The Rockford Aces have been working hard, under difficult circumstances, to learn music and be an ensemble this year. With the switch to remote learning several weeks ago, we made the difficult decision to work on a virtual recording for the holidays. I say difficult, because I’ve been promising them to keep the focus on ensemble singing, and to not stress them out with remote recording.
So with this round, I made two small tweaks that I think have really improved the process, particularly for high school singers.
- Remote synchronous recording. We met up during their scheduled rehearsal time, I gave final instructions, and then they recorded from their homes, while I stayed on the Google Meet to answer questions, and checked text/Remind/email to assess recordings and give feedback. This sense of camaraderie and knowing that everyone was working at once made it feel much more productive.
- Vocal part recordings. I recorded myself singing all the parts of the piece we’re doing. To speed up the process, I learned the basics of Melodyne. I didn’t do more than two takes of any section, and I auto-tuned the heck out of them. It doesn’t sound beautiful, but it is an accurate, sung recording of the piece with articulations, phrasing, tempo, etc. the way we want them. My students found it much easier to sing with these recordings than with MIDI or piano guide tracks.
Most of the singers recorded half of the piece in our hour meeting today; we’ll do the second half in our next meeting (Monday) and then record videos, again remote-synchronous, next Thursday. Then I get to work!
There isn’t one right way to create a virtual choir project; but I’m finding more and more ways to improve the final product through little tweaks and tricks. Hopefully I’ll have mastered my workflow just in time to never have to do one again.