... have the standard song book and people take it in turns to choose one for everyone to sing ....

Yes, we have those in the US too, but more often than not, even one of those has a strong singer leading it off. They may or not step up to the front to do it, but there's usually someone just a tad ahead of the beat giving a sense of where the pitches are moving.


We did another one last night in teaching mode-- a totally different tonality, textual structure, and source singing from the other time. It worked equally well, and we could really hear the people picking up the tune and tonality as it went along. This time one of us strummed very quietly during the teaching part. Another difference this time was that after a line-by-line approach, we went through it again 2 lines at a time. The people's ability to put it together in 2 lines told me that the 1-line run had been of some benefit. When we hit it at tempo with instruments, wow, they really got to the fun of the tune.

We arent planning on using this approach for ALL new pieces, but we're getting a sense now of which ones will be more a challenge to the folks, and will likely benefit from this approach.

~Susan