It looks like technological development and Internet assistance have taken their time to develop tools to make life easier for musicians who want to sing in a choir.
The thing is that not all websites and applications offering materials to sing choral music are suitable or have quality criteria that go beyond the 80s-worthy MIDI files.
Therefore, we have picked the 7 web pages or apps that offer rehearsal materials for choirs, and as choral music lovers and developers of music-teaching-oriented technology, our first choice is Singerhood.com, an application for mobile devices that allows you to select voices –recorded by professional singers– and listen to them separately, depending on the music part you need to learn. At present, its catalog has more than 500 works available, with more than 2300 files by separate voices, both for a cappella works and large choral symphonic productions. It also provides edited music sheets optimized for mobile phones and tablets.
In this list, you will also find pages with study materials in different versions, so you can select the ones that best fit those choral works that you need to prepare.
As you will see, we have classified the websites in different categories. We hope now it will be easier for you to find what you’re pursuing.
Apps to learn choral music
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Choral Practice
They have an app that allows you to differentiate by voice. The recordings come from real singers, and their catalog lists some of the greatest choral masterpieces, such as G.F. Haendel’s Messiah, G. Fauré’s Requiem, or J. Brahms’ Liebeslieder-Walzer. If we consider the big works’ numbers separately, their catalog includes a total of 76 works. They have a monthly-subscription-based model, although it provides some pieces free of charge to test how the app operates.
Chorus Point
It is an online choral community that provides on–demand recordings for choral materials and allows sharing those available from the different interpreters. His current catalog offers 80 masterpieces, approximately.
At present, it works via an app (ChorusPlay) on Android and Windows Phone.
Choir player
When we take a look at the Choir Player app access, we can notice it targets an audience dedicated to performing pop music backing vocals and musicals.
There we can manage each voice’s volume separately, but cannot see the score sheet. Its catalog offers 130 works that we can access via individual purchase.
Chorus class
The aim of this application developed by Swedish ChorusClass is similar to Chorus Point. Creating a choral community where users can record their materials and share them with their choir mates.
We can see it is a working tool rather than a content aggregator. When we access the sample works, we notice that we can differentiate the voices, but we cannot see or follow the music sheet.
Websites to learn how to sing without an app
Choral Tracks
Choral Tracks is, for sure, the most experienced web providing study materials with highlighted voices to choral singers. It has a vast repertoire with more than 3,000 works, all sung (in all voices) by Founder and CEO Matthew Curtis.
The access to the pieces is via individual purchase that automatically downloads to a file. It is undoubtedly worth seeing such an extensive repertoire although the price per work is high and does not offer such an accurate vocal model, especially for women’s voices.
Choralia
Choralia offers a comprehensive catalog of synthesized voices that we can access through their website. One step forward when compared to MIDI files that choirs tend to use, although far from being an appropriate reference for singing or for setting performance or pronunciation criteria.
Publishers offering study materials
Publishers such as Peters, Hal Leonard, and Ricordi have not started any project that includes elements with real singers to date.
Probably the most outstanding app is Carus Music, developed by Carus-Verlag publishers. They offer a catalog with 97 works where we can listen to the orchestra and overlay the vocal score we want to highlight via a MIDI file. Access to this catalog is via individual purchase of songs.