A choir brings singers together. And choirs are at their very best when they learn how to balance voices to achieve harmony. That makes this balance a key skill for any choir to master.

The key concept here is that singing alone and singing together work differently. Singing alone, you have to provide everything, and every detail is scrutinized. But singing in a group requires that each chorister listen to the other voices and fit their expression into the needs of the choir as a whole.

How do we achieve this balance? Read on to find out.

Blend for Balance

Vocal blend and balance are distinct, though very similar, ideas. And you need to use vocal blend to achieve the very best balance possible.

Vocal blend trains choristers to pronounce words the same way, emphasize the same syllables, shape their vowels the same way, stay in rhythm together, and keep pitch.

This blending, both in sections and across an entire choir, does a lot of work towards balancing the choir.

For one, it trains choristers to be impeccable in their unity. When we go so far as to think through each vowel and maneuver through diphthongs (when two vowel sounds glide together, like /ɪə/ sound in clear), we create intensely felt togetherness. It’s thrilling, but it takes work.

Drilling pronunciation pays off in the long run. Over time, your choir will gain a shared understanding that they bring to each new piece.

With this hard work in place, you’ll hear your singers blending. You might even experience that strange phenomenon where it's hard to tell who is singing what anymore.

But while blend is essential for balance, it isn’t enough. You can be perfectly blended but still wildly out of balance. So let’s fix that.

Set the Volume of Each Part

Once we are blended, we can adjust each part's relative volume. At this point, we are finding our balance.

This next point is crucial: you aren’t trying to even out the volume across parts. You are trying to adjust the volume so that each part can be heard in the right amount.

Sometimes, you might need more or less bass, more or less tenor, etc. Some pieces ask for a light, ethereal quality where the lower end drops out. Many songs emphasize a melody almost entirely the work of your sopranos.

Setting the volume means that the audience hears everything in the right proportion. As the choir leader, you can use rehearsal time like a producer finetuning the final mix.

Over the course of a piece, you might also want to include dynamic control—where the entire choir gets louder (crescendos) or quieter (decrescendos) together. This combines the relative volume of the parts among each other with an overall relative volume from one section of the piece to the next.

As choirs sing more softly, adjustments will often need to be made to make sure louder and lower sections don’t completely overwhelm the piece. This ongoing balance requires developing the all-important skill of listening, which we turn to next.

Listen!

If you set this during rehearsal, great. You’ll have some amazing performances there! But the point is to do this on the stage. And that means your choristers will need to both remember and adhere to the volume chosen at rehearsal while also adjusting to the realities of the concert setting.

How do they do this?

By developing exquisite listening skills. 

It’s by listening to fellow singers in the moment that true blending and balance can occur. That’s why singers need to know the relative volume of the parts. If they know the bass should be low in this section, they can do that no matter how differences in acoustics and in-the-moment changes might affect the current performance.

Listening skills should be a major component of rehearsal, even during rest parts.

Staying on Balance

Communication is how more choir leaders get blend, balance, and great listening skills from their singers. Make the adjustments you need to, but always communicate along the way why these adjustments are being made. That gives your singers the ability to collaborate and help you achieve what you are looking for: perfect harmony!

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