The Christmas Medley on Google Meet

The Rockford Aces perform Richard Gregory’s Christmas Medley every year. It’s just so fun, so clever – and it’s a great teaching tool for a lot of concepts, too.

This year, of course, we couldn’t do it in person. We had just started learning it when we switched back to remote rehearsals in November. So, we went online – to a “Google Meet.”

I was hesitant to make them a virtual choir version. I was hesitant only because it’s hard emotional labor for students – to record themselves singing solo, especially. My amazing students were game for the challenge, though, and came through with flying colors.

I helped them by creating sung guide tracks for all four parts – it’s a lot easier, I found, to sing along with a voice than with a piano. I aggressively used Melodyne on my tracks to save me time, creating quick guides that I knew wouldn’t be heard publicly. I do all my audio work in Pro Tools.

Simultaneously, we planned the design of the video together. This piece is chockfull of musical comedy, and lends itself to a lot of visual comedy in performance. Most of that wouldn’t work in a virtual choir, but by placing the virtual choir “inside a Google Meet” we were able to come up with lots of other gags based on video-meeting cliches.

They recorded the audio in six 40-second sections, over two 1-hour rehearsals. I stayed on our meeting while they left to record, so that I could tech support. They sent me audio, I assessed it, and they moved on.

We recorded the video in a subsequent rehearsal; I gave them a rough mix to work with and they shot with specific directions. Then I had the big job of putting it all together in Final Cut Pro X. I finished that today, except for the short “live” intro which we shot on Zoom at 3pm today. (Ironically, it was easier to record my “Google Meet” in Zoom…) I made an actually slideshow to insert into the video, and learned lots of new FCPX skills with this video. (freeze frames, drawn masks, etc.)

I can’t wait to make music in person again, but in the meantime, I’m glad we can have fun together and still get some music happening!

Please enjoy The Christmas Medley 2020.