40 Voice Church Choir - How many Female Suprano-Altos & Male Tenor-Bass voices f

Question:Hard question to answer...
I would want to know how many of the 40 "read"- then make sure you "seed them" throughout the group, so that the ones that read can help the others hear it. A group of 15 altos is really aided by 2 or 3+ readers, and we do struggle as directors bringing the group to having everyone performance ready!! Being that a church choir performs every week you will want to take that into consideration when you place the sections- lots of us mezzos love the opportunuty to sing alto or soprano once we have gotten past high school :)

I personally like a few more altos than sopranos, (but not if they are all "belters"), tenors may be scarce in your location, but not necessarily (you could move a couple contra-altos over with them if needed- though not the same tembre. You also could look at singing repertiore in SAB divisions- these pieces are very common and not difficult to find.

Ideally I would like 8-10 sopranos, 12 altos, 7/8 tenors, 10/12 basses- but you will be able to divide your group best as you see the strengths of your individual setting. Good Luck!!

hs choir director

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Hard question to answer...
I would want to know how many of the 40 "read"- then make sure you "seed them" throughout the group, so that the ones that read can help the others hear it. A group of 15 altos is really aided by 2 or 3+ readers, and we do struggle as directors bringing the group to having everyone performance ready!! Being that a church choir performs every week you will want to take that into consideration when you place the sections- lots of us mezzos love the opportunuty to sing alto or soprano once we have gotten past high school :)

I personally like a few more altos than sopranos, (but not if they are all "belters"), tenors may be scarce in your location, but not necessarily (you could move a couple contra-altos over with them if needed- though not the same tembre. You also could look at singing repertiore in SAB divisions- these pieces are very common and not difficult to find.

Ideally I would like 8-10 sopranos, 12 altos, 7/8 tenors, 10/12 basses- but you will be able to divide your group best as you see the strengths of your individual setting. Good Luck!!

hs choir director

It's not about numbers...it's how powerful each section is because 5 sopranos are sometimes equivalant to 15 altos... (in loudness and pitch)... it all depends how it sounds!

i agree with CEO--it doesn't matter how many you have of each, as long as they know how to blend together

You'll probably find you're short of decent tenors (most choirs are!) and it depends how much stuff you want to do that has more than four voice parts.

In a perfect world, I'd suggest 12 sopranos, 12 altos, 6 tenors and 10 basses.

However, you're extremely lucky to have 40 people wanting to sing in a church choir, so be thankful for whatever you've got. My church choir can get up to about 30 people if we call in our 'friends' but we usually average around 20 for a weekly service.

If you have 1 classically trained voice, you can do without the rest of that section. So saying that you are probably going to be short on tenors doesn't mean that you'll have about 6 tenors and 10 basses. That proprtion is very heavy on the outer voices (basses and sopranos) and practically no inner voices. Don't go at it with the idea that you have a spot for 12 sopranos, 12 altos, etc. etc. etc. In an ideal world, 10 each is what you'd need, but you're liable to get 15 crappy basses that all sound like mud, and you might get one soprano who auditioned for the Met or went to Julliard. Be open to any combination due to the strength of voices who audition

You can't just have one good person in a choir. They'd blow their lungs out trying to be heard! It's best to have more sopranos and basses than altos and tenors, but altos seem to have trouble being heard (at least, in my choir) so I'd say equal numbers of sopranos, altos, and basses (maybe about 10 each, give or take) and slightly fewer tenors. You want them to be basically even, though.