Name
Involving the Entire Community in Collective Singing: Explore and Have Fun with Your Voice!
Date & Time
Friday, July 31, 2026, 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM
Description
The voice is an acoustic phenomenon that constantly changes throughout life and constitutes each person's vocal identity. Each individual maintains an emotional and adaptive connection throughout their life with their own vocal identity, which is constantly developing. Understanding this vital need can help us reconceptualize and rework our role as teachers. Before being music teachers and before being collective singing teachers, we are voice teachers. And being voice teachers means being teachers of people, specifically of one of the most intimate and vulnerable parts of a person: their identity. Our task, therefore, is to help all people—children, adolescents, young adults, and parents—connect healthily with their voice, and therefore, with their identity. It is necessary to offer tools so that everyone can build or rebuild their vocal identity in a positive way and with the required emotional support within a protected group environment. These tools must have these common traits: exploration, creativity, and a lack of aesthetic judgment.The activities in this workshop are aimed, in a playful manner, at developing the following objectives:1. Exploratory activities on the acoustic possibilities of the voice.2. Practice vocal training activities as a game, without judgment and in an emotionally safe context.3. Interact emotionally with others.4. Allow the singing voice to gradually emerge as a result of the vocal expansion and exploration of the voice we already know, which is generally the spoken voice.5. Focus primarily on the emotional and social content of all group vocal practice.6. Understand that the voice is a tool under constant construction where new things are always happening.7. Reconsider the role of the group singing teacher as that of a "vocal identity coach," someone who helps grow and expand the possibilities of the voice.8. Therefore, we must help teachers adopt a more creative, exploratory, democratic, flexible, and, above all, less imposing style of teaching collective singing, allowing the learners to decide, in some way, what, when, and how.
Location Name
514B
Full Address
Palais des Congres - Montréal Convention Centre
1001, Place Jean-Paul-Riopelle
Montreal QC H2Z 1H2
Canada
Session Type
Workshop
Presenting Author(s)
ALFONSO ELORRIAGA