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Voice for Life Training Scheme


The training scheme

Choir picture

Training a choir is both a challenge and a joy. The Voice for Life training scheme provides a framework for choral singers to develop their vocal skills, their musical understanding and their knowledge of repertoire. The scheme comes with a range of teaching material and supporting resources and gives plenty of advice on the practicalities of running a choir. It is intended to enable choir trainers and teachers to train their choir or group more effectively, and to help singers grow as people as well as musicians.

Voice for Life involves the choir trainer or teacher, and each member of the choir or group. The scheme is designed to be flexible so it can fit around your choir’s schedule. Much of the training will become part of your usual rehearsal time; for example, the vocal exercises can be incorporated at the beginning of your rehearsal as warm-ups or to break up the rehearsal, and you can provide training on posture, breathing, diction, etc.

The Voice for Life Choir Trainer's Book contains all the information and advice you need to launch Voice for Life with your choir or group of singers. There are also other support materials available to help you motivate, encourage and assess your singers including singers' workbooks, medals, badges, song collections, and wall-charts.

Voice for Life resources and training materials are being revised during 2012, including full integration of the White Level. To find out more, go to the 'Revisions - 2012' tab.

To find out more about the RSCM Voice for Life training scheme click on the tabs above.

How Voice for Life works

There are five levels in the Voice for Life scheme, for singers of any age from beginners through to advanced singers, starting with a preparatory level for brand new, inexperienced singers.

  • White (preparatory level)
  • Light Blue
  • Dark Blue
  • Red
  • Yellow

White Level

The preparatory White Level for new singers (ie, probationers/trainee choir members, both children and adults) introduces and assesses very basic choral skills and understanding.

On completion of this preparatory level, the singer is admitted as a full member of the choir, and there is an RSCM Chorister's Admission Card that can be given to mark this special occasion. There is also a Voice for Life White Lapel Badge that can be awarded to acknowledge formally the singer's achievement. For robed choirs, it may also be your custom to award a surplice at this stage. Some choirs also choose to present singers with the Voice for Life Chorister’s Companion on joining the choir.

The White Level is being fully integrated into Voice for Life resources, with a new White Level Singer's Workbook now available. The Choir Trainer's Guide will remain available as a free download until this material has been incorporated into the revised Choir Trainer's Book.

Light Blue, Dark Blue, Red and Yellow levels

Voice for Life ribbons

Once the singer has become a full member of the choir, they move on to the four main levels of Voice for Life: Light Blue, Dark Blue, Red and Yellow. At each level of Voice for Life there are graded targets which are assessed informally by the choir trainer or teacher. Once a singer has completed the necessary training for that level, reached the targets and finished their workbook they can be awarded their RSCM Voice for Life medal and the appropriately coloured ribbon (for robed choirs) or coloured lapel badge (for non-robed choirs). The singer then moves on to the next level.

How singers are trained and assessed

To enable choir trainers and teachers to train and assess their singers with confidence, each level of Voice for Life comes complete with:

  • Teaching material to provide the appropriate training for each level. This includes practical exercises, diagrams, photocopiable worksheets, and sample tests. The teaching material for the preparatory White Level is available for download (see 'How it works' tab above), and for all other levels is contained within the Voice for Life Choir Trainer’s Book.
  • Workbooks for singers containing questions, exercises and puzzles, designed for use by singers of any age.
  • Clear targets which state exactly what a singer should have achieved/be able to demonstrate in order to be awarded their next level. These are listed in the back of the singers' workbooks with a space for the choir trainer or teacher to sign and date each target as it is achieved, showing the progress of the singer through that level.

The skills developed in Voice for Life

Each level of the scheme provides training in the following areas:

Module A: Using the voice well

Voice for Life cartoon

This module aims to teach singers how to develop good vocal technique. It contains many practical exercises and helpful diagrams enabling you to deliver the training in this Module with confidence. It begins by helping singers get used to the physical sensations of healthy vocal technique, and in the later levels develops their understanding of the physiology of the voice.

Contained in this module:

posture, breathing, tone and range, diction, style and interpretation, blending with the choir

 

Module B: Musical skills & understanding

Musical skills and musical understanding should grow together; as a singer makes progress with their voice they need to develop the understanding and skills to support them in their singing. Singers need to understand the music they are looking at and develop an ability to read and interpret what they see. Likewise, they need to develop their listening skills. This module develops knowledge of music theory and notation, and then encourages singers to demonstrate this understanding through sight-singing and aural skills.

Voice for Life cartoon

Contained in this module:

music theory (note values, rests, time signatures, note names, ledger lines, accidentals, double sharps and flats, intervals and degrees of the scale, keys and scales, modes, chords and cadences), sample sight-reading tests, sample aural tests.

 

Module C: Repertoire

This module aims to develop a good understanding of the musical and historical contexts of the music performed by the choir or individual singer. It also gives singers the opportunity to demonstrate the musical understanding they gain in Module B through some simple musical analysis. Singers are encouraged to find out about the background of the music that they sing: to translate and understand the text of a piece, to look at the historical background, to look at the purpose of a piece, to develop an understanding of the style/genre. Through this research, singers develop the ability to gather information from various sources and to present this in an original form.

Contained in this module:

finding the information, sample questions, sample answers, how to write programme notes, programming for your choir – basic principles.

Module D: Belonging to the choir

Voice for Life cartoon

If a singer wants to be part of a choir, there is more required than simply being able to sing. There are issues of commitment, punctuality and responsibility. This module considers how a singer can be encouraged in these areas and gives plenty of additional advice for you on recruiting singers into the choir and how to maintain their interest and commitment.

 

Contained in this module:

recruiting and publicity, new singers, when a singer moves into the adult section, when singers leave the choir, roles for singers within the choir, choir pay, discipline, notes for head choristers/choir captains, copyright issues, child protection, weekly standards, general progress, rehearsal tips, starting a choir.

Module E: Choir in context

A choir does not exist in isolation. Although it is a community in its own right it is also part of a wider community such as a school, church, village or town. This module encourages singers to explore the wider context of its choir’s existence: Why do they sing in that particular choir? Why does the choir exist? For whom does it sing? How does the choir benefit its members and those outside the choir? The material is divided into various sessions, each based on one topic, and these come complete with photocopiable worksheets.

Contained in this module:

For all choirs:
the gift of music, the power of music, what is a community?, the community of our choir, the wider community, the roots of our choir, the changing repertoire of our choir, special project: serving the wider community.

Additional sessions for church and worship choirs:
Christian ministry and music, regular and special services, festivals and seasons in the Christian year, places of worship (church buildings).

How Voice for Life links with the Bronze, Silver and Gold Awards

Real life stories

  • At St John’s, West Byfleet in Surrey, the Director of Music Ian Church finds the sense of progression within Voice for Life of great benefit to his junior choristers. He has been using the scheme for around five years and now has a junior choir of fifteen children aged seven to thirteen. Ian sees Voice for Life as a useful tool to monitor the progress of individual singers and makes time at the end of weekly rehearsals to assess them, as well as offering one-to-one sessions to those preparing for the Bronze Award.
  • Voice for Life is used in a number of schools as well as churches. Anne Brookes is the Musical Director at Ormesby Village Junior School in Norfolk where the scheme has been in use for two years. Anne reports that the choristers feel a real sense of achievement when they are presented with their awards. There are currently twenty-six junior choristers aged from nine to fourteen and they are augmented by a small group of adults. The group rehearses weekly during term time and performs both at the school and in local churches. Anne sets aside time at the end of each rehearsal to work on the Voice for Life targets. She is assisted by two adult choir members, so that they can split the singers into groups according to their level. All of this hard work is clearly paying off as the choir recently won a prize in a local music festival, for which we offer our congratulations!
  • Voice for Life also forms the backbone for chorister training in overseas branches of the RSCM. New Zealand choir director Robert Tait uses the scheme with the chapel choirs of the Cathedral Grammar School in Christ Church. There are separate choirs for boys and girls, each with forty members and a waiting list for entry. The choirs rehearse three times a week for thirty minutes and, in addition, Robert works with choristers on their Voice for Life targets in sessions before rehearsals and at lunchtime, assisted by Paul Ellis (RSCM NZ President) who is also a tutor at the school and works particularly with the more advanced singers.
  • The choir of Wroughton Parish Church is just one of the many using the scheme with adults as well as children. Musical Director John Henderson is assisted in this by his wife Janet who does the bulk of the Voice for Life training, particularly with the junior choristers. They cover elements of the scheme in rehearsal as well as offering individual sessions, resulting in two Bronze, four Silver and three Gold awards for adult singers over the years. An impressive record indeed!

Introducing the revised Voice for Life Scheme (2012)

Since its launch in 1999, Voice for Life has become established in countless choirs around the world. The Workbooks and Choir Trainer's Book were first published in 2006. Since publication we have listened to singers and choir trainers who have used the scheme, and during 2012 we will be revising the materials and publishing a number of new books that we feel sure will enhance the scheme, making it easier and more enjoyable to use.

White Level

One of the most significant changes is the integration of the introductory White Level. The level, for beginners, was introduced in 2009, with all of the materials available to download, initially for free. Since then it has been downloaded thousands of times, and has become a key part of the Voice for Life programme, for adults and children alike. The new White Level Singer's Workbook, published in January 2012, expands on the free materials with a wealth of new exercises and activities to reinforce beginners' learning and understanding. Like the singers' workbooks for the higher levels of Voice for Life, it also includes a clear 'targets' section, so that singers can see their own progress towards achieving the White Level (replacing the White Level record card previously available from RSCM Music Direct).

The Choir Trainer's Book is being expanded to incorporate the White Level, and targets and activities for subsequent levels have been amended slightly to take into account the learning that takes place within the new level. Until the revised Choir Trainer's Book is available, the Choir Trainer's Guide for White Level will remain available here at no cost:

Other Levels

The addition of the White Level has given us the chance to look carefully at the content of the subsequent levels, making changes to both the content of the level and the presentation of the work. Some of the exercises in the singers' workbooks have been completely reworked, with the aim of producing an even more comprehensive and flexible resource.

Aural and Sight-reading

The feedback we receive about Voice for Life suggests that many choir trainers find the teaching of aural and sight-reading skills particularly difficult. A brand new Voice for Life Sight-reading and Aural Book, helping choir directors deliver effective training, will be published shortly. This book will provide a structured approach to teaching and learning these two valuable skills, in a more user-friendly format with separate singers' copies of all the sight-reading exercises.

Module E: Choir in Context

Whether your choir is sacred or secular in constitution, and regardless of whether it sings in public worship, concerts or any other settings, an understanding of the context within which it sings is vital to the motivation and cohesion of the choir. Module E of Voice for Life addresses these issues.

The open-ended structure of Module E, and the need to plan its delivery, have led in some cases to a less thorough delivery of this aspect of the programme, something that can become apparent when singers are entered for Bronze, Silver and Gold awards. As we work to increase the scope of the awards scheme to include choirs that don't regularly sing in public worship, it becomes ever more important that this area is not neglected. We consulted experienced practitioners who are using Module E successfully and positively, and have made significant structural changes, dividing the eight general and four (optional) church-specific units between the levels, with clear targets for each that are appropriate to the level. Singers preparing for their awards exams will find the new Module E section of the workbooks invaluable in their preparation.