Choirs are not democratic organisations. Like orchestras and some other musical performance groups, they are ruled by a conductor or director whose (perhaps benevolent) dictatorship holds sway, at least in the domains of rehearsal and performance. As in choral performance, so in research: the voices of individual participants are rarely heard. The bulk of research on choral singing and choral education has taken the perspective of the conductor or teacher as its starting point and focuses on repertoire, technical aspects of conducting, rehearsing, and performance or has taken an historical approach (see recent articles in the International Journal of Research in Choral Singing, the Choral Journal, and Journal of Research in Music Education).