My First Vocal Jam Class
So I thought it went quite well yesterday evening with the Vocal Jam session. Even though, sadly, only half of the worship vocalists could make it, I thought it was, nevertheless, a good start for me. A good experience to encourage me that, "I can do it!" Haha...
I've always felt that teaching is not my cup of tea. So I never even dared to venture into giving tuition. I mean, what if I teach the wrong thing? My impression is that, if you wanna be a teacher, you have to be really good at a certain subject. Not just having the knowledge, but know how everything falls into place. Your foundation has to be strong.
Like if you teach English Language, it's not enough even if you have all the vocabulary. You have to know sentence structures, rules of grammar, conjunctions, what defines a verb, adverb, adjective, noun, blah, blah, blah. For me, I just know whether a sentence sounds right (and I might be wrong, too). I don't have the proper 'formula' behind it. Perhaps I have already internalized the knowledge. But a teacher needs to draw out the knowledge, break them down to bite sizes to impart them to another in a way to most effectively faciliate learning. Wah...so difficult!
So, I see this Vocal Jam class more as a sharing session where I penned down what I've learnt and picked up from singing over the years, organised them into 2 pages of notes for distribution and go through them with the class. A lot is about what works for me, in other words, and I'm sure the list is not exhaustive.
Well, in case after the few long paragraphs above, you are wondering what this Vocal Jam is about, it's a jamming session with just the voices. No band, no instruments.
The session was basically on improvisation, so it was ok to just use praise & worship music off my iTunes as accompaniment for the 'hands-on'. The whole idea was to add more variation to songs that we sing during Church services, and not just follow whatever we hear from the recordings, 'wholesale'.
After all's been said and done, one thing I strongly believe is really important. It is that as we're exploring improvisation and all other techniques to improve ourselves, we must never forget that the point of it all is to be an effective instrument in leading the congregation into the presence of God during our time of worship. So there needs to be a balance not to over do it and become a distraction. And if it's not about Jesus and the presence of God, I would just be wasting my time. We all would be.
So I did have fun, and took back something with me even though I was supposed to facilitate the session. At least I know now that it's not as bad as I thought. I know I would be more daring to do it again...and better at it, for that matter. Thanks for being by 'guinea pigs', y'all! :P
I've always felt that teaching is not my cup of tea. So I never even dared to venture into giving tuition. I mean, what if I teach the wrong thing? My impression is that, if you wanna be a teacher, you have to be really good at a certain subject. Not just having the knowledge, but know how everything falls into place. Your foundation has to be strong.
Like if you teach English Language, it's not enough even if you have all the vocabulary. You have to know sentence structures, rules of grammar, conjunctions, what defines a verb, adverb, adjective, noun, blah, blah, blah. For me, I just know whether a sentence sounds right (and I might be wrong, too). I don't have the proper 'formula' behind it. Perhaps I have already internalized the knowledge. But a teacher needs to draw out the knowledge, break them down to bite sizes to impart them to another in a way to most effectively faciliate learning. Wah...so difficult!
So, I see this Vocal Jam class more as a sharing session where I penned down what I've learnt and picked up from singing over the years, organised them into 2 pages of notes for distribution and go through them with the class. A lot is about what works for me, in other words, and I'm sure the list is not exhaustive.
Well, in case after the few long paragraphs above, you are wondering what this Vocal Jam is about, it's a jamming session with just the voices. No band, no instruments.
The session was basically on improvisation, so it was ok to just use praise & worship music off my iTunes as accompaniment for the 'hands-on'. The whole idea was to add more variation to songs that we sing during Church services, and not just follow whatever we hear from the recordings, 'wholesale'.
After all's been said and done, one thing I strongly believe is really important. It is that as we're exploring improvisation and all other techniques to improve ourselves, we must never forget that the point of it all is to be an effective instrument in leading the congregation into the presence of God during our time of worship. So there needs to be a balance not to over do it and become a distraction. And if it's not about Jesus and the presence of God, I would just be wasting my time. We all would be.
So I did have fun, and took back something with me even though I was supposed to facilitate the session. At least I know now that it's not as bad as I thought. I know I would be more daring to do it again...and better at it, for that matter. Thanks for being by 'guinea pigs', y'all! :P
Comments