"Drunken Sailor/Marry a Woman Uglier Than You"

Changing it up a little bit this week and posting a choir with only male voices. This is the KIS Middle School performing both "Drunken Sailor" and "Marry a Woman Uglier Than You." The boys in this choir are all middle school aged. However, as the director mentioned in her introduction there are boys everywhere from completely changed baritone voices, to voices that have not changed at all.

This was the first video that popped up when I typed in "Middle School Boys Choir" so this was originally why I decided to give it a listen. Yet, the reason I chose this recording is because it directly relates to what we have been discussing in class over the past week. While working at Simsbury we don't get the pleasure that this director has at with working with male voices that are undergoing vocal change. Many of the issues that Phillips discusses are alive and well in this recording.

There are several issues that I have with this recording and the performance. To start, the overall posture of the boys is pretty awful. A lot of boys are standing with their arms clasped in front of or behind them and some of them just aren't standing up straight with their feet planted. This relates directly to a lot of the vocal issues they are experiencing because they are cutting off their opportunities for air to flow through their resonators. Also there are issues with a lot of the vowels. Part of this might be a language barrier because clearly all the boys are Asian, but the vowels are very spread the majority of the time and don't match up with the rest of the group. Additionally a lot of the notes don't sound particularly supported and at times the boys sound as if they are shouting. Also in the second piece there is a lot of "riser-ography" going on, complete with costumes and everything. In the very first piece there seemed to be a lot of boys that clearly did not want to be on that stage just based on their poor posture and lack of facial expressions and engaging their singing with the audience. Phillips mentioned that a lot of boys are self-conscious about being in a "choir" because they either think it is nerdy or feminine. For some of the boys, this dancing was very enjoyable, but for some of the boys you can tell that they felt ridiculous and did not want to be a part of it.

What I do like about the recording is that for the most part the boys voices sound like they are singing in a range that is comfortable for them. At the beginning of the recording, the director mentioned that there were completely changed voices, and voices that have not changed at all. There are very view times when I hear boys going down to a note that is a little bit too low for them. Even so, the voices don't have to stay outside of their tessitura. They might have to hit a low note here and there, but for the most part they are in the comfort voice. Props to this teacher for picking appropriate repertoire that can adhere the varying tessituras! You can also hear some boys singing in their falsetto at times which means these boys voices are unchanged and are free to sing in their appropriate range. There is big debate in Phillips chapter as to whether adolescent boys should sing or not. Although I think this video helps proves that boys should be as long as they are singing in their appropriate ranges and tessituras that fall into their rate of voice change. Since these boys are singing in their falsetto, I am going to have to disagree with Phillips argument that the male voice does not have a falsetto. Clearly falsetto is a voice that boys need to use to sing healthily before the voice changes, as you can hear in this recording. Overall this recording provides many examples of different issues we run into with developing boys voices. There is a nice balance of good and bad techniques for singing going on and a lot can be learned by watching this video.