Principles & Philosophy

Marlborough Community Choir is not primarily a performance choir, but there will be opportunities to perform, especially for community causes.

Everything is taught by ear and repetition so you do not need to be able to read music. However, sheet music is available for singers who find it helpful

Everyone who can talk can sing and there will be no competition or judging of people’s singing, nor will we compete with other groups.

We generally refer to parts as soprano (i.e. high), alto (i.e. middle), tenor/bass (i.e. low). Most people will find that one particular range suits them best, but you don’t have to stay with the same part each time.

Singing is not a ‘from the neck up’ activity, it involves every muscle in the body, and we will use the body to sing more easily and comfortably.

There will be recordings of parts, word sheets and sheet music available on the website; you’ll get the password for the Resources pages when you sign up for the term to enable you to access the audio tracks, song words and sheet music.

The repertoire can include anything so if you don’t like one song you’ll probably like the next one.

This is a singing group and there won’t be solos as such, but sometimes we might need a very small number of voices for a particular part.

Some songs like gospel will mention God, Jesus. You can take it in a religious way or not.

In the course of learning songs we will focus on different aspects of singing – tone, rhythm, breathing, pronunciation. Each week will build on the previous one. We’re going to bed-in each song, so we really feel that we know them.

People can come along to the first session of each term to try it out, and then pay the full fee for the term if they decide to join

Bring water with you.