Jackson Hopper

December 10th, 2020

Senior Seminar

For our senior project, I decided to put together a video featuring Oxford Prep’s jazz

band. I chose this topic because band is a passion of mine, and it is what I want to spend the rest

of my life teaching, but band and live music are both something we’ve lost as a result of

COVID-19 over the past several months. Our goal with this project was to find a way to still

create music in a band setting, and do so safely. One thing I discovered about myself was my

lack of knowledge regarding video recordings. I enjoyed learning about the video side of things,

and I now understand how to use video editing software.

For the audio, the signal chain went as follows. I used an SM58 microphone into a

Focusrite Scarlett audio interface. The audio interface allows the signal from the microphone to

be imported into the computer. The audio interface took the recorded part and directly imputed it

into our Digital Audio Workstation in real time. We recorded each part individually to keep the

project as safe as possible. All of the parts were then compiled into one track to form a virtual big

band. The big band is a band arrangement that consists of 12-16 musicians playing in the big

band arrangement. The style was very popular during the swing era and led towards the

organization of jazz music. I then mixed and edited the audio in order to further build the big

band effect.

While I recorded the audio, Molly set up her camera to record the video while each

person was performing. In a few cases when we weren’t recording a person together, I used my

phone camera for the video. We took the videos for each person recording, and we edited them

all together so that every player was visible. There were a few technical difficulties that we had
to overcome during the project. One example would be the headphone amp malfunction. My

initial plan for the signal chain involved splitting the headphone signal 3 ways via a headphone

amp. The goal of this was so the performer, Molly, and I could all listen to the recording as the

performer played it. I couldn’t get the headphone amp to work, so we were only able to use one

pair of headphones at a time— given to the performer. Often times performers had to do multiple

takes in order to get the part exactly right, but that is to be expected in the recording world. We

met our goal through this project because we were able to recreate the effect of a live

performance during the pandemic.

I benefited in many ways from this project. I now have practical recording experience,

which makes me an aid to any group I am a part of. Since I want to do music education, I now

have the means and knowledge to record my own bands someday in a similar video. An

improvement I would’ve made would be spending more time mixing the audio. I should’ve

asked for help from my trombone teacher, who does a lot of recording and mixing. I feel that I

could’ve done a better job if I had done this. Overall I am very proud of this project, and I look

forward to doing something similar soon.