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of developing good choral tone as a priority for cho- • Warm up your singers every day.
ral performances, specifically when considering choirs
who may be judged at festivals or other music associa- • Insist on good posture.
tion performances.
When I began my career as a middle school choral • Practice breathing exercises.
director, I knew that middle school choirs could achieve • Work on resonance and placement.
a beautiful tone, but I wasn’t sure how to make that
happen. After attending workshops and conferences • Give significant attention to uniform vowel shape.
and working with veteran directors, I soon found im-
provement in the choirs’ tone by focusing my instruc- • Incorporate consistent sight-reading and ear-training
tion in a few areas. Integrating these strategies into practice.
your teaching may help your choir as well. The follow-
ing eight strategies are discussed along with suggestions • Avoid overuse of the chest or belt voice.
for implementation into lessons and rehearsals:
• Provide good choral models.

Table 2. Adjudicator element rankings if the scoring instrument included variable weights assigned to elements

You indicated that you do give all seven elements of the performance criteria the same weight in the overall score. If the
scoring instrument was designed to give more weight to certain elements, please rank the performance criteria with 1
being the element you think should get the most weight in the overall score and 7 being the element you think should get
the least weight in the overall score.

Field 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Total

Diction 2 3 5 10 1 4 0 25

Ensemble 2 1 3 6 8 5 0 25

Interpretation 1 1 2 2 7 12 0 25

Other Factors 0 0 0 0 0 1 24 25

Pitch 4 13 5 3 0 0 0 25

Rhythm 0 2 8 3 8 3 1 25

Tone 16 5 2 1 1 0 0 25

CHORAL JOURNAL May 2025 Volume 65 Number 8 9