After the video, you find a transcript of the voiceover text.

Transcript:

Guide singer practice, also known as mirror singing.

Uniqueness

You are unique, and so is everybody else in your choir or your vocal group. Each of you come with a vast range of different sounds.

How can we explore those sounds, and how can that be a way of showing respect for the uniqueness of everybody?

Agency

How can we respect the agency or the capacity for active participation of each singer, where each singer contributes with their creativity and their willpower together to create a very powerful sound?

Here’s a template for how you can do this type of practice known as guide singer practice.

So each of the singers is unique, and therefore they have different colors in this presentation. The blue singer has the role of being the guide singer, and then everybody else has the task of copying and cloning the expression of the blue singer, and then you get the blue sound. And then you rotate the initiative. The red singer gets the role of being the guide singer, and then you get the red sound, and then you give the task of guide singer or the role of guide singer to the yellow singer, who then has the role of providing musical initiative, which also means that everybody else serves in the role of providing support to the guide singer. Very powerful.

The goal may emerge as a result of the process

In this way, the person with the musical initiative gets support from the others, and it’s a way of showing your respect for the person with the initiative. And when you rotate this type of practice, very interesting things can happen where you actually rarely know what the result will be. So it’s a way to have musical exploration where the goal may emerge as a result of the process, and this is an important cornerstone of the learning system that I call Play It By Voice.

Floor Roof exercises

Let’s take a look at a special case of the guide singer exercises, known as Floor Roof exercises. The starting point for the Floor Roof exercises was things we did with The Real Group. We didn’t call it Floor Roof exercises then, but from things that we did, I have further developed this way of rehearsing into something systematic, that works for choirs also. I have done these exercises many many times with groups from two people to 300 or 400 people.

So here is an overview.

Guide singer leadership with rotated initiative and support.

Musical parameters

Musical factor – many musical factors have a minimum value and a maximum value, and the maximum value is the roof and the minimum value is the floor. It is a way of saying minimum and maximum in an un-boring way, if you will, and then you do an exercise that may take one minute or two minutes or something, and the guide singer has the role of making a change between floor and roof, depending on which parameter, and everybody else has the role of copying and cloning that in real time.

Learning principles with this type of practice:

Experience first, theory and reflection later

This is a type of thing that you can just start doing. You don’t have to give a big explanation first. Maybe say a few words about what type of issue that this exercise is supposed to be a solution to, and then just do the exercise.

You can do it with repertoire so that you apply the principle of the floor roof exercise to an excerpt of your repertoire, or you can do it as a standalone exercise. But it’s a powerful thing to use it with repertoire because then you can get outside of the box with the expression of the song, and then you can get back in the box after having done the floor roof exercise, and then improvement will happen almost always, I would say.

We learn through change

When you give the initiative to a singer to apply change to a musical parameter or musical factor, then change will happen and singers will learn about what that musical parameter is about, and they learn that by doing.

Very powerful.

Playfulness

What is playfulness? I would say it is exploration here and now, and I could even say exploration here and now where you apply change. That is actually improvisation.

I don’t use the word improvisation in this context because sometimes singers can get tense, but if you say, “Apply change to this example and change between floor and roof in terms of dynamics, change between quiet and loud,” every choir singer in the world can do that, and it is an improvisation with only one musical parameter, and that’s a simple task. It’s much more simple than if you ask the singers to come up with a rhythm and a melody and harmony at the same time. That’s a very complex task, but in this case you give the singer a simple task, and actually chances are higher in my experience that playfulness will happen even with inexperienced improvisers. Any choir singer in the world can do this.

Rhythm, intonation, sound and blend, expression

A few examples of musical factors that have a minimum and a maximum value. In other words, Floor Roof exercises can be applied to these musical factors.

For example: tempo.

Of course, you want the singers to be in sync and maybe even have a steady tempo, but the thing is, you learn about tempo when you make change between slow and fast, and you can have a guide singer making that change. It is an intuitive and very physical way of understanding what tempo is, and after you have done that, you can go back to singing with a steady tempo, and then ninety-nine times out of ninety-nine, the tempo will be steady.

Intonation

Note pitch, of course. So how can you apply change between a minimum and maximum? Of course, you change between flat and sharp. You glide with the pitch up and down, like for example you do with the Big cluster, Small cluster exercise, and that’s a way of becoming aware of note pitch. We learn through change. We become aware through change.

Sound and Blend

Voice timbre: dark / bright.

“I’m old fashioned. I love the moonlight. I love the old fashioned things.” (I sing this)

By changing between dark and bright as shown by a guide singer, everybody else have to adapt their whole voice instrument to the guide singer, and this is a way of really understanding what blending is. Very powerful.

Articulation

Also very interesting. Some singers will sing with a small mouth, and how can you inspire them to explore the whole range between small mouth, large mouth, big articulation, small articulation? Well, you can ask every singer to sing with the smallest articulation possible and then sing with the largest articulation possible. That will provide awareness. Singers will become aware of articulation in this way, especially when they have to copy and clone a guide singer who changes the articulation.

Dynamics

This is often the parameter that I begin with when I do Floor Roof exercises: change between quiet and loud. Every choir singer in the world can do this, in my experience. First you sing as quiet as possible, everybody does that, and then everybody sings as loud as possible, and you may need to negotiate this a bit with the group, like asking them to sing even more quiet or more loud, and then you have a guide singer who will change between quiet and loud and everybody will understand not only what dynamics is, but also what dynamics are possible. It’s a way of exploring the range of possibilities, and that goes for all of these factors.

A “database” of sounds

So in this way, you give yourself like a database of sounds for your choir created by the singers of your choir. Again, it’s impossible to know beforehand exactly which results you will get. Very often it may exceed your expectation, so the goal of doing it emerges as a part of the process. Afterwards, you can say, “Okay, so this was the goal: to develop this sound or that sound or that sound,” but it’s almost impossible to have known that before you started. So this is a way where I think exploration can be a very great complement to goal setting.

A problem is not a problem – until it is a problem

Floor Roof exercises work best, in my experience, when you apply a Floor Roof exercise to a problem in your repertoire. If, for example, you do have a problem with dynamics, nothing happens, or singers sing with a super boring standard mezzo-forte all the time, then you can apply a dynamics Floor Roof exercise, and singers get to understand: “Aha, we can sing quiet, we can sing loud, and it feels like this and it sounds like this.” And that’s a way to introduce exercises like this in a way that it becomes easy for the singers to understand why you do it.

But if you anticipate a problem beforehand, sometimes you will actually lose the opportunity of getting the singers on your team with doing this kind of exercise. So wait with the solution until you have a problem. A problem is not a problem until it is a problem.

Motivation and engagement

Why and how this pedagogy can inspire singers’ motivation and engagement:

In non-verbal communication, everyone can express themselves at the same time without chaos to happen. In verbal communication, you have to speak one person at a time. If everyone tries to express themselves at the same time, you will have chaos. You won’t hear what they say.

So in verbal communication, you have to speak one person at a time. In non-verbal communication, everyone can express themselves at the same time, and that’s a fantastically powerful setup, and this is possible especially with singing and dancing.

Build in singers’ interaction with musical practice

– which is just to say what I just said, that in the musical practice, you can build in social interaction actually, and that can help when you get into conflict, which sometimes happens even if your choir singers are the sweetest people in the world.

If you have built in, in the practice, to support the guide singer for example, you’re building initiative and support in the practice, and that is helpful to your social dynamics.

Imago Dialogue

Imagine yourself in somebody else’s situation is a part of various communication practices. Guide Singer exercises are inspired by the Imago Dialogue, developed by Harville Hendrix and Helen Hunt.

The basic exercise of the Imago Dialogue is that you express the opinion of somebody else in your own words, and with guide the singer exercises you do that in a musical way, which is super powerful. Then you can do it later with words as a tool in conflict resolution.

Establish personal boundaries within a safe group space

The safe group space emerges when people feel that they can, and that they are allowed to be themselves and get a sense of belonging. As Brené Brown says, there is a huge difference between belonging and fitting in.

If you have to fit in to be accepted, then you have to change something about yourself. With a sense of belonging, we feel that we belong to the group, but then it’s super important that who you are as a singer, for example, is accepted, and guide singer exercises is a way to experience that.

Also, the person who provides the change to a musical parameter says without words, “This is how I like to have it,” and that is a way of establishing personal boundaries, and you get direct feedback from every person who practices support that they respect the personal boundaries of the guide singer, very powerful.

Give people a framework for how to show respect for the agency of others

This is of course built in: agency, active participation. Everyone is active in this type of game, both the person with the initiative and the people with support, with very clear roles.

Initiative with change

When you have the task of providing initiative and apply change to a musical parameter, then you cannot do that without also expressing your willpower. “This is how I want this phrase to be”; it’s built in, it comes with a package of providing initiative with change. And with willpower comes motivation.

As soon as you express your willpower, you will become motivated, even if you were not motivated thirty seconds ago. And motivation is the mother of engagement, and engagement is the mother of responsibility. So there is a strong connection between providing initiative with change and assuming responsibility for the group. Take responsibility for a lot of things that the choir leader would wish that the singers would assume responsibility for. Congratulations!

A feeling of being heard and listened to

This is of course built in when you show yourself, when you show, “This is how I want this phrase,” and you get that copied and cloned in real time will give you a feeling of being heard and listened to if everybody is in on the game, and it’s very hard not to be in on the game the way it has been set up.

Play It By Voice, playfulness.

playitbyvoice.com is going to be launched in January 2026.

Have fun. Good luck!

The main topic of this article is musical practice and practical knowledge essential to singing together with rhythm, for amateur and professional singers alike.

Is this for me?

This part of Play It By Voice is for anyone who may have said to yourself, at some point in life: “I don’t have a sense of rhythm” or “I can’t sing” or “yes, I can sing, but I don’t have a beautiful voice”. When we see people having fun together and long to be a part of their group, and something holds us back, then we say these things to ourselves, don’t we?

The practice modules of Unlock your potential are also for you who already sing in a choir or vocal group and who may have a feeling of “how can I bring more of my authentic self into this group” or “how could my choir sing this song that I like so much” – while respecting how the music style of that song really sounds, rather than falling into a habit of “the choir who sings jazz or pop or r’n’b or folk music or schlager or blues or rock’n’roll or K-pop or epadunk or bossa nova in a way that choirs do”. As if choral music were a separate music style.

How can you get closer to the real thing, with your choir or vocal group, in the styles of music that you love to listen to?

As a child, you knew

When small children hear music, then they begin to dance. This is a natural part of being human. Music and dance belong together. But in European culture, singing and dancing got separated at some point, somehow.

When we start school, then somebody says to us: “sit still, shut up and listen to me”. And then we begin to separate our natural physical and musical activities from the main learning processes of school.

In that process, many of us lose contact with our natural sense of rhythm and dance and music. But the rhythms and the sounds are still there, somewhere deep inside, longing to come out.

It is a potential waiting to be unlocked – when you are ready for it.

Craftsmanship

For me, being an a cappella singer by profession, the Play It By Voice practice modules are also about craftsmanship as a musician.

Before deciding on the title “unlock your potential” for the practice modules section of Play It By Voice, I did consider an alternative framing: a phrase that would refer to the musicianship of every individual a cappella singer. Like “A Cappella Singers’ Practice”, for example. Such a title would emphasize the reality that our individual practice as ensemble singers is an ongoing activity as important as our collective rehearsals.

However, through several decades of a cappella singing and choir coaching, plus a few years of choir leadership and a decade of choir leaders’ education, the most important aspect of teaching and coaching that I have learned goes like this:

Before being ready to open up with their voices to exploration of a vast field of musical possibilities, many choir singers first need to release their innate capacity for basic musical skills. Through learning by doing, you may re-connect with physical knowledge that you may have lost as a part of growing up and going to school. Release, or unlock, your innate musical skills. Your built-in potential.

All of us who sing in choirs and vocal groups are connected by the most basic practices. It is as important for amateur choir singers to go back to the basics, from time to time, as it is for professional a cappella singers.

Cycles of activity

The Choral Wheel gives an overview of typical cycles of activity in choirs and vocal groups:

Start – Collect ideas - Get songs - Unlock your potential - Rehearse - Prepare for the stage - Perform - Celebrate - Rest - and then back to Start again.

Video #1 - Unlock your potential

You can unlock your potential for knowledge essential to ensemble singing by doing practice modules.

Learning by doing.

Most of the Play It By Voice practice modules take between 1-3 minutes to do.

Sooner or later, by doing each practice module, you may unlock your potential for specific pieces of practical knowledge to become fully internalized; musical skills available within yourself that are fundamental to active participation in the moment of music-making.

Individual and collective knowledge

When you join a choir as a new singer, is there then a minimum requirement in terms of your knowledge as an ensemble singer?

I would say: there is an individual part and a collective part of choir practice. Every choir singer has potential for developing the individual knowledge as well as the collective knowledge required.

There are specific individual skills that every choir singer has a potential for. But we rarely spend time to develop individual skills of ensemble singers. In choir rehearsals, we practice collective skills, that you get through interaction with other singers. Collective knowledge.

When and where shall choir singers practice their individual skills ? And which are these skills? I think it’s important to make distinctions between individual practice of ensemble singing, and individual practice of solo singing.

Why isn’t individual practice of ensemble singers a part of mainstream choir culture? I would say: this is mainly because it’s poorly understood what a choir singer does, or could do, in the very moment of music-making. What do you do to get the rhythm right? What do you do to get the intonation right? What individual skills do you need in order to get a satisfactory sound and blend, and expression, together with other singers?

I find all of this incredibly interesting to explore, especially since it is the singers who make all the sounds of vocal music. Not the composers. Not the conductors.

Practical knowledge

The knowledge that I’m talking about is practical, like knowing how to walk, how to tie your shoes, how to chop wood, how to cook food, how to sing in tune, for example.

Practical knowledge has little to do with theoretical understanding. It’s mostly about physical understanding. Embodied knowledge, for rhythm, intonation, sound and blend, and so forth.

Good news:

There is a limited amount of knowledge for you to unlock, as a starting point.

Play It By Voice provides exercises to embody such knowledge. Each of these exercises, or practice modules, doesn’t take a lot of time to do. It does take repetition, though. Ten minutes every morning; sometimes less, sometimes more.

This practice is fun to do.

All you need to do is to do your practice, on a daily and weekly basis.

There is no final destination in learning processes in music.

Breathe out before you breathe in

Video #2

Some of the things that I’m about to say could perhaps be confrontational to hear, or even painful to consider. So I’d like to ask of you: hear me out, before you dismiss what I say. Thank you.

Sometimes you may be ready to just add new knowledge.

And sometimes you may need to breathe out first, so to speak, before you can breathe in new pieces of knowledge.

Before we are ready to assimilate new knowledge, to make it a part of ourselves, we may have to let go of habits from the past. Habits of the mind and habits of the body. Patterns of thinking, being and doing.

Things to unlearn

Mainstream choir culture of today has inherited many of its practices from old school European music pedagogy, sometimes without conscious reflection, apparently. I think there are important distinctions to be made. Which of the old school practices do you really want to inherit, and which practices do you prefer to let go of? While there is universal musical value in some of it, there are core elements of default choir practices which are counterproductive to active participation of choir singers.

Chances are that there are things for you to unlearn before you are ready to assimilate new knowledge and new practices that are relevant to a wide spectrum of repertoire, including music styles that have emerged since the early 1900s.

Some of the things to unlearn may be embedded in collective patterns of thought. For example: a common habit of thinking is that choir singers shall follow impulses from their choir leader, without assuming musical initiative. The choir leader knows everything, or should know everything. Right? This type of mindset may create blockage in the flow of learning processes.

Letting go of false patterns of thought

Or someone may have told you that you don’t have a musical talent. Which isn’t true, but still, if someone said that to you, it may have inflicted trauma in yourself. Trauma which would constitute blockage, since we tend to avoid any experience that could remind ourselves of the event that caused the trauma in the first place.

A time may come when you want to dissolve blockage within yourself. Letting go of old and false patterns of thought, or letting go of trauma, can sometimes be painful. In order to clear the field for new ways of thinking, being and doing, you may have to re-live the experience of the event that shaped your trauma. You don’t have to re-live that actual event, but you may need to re-live your experience of the event, before you are ready to let go of the pain and the shame connected with that experience.

Upgrade your knowledge

When you create new habits in your musical practice, then you establish new patterns of activity in your mind and in your body; new ways of doing things and new ways of thinking. Or perhaps you won’t be thinking at all, which is a great approach in the moment of music-making. Being in the music, not in your head.

And then everything may run smoothly, until one day when your habits of thinking and doing needs another upgrade.

The constant process of learning, letting go of old patterns, upgrading your knowledge and so forth, often involves that you do the same exercises again, but from a new mindset. You may reach a deeper level of practice with the same exercise that you already have done many times.

Micro-second response habits

Before you get to deeper levels of practice, chances are that you will meet resistance from within yourself. Scepticism to anything new is built in with human response. In human interactions, automatic resistance to new initiative often shows up within a micro-second, and blocks the flow of interaction in that moment.

Remember this: it’s just habit. It’s not who you really are. In essence, you are music. And music is not about resistance. It’s about flow, within boundaries – like a river.

In my experience, it is possible to break micro-second response patterns, when you apply self-observation combined with respect for boundaries of others.

Eventually, you may fully embody the experience of going with the flow in the moment, with the music.

Leadership

From your point of view as an ensemble singer, what are the consequences of all of the above – for choir leadership?

For example: to what extent do you think that it is your choir leader’s responsibility to inspire you and the other singers to unlock your potential?

To what extent are you and other singers responsible for initiative, curiosity and inspiration in the moment of rehearsals and performance?

Who is responsible for letting go of counterproductive response habits - everybody else, or everyone including yourself?

Is it your leader’s role to initiate musical processes set up with the purpose of letting go of old habits?

Is it your leader who shall inspire you to self-observation? Or do you naturally include self-observation as a part of your individual musical practice?

Have fun, good luck!

I am a founding member of the a cappella group The Real Group, Sweden, former musical director of Perpetuum Jazzile, Slovenia, and I now serve as Honorary Professor of innovative choir direction at the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus & Aalborg, Denmark.

Play It By Voice

In its most basic form, Play It By Voice is a learning system that consists of

• maps of learning processes

• learning principles

• practice module tutorials

About this blog and podcast

The podcast and blog provide free access to the Play It By Voice maps and learning principles, and is a platform for me to elaborate on related topics, and to share ideas with you. Feel free to subscribe at no cost.

Practice module tutorials

The tutorials part of Play It By Voice at Substack will be launched in January 2026 and requires a paid subscription.

The Play It By Voice practice module tutorials is for development of practical skills that are fundamental to all kinds of ensemble singing. You can do the exercise modules together with your choir, and on your own. The purpose of doing these exercises is for you to feel adequately prepared and to experience the fun and playfulness of singing together with others.

Feel free to explore this material at your own pace and in an order of your preference.

For those of you who prefer to follow a plan, I provide guidelines for the order in which I recommend you to do the exercises.

For those of you who wish to do a whole course on specific dates, let me know. Our team at The Real Group Academy can set this up for you.

The Real Group Academy

Singing with The Real Group for twenty-six years had a profound impact on my life.

The relationships between group members, and the things we did together – in rehearsals, concerts, recordings and workshops – gave me invaluable experiences as an artist, musician and teacher. My career as a singer, arranger and composer with The Real Group still has an important influence on my current activities as a teacher and developer of new methodology for choirs and vocal groups. Our journey together continues to unfold to this day.

Stay tuned for more info!

“We shall not cease from exploration,

And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.”

– T S Eliot

Map #1 – The Choral Wheel

The main purpose of this map is to provide singers and leaders with a common reference to the interconnection between different types of activity within your choir.

Cyclic processes

Start - Collect ideas - Get songs - Unlock your potential - Rehearse - Prepare for the stage - Perform - Celebrate - Rest - Start… and so forth

When you have completed a full cycle of activities, then you return to a new starting point, from where the next project can begin to take shape.

One round through a wheel like this can take two months, five minutes, two weeks, or twenty years, for example.

There is no end station in the Choral Wheel.

Start

What do singers commit to when they join a vocal group or choir? Which types of activity do they think that they are signing up for? And what do they actually sign up for, in reality?

What is required of each choir member to ensure that the choir’s activities are sustainable over time?

Is it only the choir leader’s responsibility to have an overview of the group’s activities? Or do the singers share some of that responsibility?

It may take several turns around the choral wheel before a new singer begins to see their part in what it takes to run the choir.

From ideas to performance

It does happen that we get lost in details, doesn’t it? At times, we all need to zoom out from our current activity and take a look at the whole picture.

In each part of your preparations for performance – Collect ideas, Get songs, Unlock your potential, Rehearse, and Prepare for the stage – you will be expected to give your attention to a wide range of things. Some of these activities may seem unnecessary, unless you have a sense of the whole plan. That’s when understanding of development cycles may come in handy.

Celebrate

How do you collect experiences and lessons learned during the current project, to be assimilated into the collective knowledge of your choir?

After a concert, for example, it is important to celebrate the accomplishments of the whole group, including the preparations leading up to the concert.

A piece of advice: Give yourselves time together to share personal and collective experiences made during the whole project while the preparations and your concert are still fresh in your memory:

– What did we do?

– What did we learn?

– What did we know already?

To collect learning from your current project, questions like these are important to ask oneself, and to discuss together. That way, your experiences can be brought into the next cycle, in ongoing development processes.

Rest

It has been said that music is silence, occasionally interrupted by sound.

Rest is one of the most important parts of creative processes. It is a natural part of life; a state of being.

Many of us are trained to produce, then to evaluate, then to produce again.

When do you set time aside to do nothing?

Have fun, good luck!

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