Y’all. Someone recently said that Caitlin and I are choir snobs, and in the moment I kind of laughed but also I had a moment where I was like, What? I’m no snob! Then I thought about it for another few seconds and I realized that, if I’m honest, it might be true. Or anyway, it might be true that I’m a choir director snob.

I spent a good 15 years with 3 directors that I really, really liked. Were they objectively better than other directors? I don’t know, because my opinion can only be subjective. But I can tell you this: I sang better with those 3 directors than with any of the other directors I’ve sung with.

I have been singing in a choir since I was about 11 years old. I started in church choirs (once someone called me a choir hopper – I didn’t really have a spiritual home at that time so used to attend churches that were singing music I liked – until they weren’t) and did that for MANY years.

At one church we sang Carmina Burana and the director taught us how to get to the right pitch – there are a lot of moving parts in that piece. He also did a great job of having us all pronounce the words the same way. The text is written in Latin, Middle High German and Old French, so I’m not saying that we sounded like native speakers of any of those languages, but I do know that we had a generally agreed upon way to say all the words. I learned a lot from him about phrasing and dynamics, too.

(Also ran: I’d be remiss if I left out the director of my mom’s choir, Miss Joanie. I didn’t live there so only joined when I was in town, but she had exacting standards delivered with such dry humor I often found myself laughing even if it was my section getting the reprimand.

“Now beloveds,” she would say, “are you making a joyful noise to the Lord? Because when I look at your faces I am just seeing foreheads. I need y’all to look at me and I want y’all to smile like you are praising Jesus with this song.”)

Eventually I discovered community choirs and I discovered that there were ways that singing fed my soul – even without the trappings of religion.

I was lucky enough to start with a director that poured her whole heart and soul into each song, each performance. Sometimes she danced around the room to give us a feel for the song, sometimes she scolded, sometimes she made us put down our music even though we didn’t think we were ready. Her warm-ups were directly related to the music we were about to sing – buzzy lip trills before songs that required that sound – soaring high notes to prep first sopranos – quick tongue twisters for fast lyrics. We had learning tracks and sectionals to figure out the tricky parts.

Beyond the way we sang – she helped us feel like a community. She told us stories we could relate to and encouraged us to help each other. Sometimes in a “ask your neighbor” kind of way, but also sometimes in a “listen to the altos at this part of the song” kind of way. I learned to not just learn my notes but learn how they fit in with the whole song. We once sang a version of Ave Maria that was extremely complicated – I’m not saying I was 100% correct every time – but I was closer that I imagined I could be because I learned to listen to the other parts.

My next community choir had a snarky director who also expected us to lean on each other. To learn when to come in even if he didn’t give us the cue. Not to say that he didn’t – he did when he could – but he wanted us to function not as individual singers dependent on him, but more as a group that supported each other.

Once he divided us up by section and asked us to go and listen to the learning track together.

“Just play it 3 times in a row and come back,” he said.

We did – and I have to say not everyone in my section thought it was a good use of our time – but when we came back, the whole choir sounded better.

He would sometimes have us listen to the different tracks as a group, too, and point out what basses were doing while sopranos were doing something else. Sometimes we listened and then sang it back in short segments. Rather than feeling deficient for needing those audio learning tracks, I started feeling like this was just one of many tools I could use to improve my singing.

Am I a choir snob? I don’t think so. I have enjoyed lots of group singing projects. But it very well might be true that I am a choir director snob. If y’all have favorite choir director habits, feel free to drop us a comment!