replacing yourself as a director—you’re freeing yourself up to do what only you can do: inspire your choir, refine their performance, and guide them toward the deeper meaning of the music.

Only for those seeking excellence

If you’re ready to stop repeating yourself and start achieving excellence, consider exploring the new model. It worked for my choirs, and over 200 others.

Try Choir Snacks for free. If you like it, continue it. If you don't have a budget, just send us a message and we'll work it out. Or if you want to create your own asynchronous trainings, go that route!

When your singers thrive, your choir thrives.

And when your choir thrives, it becomes a powerful instrument of beauty and grace.

Your volunteer singers deserve to be in that choir.