The Definition of Show Choir

Though the TV show GLEE has made show choir a lot more popular, it has also created many misconceptions about it. No, we do not go to class everyday and sing pop songs with a backup band randomly. We don’t learn our music the week before our competition and we can’t sight-read perfectly the first time we see music. We also aren’t able to produce a radio-ish sound with only 10 people. We also don't get slushies in our faces every day.

In real show choir, there are real teenagers who attend a real high school. It takes us weeks to learn a song and after we learn it, we have to spend months getting all of our dynamics, diction, and phrasing just right. Our work is never done and there is no such thing as perfect. We do have some amazing soloists but they actually sound like real people and make mistakes too. In real show choir, we have to work every day learning how to use our voices. We need to work on our technique and do multiple voice exercises and such to train our voices to sound good. Sometimes songs “sit” in an awkward place in our voice range because female voices don’t mature until about at 25 and make voices don’t mature until about age 35.  This means that our voices are constantly changing and we need to keep working them every day to keep them in shape and developing correctly.

The dancing on GLEE is a bit more realistic than the singing. The dancing on real show choir, though, is a lot cooler because there are a lot more people and so you can have cool ripples, awesome feature groups, or eye catching formations. Depending on your choreographer and the level of dancing in your group, you can have more typical choreography like jazz hands, jazz squares, arm diagonals etc., or more modern “hip hop” dancing. In GLEE there is also “booty camp” for the not as gifted dancers. We don’t single people out like that, but people do get together outside of practice to help each other and such.

Also, at Kennedy, we don’t have “assignments” every week that focus on a certain lesson we should learn. We aren’t required to get up in front of everyone and sing a fun song with a message. In fact, no has ever sung a song randomly for us. Sure, us choir nerds are constantly singing J but we don’t actually perform for each other regularly. We don’t sing “mash-ups” constantly either. I had never heard of the term mash-up at all until GLEE. So as you can seem televised show choir and real show choir are very different. If you don't believe me, watch n episode of GLEE and then go and look up John F Kennedy Happiness Inc Show Choir on YouTube.com. I think you’ll be delighted with the real thing. (485 words)