Musicianship Classes

Pacific Chorale's Musicianship Classes

Pacific Chorale offers musicianship classes designed for both professional choral singers and community singers interested in personal development and growth in musicianship and sight-singing. In order to give participants the best experience possible, we offer beginning and advanced classes to suit individual needs. To ensure that you are placed in a class that is at your current musicianship level, please take a short assessment to identify which class would be best for you.

Classes are led by Pacific Chorale’s own Dr. Laura Harrison. Enrollment cost is $80, based on a rate of $20 per day for 4 two-hour classes.

For more information, contact Katherine Yang or call 714.662.2345.

Class Descriptions

Skills Building Class:
An opportunity for choral singers to be introduced to a basic understanding of rhythm, notes and melodies. It also includes score marking tips and practicing skills to help choral singers improve upon reading and singing in an ensemble.

The Skills Building Class is recommended for choral singers that have a general understanding of reading notes in the treble and bass clef. For those who have taken a Pacific Chorale Skills Building course, this will be a continuation of the musicianship skills topics that was covered earlier.

The Skills Building Class will largely focus on:

• Practicing sight reading melodies in a major key
• Sight-reading rhythms in simple meter (4/4, 3/4, 2/4)
• How to find (or tonicize) a key

• An introduction to reading works in the standard choral literature
• An introduction to compound meter (6/8, 9/8, 12/8)

Advancing Musical Skills:
Recommended for choral singers with an already established background in reading music. This series of classes will largely focus on reading compound meter and irregular meter. In addition, the class will focus on sight-reading and audition techniques. Works from the standard choral literature will be selected to demonstrate these concepts. Selected works will be rich in ways for us to explore and improve musicianship and sight-reading skills!

For those who have already taken a Pacific Chorale Advancing Musical Skills course, this will be a continuation of the musicianship skills that was covered in previous classes. The musicianship class contains opportunities to learn and practice the following rhythmic and melodic concepts:

• Compound Meter (6/8, 9/8, 12/8)
• Irregular Meter (7/4, 5/4, etc.)
• Continued strength building in simple meter (4/4, 3/4, 2/4) including sixteenth note patterns and triplets and duplets.

• Sight-read eighth-note runs
• How multi-movement works modulate within each movement (aka: the circle of fifths) and the length of time it takes to modulate and why.
• Practice reading melodies in a minor key
• Introduction to reading melodies in a mode (dorian, mixolydian, lydian, etc.)

• Reviewing and sight-reading common audition excerpts.
• Practice the audition process through mock auditions.

If you are interested in being notified of future musicianship class sessions, please submit your contact information using the form below, or call Katherine Yang at (714) 662.2345.