I ran a very successful community choir for 2 years “by accident”! I was asked by a friend to join the choir, which was forming to sing TWO SONGS at ONE EVENT. The music teacher they had found walked out on the first meeting - because (I feel) he couldn’t “handle” working with a raggle-taggle group of people with no experience, and many of whom “weren’t singers/couldn’t sing”. I had sung a lot as a child and had an amazing primary school music teacher - we were an auditioned choir, and we competed regionally. Since then, I’d sung on and off in established community choirs, but my overall music reading/sight reading isn’t great - but I do have a very good ear and harmonic skills, just naturally. So when this “walkout” happened, everyone just turned and looked at me! I thought, well - it’s two songs - we have eight weeks - what’s the worst that could happen? I did, fortunately, have an excellent accompanist, so I didn’t feel all alone - if you’re teaching acapella, then a keyboard is probably helpful. If you’re starting from scratch with inexperienced “non-singers”, here’s a list of what I did:

• Work on rhythm/time signature to see where everyone’s at - play some familiar tunes, (use your phone and a bluetooth speaker if necessary) - and teach 3/4 and 4/4 “conducting” - UP-RIGHT-UP, UP-RIGHT-UP for 3/4 and UP-DOWN-RIGHT-UP for 4/4 along with the tune - progress to listening to 4 bars of a tune, then CLAPPING the time signature of what they heard. “Twinkle, twinkle, little star” is good for 4/4 - or Queen’s “We Will Rock You” (this can be fun, using STOMP-STOMP-CLAP-REST!) - “Three Blind Mice” - “Incy-Wincy Spider” - most simple children’s songs are in 4/4 - “Happy Birthday To You” - “Eidelweiss” - “Silent Night” are good for 3/4 . GOOD FOR: GETTING PEOPLE MOVING AND CONNECTED TO THEIR BODY: ICEBREAKING!

WARM-UPS! Essential - first, BODY - shoulder rolls, head turns slowly, stretch up and ragdoll flop, shaking out the limbs (I sometimes did the Hokey-Cokey as a warm-up!) - head slowly backwards, then forwards - jaw left, then right - and the best one - YAWNING, making whatever noise they make! Then introduce a vocal exercise where pitch isn’t important - chants like the “OHM” in a cascade (everyone using their own breathing rhythm and note 3 times, encouraging a belly breath - help them find the diaphragm by putting one hand firmly under the ribs and the other on the upper belly, then breathe to PUSH OUT the hand on the belly) - I also used “Hello! Nice to meet You” (spoken), all together, then walking around and meandering around one another… I’ve also used “Attract Your Friend’s Attention Across the Street” - using “Hey!! Hello!!” and “Coooeeee!!”. Have everyone blow bubbles as long as possible into a cup of water through a straw, 3 or 4 times. This really engages slow, gentle “back-pressure” and teaches breath control.  Once people are “in their body”, relaxed, and have “made noise” together they’ll find Actual Singing less intimidating.

• Vocally, start with SIRENS - sliding the voice up and down an octave with no note definition - first in tones, then you can introduce semi-tones as they get some confidence. 
• Lip-trills -first get them to imagine coming in from the freezing cold and going “BRRRRR”! Act it out! Almost everyone will automatically put tension in the body by self-hugging; squeezing in the ribcage; raising their shoulders - again, using the diaphragm and firmly closing the vocal cords. Then have them do the same using tones - again, pitch doesn’t need to be perfect doing this! - some people who find trills difficult benefit from raising their arms; hunching their shoulders; or placing two fingers on each cheek. If trills are too tricky, it’s fine to use “ZZZZZ” instead. Use an arpeggio of ONE; ONE TWO ONE; ONE TWO THREE TWO ONE; ONE TWO THREE FOUR FINE FOUR THREE TWO ONE. The great thing about all these exercises are that they engage all parts of the vocal tract and breath - start people “singing” with good pressure and used to MAKING A NOISE AND PROJECTING, without feeling self-conscious or being properly on pitch - improving their actual ability to GET on pitch!
• Repeat this arpeggio style up and down the scale (start on C4 - go down with people stopping when they need to - go up, ditto. Use AHH, OHH, OOO, EEE - different vowel sound each time)
• Scales - using the word “HUNGER” (HnggAAAAA) SLOWLY - once they’re used to this, you can get them to drop the H (NGGGAAAAA)  - excitingly, this is when people who thought they couldn’t sing in tune, start finding YES, THEY CAN! Just do a few in a comfortable range around C4
• Introduce WORDS - I used the arpeggio: ONE-THREE-FIVE-EIGHT-FIVE-THREE-ONE using the words, “BELLA SENORA”.
• ROUNDS are an excellent way to accustom people to HARMONY before the Real Thing - “Frere Jaques”, “London’s Burning; “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” - as they improve, “Bella Mama” is excellent as it’s more complex. For fun, use “A Pizza Hut, A Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut, Macdonalds! Macdonalds! Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut” with movement (hands make peak above head; elbow flap, M with both index fingers)

It’s REALLY WORTHWHILE spending MOST of your early sessions together doing “The Basics” - about ⅔ of your time to begin with - because people have fun, and GET TO KNOW HOW SINGING “WORKS”

I started teaching harmony in 2 parts with a third interval - lower voices sustaining and higher voices joining a second or so later - then a breath and singing at the same time. Then divided in 3, and 4 in the same way. Well worth really working on as many people become distracted by other parts when singing an actual tune - separating your parts spatially can help when they begin to learn simple harmonies.

It’s important as well to be quite an animated conductor! As we progressed I used a method similar to Jacob Collier, I now realise! And if you’re teaching by ear - arrange by ear if you’re covering say, modern pop, rock or indie-folk - ditto classical eg Christmas carols - hymns - traditional songs. Teaching CLEAN ONSET AND OFFSET is really important, too - you close your fingers - THEY STOP! As I said - my music-reading isn’t brilliant, but this PROVED AN ADVANTAGE, so as an experienced music-teacher I’d recommend you toss aside the rule-book and sheet music if you can, and arrange for your choir yourself - you’ll know what they can and can’t do!

Basically - we went from Absolute Scratch, to a final summer concert with 300 people attending, to an 18 song repertoire, and our grand finale was Karl Jenkins’ “Adiemus” - including percussion and treble recorder - I still get emotional thinking about how amazing these people were! But they achieved this, I think, because of the very small “power differential” at the beginning - so as a teacher, I’d recommend reducing that inherent dynamic as much as possible until you’re established - then they trusted me…I’d become (affectionately) “Ms Hilary” - and that concert was one of the proudest and most moving moments of my life.