You don’t need much to write choral music

Still thinking about the process of writing choral music. Today, what occurred to me is that a cappella choral music (which I’ll very broadly construe as group singing of any genre) has one of the lowest barriers to entry of any kind of music, or any other art form. It’s so easy, I often wonder why people aren’t doing it more.

Here is an exhaustive list of what you will need if you want to make choral music:

• People who will sing with you

Everything else that might be involved is nice to have, but not core to the activity. You don’t even have to write down your music. Singing is exceptionally easy to teach people by rote.

You don’t need any special training to come up with choral music, either. While more knowledge helps, it’s not at all necessary to get started. There are plenty of simple ways to get people singing together:

• You could come up with a tune and just have everyone sing it in unison.
• You could have half the people sing one long note, and the other half sing the tune.
• You could have everyone sing the tune, but start at a different time, or at higher or lower pitches.

The field is wide open for experimentation, and singers are your workshop. The more you sing with people, the more you will learn about what works and what doesn’t. It’s a skill you can learn with almost no overhead, and the best part is, you can make some friends while doing it.