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Create orchestrations of up to 8 staves, and enter notes by clicking them into the staff or importing MIDI or MusicXML files

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hear the silence – every song starts from silence. Remind your choir. Ask them to stand in silence and focus on the sounds they can hear from outside the rehearsal room (wind, cars, children playing, dogs), then ask them to re-focus on the sounds from inside the rehearsal space (breathing, creaking floor, shuffling, throat clearing, doors banging).

sing the same note and disappear – choose a note that everyone can sing comfortably in the same octave for quite some time. Get everyone to stand very close together facing different directions. Mix the usual parts up. Everyone starts to sing on an ‘aw’ as a sustained drone. Tell the singers that after they’ve taken a breath they need to gently ease back into the overall sound. Ask them to match the quality and volume of all those around them. Tell them that you want them to disappear into the sound so it’s not possible to tell who is singing what.

stop conducting – one problem with a choir can be that the singers become so used to someone standing in front of them conducting that they stop taking responsibility for themselves and start to believe they can’t do it without that person guiding them. Without telling the choir, start a song off, gradually stop conducting, then walk off and listen. There will be an initial blip probably, but then they’ll manage fine and begin to listen more to each other. Repeat the exercise, but just give the starting notes and tell them they all have to begin together but without you bringing them in.

The saxophone is usually viewed by the wider public as a “jazz instrument,” thanks to nearly one hundred years of iconography associated with that art form

most in the music community now recognize that the instrument is capable of performing in any musical style, from contemporary classical to jazz to rock to pop to salsa, and so much more.

Instead of solely nurturing one style of saxophone playing, students should be encouraged to make use of all of the wonderful potentialities of the instrument, so that they can enjoy any possible form of music making throughout their lives.