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Teaching Strategies for the Out-of-Balance Ensemble

by Gregory W. LeFils Jr.

Gregory W. LeFils Jr., PhD, is the visiting assistant pro- topic of discussion in music education conversations for
fessor of music education at the Stetson University School much of the century. There are potentially many reasons
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of Music. glefils@stetson.edu as to why male participation in choir is disproportionate;
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Frederick Swanson offers three possible reasons. Though
an older source, these are still applicable today:
One commonality between my experiences singing in (1) Male voice change. Males undergoing voice change
the middle school and high school choirs was the largely can have lower self-efficacy beliefs and neglect to sign up for
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disproportionate ratio of male to female singers—a ratio choir for fear of not being good enough or are embarrassed
that did not exist in the more advanced choirs offered by of their changing voice.
the two programs. Conversations since with other middle (2) Singing becomes an elective. During the elementary
school and high school colleagues around the Southeastern years, singing is often a core component for all students in
United States echoed similar experiences with their intro- their music education; beginning in middle school, singing
ductory ensembles, especially when a tenor/bass choir for becomes elective and students could potentially sign up for
new students was not offered. It was clear to me that I need- other electives or choose to pursue athletics.
ed to learn more about teaching strategies for these out-of- (3) Singing in a new idiom. The males who sang in el-
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balance ensembles. ementary school often sing the melody or other simple har-
This article will seek to offer strategies to help choral edu- monic lines within close proximity to the melody. During
cators to engage and retain middle school singers. These middle school, on the other hand, when males are amidst
strategies include the singer’s self-efficacy, voice change and the vocal change process, they will often be assigned to a
matching pitch, repertoire selection, and how to arrange tenor/baritone/bass part, on an unfamiliar clef, singing
repertoire to fit the needs of the choir. While at times the notes that are much lower and harmonically strange to their
focus is specifically on helping retain males in a choir of ears. To sum up our challenge in choral classrooms where
mostly females, the suggestions presented here will positive- males and females are grouped together, the females can be
ly impact the entire choir. developmentally ready for more advanced singing experi-
ences, whereas the males are singing unfamiliar harmonies
with changing voices or newly minted changed voices. Ef-
Participation Rates fective choral educators must have instructional strategies at
The low participation rate of males in choir as compared the ready to engage all of these singers regardless of their
to females is nothing new to the literature and has been a level of vocal development.

ChorTeach Volume 15 • Issue 2 10 Winter 2023