Completely agree with your observations, and I say this as someone who (a) grew up with family singing, campfire singing (b) had pretty extensive choral training; (c) nevertheless later participated in and led community singing groups built on the idea that it’s totally, absolutely fine to sing “badly”; (d) for many years hosted a successful wassailing party at which most people were not Christian and not familiar with caroling, yet happily and credibly belted out the Christmas carols they had just learned, on the porches of surprised neighbors; (e) is now a folkie very active in the pub singing tradition (f) with an armchair interest in ethnomusicology, oral tradition, and the neurobiosociology of community singing.
SO… a few thoughts:
You are absolutely right that the most important factor is giving people permission to sing, that everyone has the right to sing, your voice doesn’t have to be good, you don’t have to be in tune, and in fact it will be fine. If there are professional musicians present it can be important to explain to them what is going on, why they should be happy to hear bad singers sing, and how they can help by singing the melody loudly, and not wincing.
You may find helpful resources at https://singout.org/communitysings/, look up Pete Seeger’s Tone Deaf Choir (historical), Matt Watroba’s Community Sings (current, I think). They were brilliant at getting big crowds of non-singers to sing (and surprise themselves with how good they sound).
I’d be happy to exchange notes on repertoire. I am not sure what themes exactly suit the Rationalist Solstice scene, but I know what worked well for my motley wassailing crew and my community singing group.
There are characteristics of songs from oral tradition that support/encourage everyone to sing, which are common in older traditional songs, religious/church songs, childrens/camp songs. Yes, they arose from contexts where the participants could not read, but this is irrelevant. You do not want people reading words off of a sheet of paper or their phone. You want them to be present to the room and just sing. You want it to be easy to sing in the pitch dark with a candle in one hand and a glass of grog in the other. So the same rules apply.
Predictability. The tune is repetitive (no modulations, bridges, etc), and the lyrics have a formulaic pattern. A good example: “Where have all the flowers gone?”. If someone has never heard the song, they have to stop singing and listen to hear the one word that is new in each verse; but then they can predict how the entire next verse will go, and can sing along to the whole verse as well as the chorus. And that song is not silly, and not a bad candidate.
Repetition. Songs with a chorus, as noted, you can sing the chorus once at the outset, and then people can sing it every time it repeats. Pro tip: sing every verse, and repeat the chorus after every verse. Stage folk performers will skip verses and only sometimes sing the chorus to avoid boring the audience; but it’s not boring when there is no audience and everyone is singing. But choruses aren’t the only form of this. Some songs have call and response where you repeat each line (or there’s a formula for the response to the called line). Some have a refrain in which the last line or two of each verse is sung again. Look for songs with these features.
Familiarity. Obvious one. If a lot of people recognize a song it helps, even if they just hum the tune. A good example of this might be Silent Night. In traditional music, including church hymnals and pub ballads, tunes are heavily re-used. The same tunes are re-used for many different sets of lyrics, so you can leverage that everyone already knows the tune. Parodies (writing new songs to well known tunes) work well for this reason.
Physicality. Clapping, stomping, snapping, whatever, lets people participate even if they don’t know the words or tune—and surprisingly lowers inhibitions for singing.
For totally novel songs I think the best you can do is have an optional pre-run for people who want to learn them, use the same ones year after year, and make it ok to just listen and enjoy the ones you don’t know. People pick up songs up with remarkable ease. They will accidentally find they are singing it next time. In this context, story songs are the easiest for people to remember; our brains are wired for stories. For example ‘Good King Wenceslas’ was the favorite most belted out at my Wassail, even though there are no choruses or refrains.
Since you are taking a long term view on this: wanna co-org a workshop on “singing for people who can’t sing” at LessOnline next year?
Completely agree with your observations, and I say this as someone who (a) grew up with family singing, campfire singing (b) had pretty extensive choral training; (c) nevertheless later participated in and led community singing groups built on the idea that it’s totally, absolutely fine to sing “badly”; (d) for many years hosted a successful wassailing party at which most people were not Christian and not familiar with caroling, yet happily and credibly belted out the Christmas carols they had just learned, on the porches of surprised neighbors; (e) is now a folkie very active in the pub singing tradition (f) with an armchair interest in ethnomusicology, oral tradition, and the neurobiosociology of community singing.
SO… a few thoughts:
You are absolutely right that the most important factor is giving people permission to sing, that everyone has the right to sing, your voice doesn’t have to be good, you don’t have to be in tune, and in fact it will be fine. If there are professional musicians present it can be important to explain to them what is going on, why they should be happy to hear bad singers sing, and how they can help by singing the melody loudly, and not wincing.
You may find helpful resources at https://singout.org/communitysings/, look up Pete Seeger’s Tone Deaf Choir (historical), Matt Watroba’s Community Sings (current, I think). They were brilliant at getting big crowds of non-singers to sing (and surprise themselves with how good they sound).
I’d be happy to exchange notes on repertoire. I am not sure what themes exactly suit the Rationalist Solstice scene, but I know what worked well for my motley wassailing crew and my community singing group.
There are characteristics of songs from oral tradition that support/encourage everyone to sing, which are common in older traditional songs, religious/church songs, childrens/camp songs. Yes, they arose from contexts where the participants could not read, but this is irrelevant. You do not want people reading words off of a sheet of paper or their phone. You want them to be present to the room and just sing. You want it to be easy to sing in the pitch dark with a candle in one hand and a glass of grog in the other. So the same rules apply.
Predictability. The tune is repetitive (no modulations, bridges, etc), and the lyrics have a formulaic pattern. A good example: “Where have all the flowers gone?”. If someone has never heard the song, they have to stop singing and listen to hear the one word that is new in each verse; but then they can predict how the entire next verse will go, and can sing along to the whole verse as well as the chorus. And that song is not silly, and not a bad candidate.
Repetition. Songs with a chorus, as noted, you can sing the chorus once at the outset, and then people can sing it every time it repeats. Pro tip: sing every verse, and repeat the chorus after every verse. Stage folk performers will skip verses and only sometimes sing the chorus to avoid boring the audience; but it’s not boring when there is no audience and everyone is singing. But choruses aren’t the only form of this. Some songs have call and response where you repeat each line (or there’s a formula for the response to the called line). Some have a refrain in which the last line or two of each verse is sung again. Look for songs with these features.
Familiarity. Obvious one. If a lot of people recognize a song it helps, even if they just hum the tune. A good example of this might be Silent Night. In traditional music, including church hymnals and pub ballads, tunes are heavily re-used. The same tunes are re-used for many different sets of lyrics, so you can leverage that everyone already knows the tune. Parodies (writing new songs to well known tunes) work well for this reason.
Physicality. Clapping, stomping, snapping, whatever, lets people participate even if they don’t know the words or tune—and surprisingly lowers inhibitions for singing.
For totally novel songs I think the best you can do is have an optional pre-run for people who want to learn them, use the same ones year after year, and make it ok to just listen and enjoy the ones you don’t know. People pick up songs up with remarkable ease. They will accidentally find they are singing it next time. In this context, story songs are the easiest for people to remember; our brains are wired for stories. For example ‘Good King Wenceslas’ was the favorite most belted out at my Wassail, even though there are no choruses or refrains.
Since you are taking a long term view on this: wanna co-org a workshop on “singing for people who can’t sing” at LessOnline next year?