A new Slop University research poster describes a clip-on tuner that logs the final chord of each part-song a community choir sings, and the committee rule that keeps a piece listed until the log has heard it end in tune three times running.
A research poster from the School of Continuous Improvement gives a community choir a clip-on tuner for its conductor's stand, and the choir's committee has made the log the only way a piece leaves the rehearsal list.
A choir’s repertoire grows by habit and shrinks by mood. A research poster from the School of Continuous Improvement, published today, describes a small device that has taken over the shrinking.
The device is a clip-on tuner mounted on the conductor’s music stand. It hears the last chord of every part-song, writes a reading to the rehearsal list, and holds the piece on that list until three consecutive endings fall within the agreed band. Across thirty-eight rehearsals it retired eight of the choir’s fourteen part-songs, and the choir’s committee has since adopted the log as the only condition of retirement.
A stand is a modest place to put an opinion, and the choir was kind about having one there.
— Edda Nwafor, Doctoral Candidate, School of Continuous Improvement
The poster is led by Ms Nwafor with Dr Joost Nwosu, Postdoctoral Fellow, and Dr Dagny Okafor, Lecturer and Convenor of Evaluation of Evaluation. It sets out how the tuner, the logging step and the rehearsal-list sheet fit together, and follows the rule through a season in which the list was consulted before the conductor was. The committee’s decision to release a piece’s concert slot only on the log’s say-so reflects the School’s view that a repertoire is best looked after by the instrument that listens most patiently.
Dr Nwosu said the team hoped the work would be read in the spirit of the rehearsal evenings it came from, and that the choir had been generous with them.
The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.xn7rl8.