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CHORTEACH
Lifting Up the Littles: Highlighting your Youngest Singers Through Commissioned Works, Effective Rehearsal, Performance Opportunities, and Student Composition

ARTICLE

makes sense for our group. A few additional considerations as you embark on
this creative journey with your students:
3) Melodic content. Let them flow.
• Plan more time than you think you will need.
a. In the Bumblebees, I serve as the translator; we Encourage every idea at first.
speak a short phrase until it’s in our heads, then
I play a D or E major chord to give us our tonic • Scaffold well with small, structured steps.
and choose a few students to sing me whatever is
in their heads for that phrase. Then I repeat (with • Embrace unexpected detours. The Bum-
real-time “autotune”) so the whole class can sing blebees unknowingly composed secondary
it back. We always draw the melodic contour in the air dominants, and most recently, a mixolydian
while we sing. We do this with several ideas and then melody!
choose which one. Sometimes I truly let the girls
choose, and sometimes I select one idea or anoth- • Incorporate musical concepts all the time,
er to emphasize certain concepts. not just at the end. Every step is an opportu-
nity to explore articulation, dynamics, tone,
b. It is common for one singer to suggest a melody etc.
and then all subsequent suggestions are exactly
the same because that’s what is in their ears. To • Adding movement is a high-impact way to
break this up, I ask a lot of questions: enhance any piece, including an original
composition! This is another great avenue to
• What is this sentence/phrase about? What is include student input!
the feeling for this phrase?
View “Be a Tree” performed by the
• What would music sound like that is sad, hap- Tucson Chorus Bumblebee Singers.
py, bouncy, silly, etc. https://youtu.be/8YIieLqU1BE

• What if our highest pitch is on this word or
that word? As the Bees like to say, “you never know until you
try.” Consider this article permission, encouragement,
• What should the longest word be? The short- a call to action to incorporate student-led practices—
est? including composition—in your youngest choirs.

4) Notating their Creation. At TGC we are fortu- Jess Edelbrock is the director of operations and
nate to have accompanists who can sketch out much associate conductor of the Tucson Girls Chorus.
of the basic notation of the singers’ ideas in real time. jedelbrock@tucsongirlschorus.org
They also can harmonize it quickly. However, you can
sketch the notation in small chunks (use solfège, a staff,
whatever works best for you) and harmonize it later us-
ing your choice of instrument.

a. Super quick harmonization 101: Pick the note in
the melody you want to harmonize, play it as the
root of a triad, the third, then as the fifth. Students
pick what they think sounds best!

CHORAL JOURNAL November/December 2025 Volume 66 Number 4 39