Vern Sanders

Nobody Knows the Marks You See… Conductors want listeners (and perhaps performers too) to believe that there is a psychoemotional link between the composer and the conductor. The image that is cultivated is that the conductor looks at the score, has a mystical, psychic communion with the composer (and, if…

Plan Ahead We’ve just finished a big worship weekend (Easter 2014 for those of you reading this in 2025), and when the time came, 10 percent of the singers were on an all cough drop diet or consuming a box of kleenex a rehearsal. Ten percent more were about to…

“You Saved My Life!” I was just about to start warm ups at the first rehearsal of a choir retreat. I had done all the planning. Everyone who was there had safely completed a 4 hour drive, avoiding Friday night traffic problems. We’d had a wonderful meal at the conference…

That’s pretty much the only western language in which I haven’t taught a choir to sing music. Perhaps it is a result of growing up in California, in an Italian neighborhood, with a large Chinese population, a German/Slavic barber (those were the days when I had hair…), and Spanish all…

Let’s Talk About It… Being in tune. It is one of those things that separates musicians from “typical” folks. You know who you are if you’re the one squirming in your seat because one section of the choir (or orchestra, or band) is a quarter step off in one direction…

3 Ideas to Help You Do Your Ministry Better One of the wonderful things about the internet is that it allows anyone with some investigative curiosity to connect with people who have ideas and insight into how to do things better. My aim has always been to fill that role…

How to Trim at least 2 minutes off the length of your worship service… Perhaps you don’t have a service length problem. Maybe your pastor never preaches more than 12 minutes…and your choir always sings one 2 minute anthem…and your children’s moment is never longer than 2 minutes tops…and you…

do you really believe it will be that easy? At the risk of stating the obvious, in this era of instant gratification, we often lose sight of the fact that achieving great things means a lot of sacrifice. And not just by a few, either. For a group/ensemble/team, everybody has…

I come from a family that keeps stuff. We’re not hoarders by any means, but we tend to accumulate things. In other news, in my family, I’m the one who has moved the most. Everytime I’ve moved, that accumulation of things has moved with me, much to the delight of…

Caution… Thick Prose Alert… Proceed at your own risk… I heard a commercial the other day in which the voiceover implored the listener to “finish like a pro.” It got me thinking… What does that mean exactly? In one sense, it can mean pushing on to the end with your best…