Choir Class

The first place I went to for my research on different music environments that are unfamiliar to me was a Choir class. As soon as I walked in the building I could tell I wasn't in a place that's familiar to me. Everyone in the common area was either singing or reading music. They were discussing the different notes and things like that. I'm so used to a military environment and hanging out in the weight room. This was definately a huge difference.
When i walked into the class of about sixty people I definatly stood out. Class hadn't started yet, but they were all shooting glances at me that basically said "what are you doing here?" Everyone was really nice though. A friend of mine with a music major is the one who got me in. She introduced me to a lot of people and they were all pretty cool.
Before class began the instructor had everyone make a massage train to loosen up the shoulders. After that they stretched out and did breathing excersizes. They also did different types of humming and as they kept doing it they would hit higher notes. What I realized is they were warming up like I would before I work out. In order to perform at the best of your ability, certain parts of the body need to be warmed up. Just like warming up for a run, they warm up for singing.
What I noticed during the next hour and ten minutes was that the instructor was very knowledgable. He was very quick to tell people what was wrong. What seemed as a laid back class turned out to be very serious. The students worked very hard during that period to make the corrections and sound good. The instructor could pick out one person out of sixty like that was the only person in the room. He could here things that I thought sounded fine. I was sitting there listening to all of these students with amazing voices, and he would stop the song to tell them they were off key. The class was very business like and conducted really well. Even though they were working their butts off, they were still enjoying themselves.