I started singing around 4 years ago when I turned up one Thursday evening to a Spirit of Harmony rehearsal. I could never have imagined then how enjoyable and rewarding a hobby it could be.

I was quickly ushered into my first quartet on that first night by Andy Salter (after convincing them that I would rather sing bass than baritone) and so it began.
Spirit of Harmony gave me a great deal of support in learning new skills and exploring what the hobby had to offer. I then joined the NBYC and reached a stage where I wanted to start giving something back.

I started taking warm-ups at Spirit of Harmony and took on the role of Bass section leader at the NBYC. It soon became apparent that being able to communicate with the chorus both verbally and physically is a very important skill and well worth spending some time working at! Spirit of Harmony were very forgiving of my first attempts at directing and with time I became more confident but found it was difficult to gauge what was working and what wasn't working about my technique.

I attended Directors College in 2007 as a novice and found it was an amazing weekend. It made me realise just how much is communicated by the director that I had never consciously picked up on before as a chorus member. I gained a great deal of knowledge and insight from the weekend and also a greater respect for my directors at how they made it all look so easy and natural!

It was not a difficult decision to make to attend DC08 and I would advise anybody who is unsure if they would benefit to go along, you will not be disappointed.

The weekend was very well thought through, no doubt the result of years of honing and lots of planning. We arrived on the Friday night to a speech by Royce Ferguson which was somewhat of an eye opener and a fantastic way to set the tone for the whole event.

We then broke off into our smaller groups and met our coach for the weekend. We talked about what each of us individually wanted to achieve which was an invaluable exercise. It is very easy to go through events such as these without a clear idea of your objectives; with no objectives to aim for it becomes much harder to achieve them! It was interesting that our group had a spread of a few different things they wanted to achieve and that gave each of us an insight into areas that we should consider too.

Saturday was an action packed day; we started by watching the videos of each member of our group directing their choruses. This was useful as by spotting areas that others could improve in we realised ways that we could improve ourselves and vice versa. Whilst I don't think that anyone was truly comfortable watching themselves direct it was a very revealing and helpful exercise.

We also had a section on Leadership and Management run by Mike Taylor and Cherry Hartshorn showing two different directors' approaches to running their club. There were many similarities and quite a few differences to and I think everyone came away with a few aspects of it that they could take back to their chorus as well as being re-assured that they were not alone in some of the challenges they face.

The video session on the Sunday morning had to be one of the highlights. 10 minutes does not seem like a long time and it certainly flew by but at least half of what I have taken away from the weekend was covered in that session. I directed the Sounds of Three Spires using the song "From The First Hello To The Last Goodbye" to try and improve my fluidity as a director. This was my main objective for the weekend and Linda helped me a great deal with it. The chorus were very responsive and supportive and I was lucky enough to have a magical moment where everything I was trying to communicate actually came across at the right point and the results were tremendous! All I need to do now is do that all the time every time, simple!

There was too much in the weekend to be able to cover it in the detail it deserves. Even if I only remember a fraction of it 6 months from now I will be well off. I have already found myself using a lot of the techniques and ideas and keep going back to my notes and my video and finding more!

I would like to thank the BABS Harmony Foundation and the Steve Hall Fund for awarding me the scholarship making it possible for me to attend. I learned a great deal and can't wait for next year to build on it again!

Duncan