Video transcript
A cappella choir workshop with Stuart Davis - 01. Introduction

So what we're going to do in this session is it's a pretty typical workshop for me, where I'll start with a group of kids or adults who haven't sung together before, and don't know anything, basically. And we're going to use a fairly traditional black gospel song, which is always good to use because it's a nice simple melody, and simple harmonies, but they sound great when you sort of get it going and put it together.

So we start with a simple tune. I'll start-- actually before that, I'll do warm ups, I'm sorry. So I will do some basic warm ups just to get the voice into that sort of place where it needs to be, and look at just getting bodies moving, and a little bit of rhythm so they're used to the idea that they're going to be using both their voices, and their bodies, and a bit of rhythm together.

And then we'll learn just the tune to the song. That's always the first step, is just to get the tune happening, and then put the tune together with a sort of a bodily kind of movement that's going to work with that tune in that style. And then from there on, I'll just add whatever I can add within the given time frame that I've got.

So usually, we add in another little harmony, or we add an introduction, or we add another harmony. If we've got some basses, then I can put in the bass part to the song, and it's just like assembling a puzzle. And we just get as far as we can in the given time.

And by the end, the goal of the whole exercise is at the end of that session there's a piece that sounds great. They have a really good experience with it, and have a lot of fun with it, and come away with that experience of having experienced a genuine sort of musical moment together. That's the goal of the whole exercise.