25/05/2020 7 downsides of singing in a Virtual Choir - Virtual Choir 101

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7 DOWNSIDES OF SINGING IN A VIRTUAL CHOIR

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 23 May 2020  2 Comments

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Last week I posted about 5 good reasons to start a Virtual Choir, today I want to consider its downsides too.

How many times have you got your virtual choir proposal rejected by many of our choir members?

I already had in mind few points to talk about, then Mr. Ben Sobel replied to my post in Choir Director Central
Tips for
Facebook group.
He strengthened my initial ideas about why singing and producing a virtual choir is a wonderful but painful singers
experience.
Share this fre
Make no mistake, I love virtual choir singing and editing, but I want you to know that is not as easy as it seems: so for resource with y
each of these points, I’d like to propose a counter action to you, not to deny them but to try to convince people to join
the virtual choir experience.
singers and help
to catch the grea
Downside #1 – Singers sing alone, it’s not a real choir experience. recording sess
We are people who are used to sing together other people.

Maybe some of us is a soloist too, but most of us are choral singers.

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It’s strange to sing alone; it can put off many people and they won’t take part to a virtual choir proposal.

Action for singers: have you ever rehearsed your part at home, using learning tracks? It’s almost the same!

Action for directors: provide great rehearsal tracks, maybe with other voices too, so singers can “feel” the choir
singing in their ears.
Stay up to date!
Downside #2 – Singers must expose themselves. Email address:
What? Do I have to sing alone? AND I must film myself??? Are you crazy??? Your email address

OK, that’s a huge problem for choir members, people that love to sing but that do not love to be over-exposed.
Yet you’ll be surprised by shy people that strive to send you the best video. Sign up

Action for singers: try to be natural, try to think you will be a small but precious piece of a bigger picture, try to
think you’re going not to be alone.
Start here!
Action for directors: many people might be very uncomfortable standing in front of a camera, why don’t allow
them to take part with audio recording only? How to create a virtual choir per

Virtual choir softwares

Downside #3 – All the emotional stu of singing live is gone.
Do you remember the fear just before a live concert?
Do you remember your hands trembling just before giving the first attack to the choir?
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Do you remember the satisfaction during and after a well performed piece?
Do you remember the sound of people clapping? 7 downsides of singing in a Virtu

5 good reasons to start a virtual

Yes, they won’t be here, virtual choirs are not live performances.
But they could be seen as if you were recording a CD to be shared to people across the web. How to remove noise from audio

Maybe you’ll get some phone call, maybe a lot of good comments to your video: and that’s good! 7 Virtual Choir problems and the
syndrome

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25/05/2020 7 downsides of singing in a Virtual Choir - Virtual Choir 101

Action for everyone: thousands of views are possible. When did you have the chance to perform before such an Why you should really edit your
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audience?
VIRTUAL CHOIR HOW TO GUIDE audio track with
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How to start a virtual choir project 
Downside #4 – Experienced choral singers may nd virtual choir frustrating.
Ben’s words:

“I have also noticed that the level of enjoyment often (not always) is inversely proportional to any person’s level of
experience with the choral medium. Friends, family, and casual singers love them. I can’t deny that. Those of us
who have spent a lifetime in the genre are often frustrated by the issues with blend, timing, and the sheer amount
of back-end labor that it takes to produce them.”

Ben Sobel – Choir Director Central Facebook group

Action for directors: if you don’t want to deal with the huge work a virtual choir requires, you might look for editors
that do it for you.

Downside #5 – The “Uncanny valley” e ect: too perfect to be real

I like this mention by Ben.
I love to listen to choral exhibitions (live or recorded) because of good sensations that only perfect harmonies can
give.

That’s not true when I watch virtual choir videos: I know that there has been some kind of post-processing work.

We start from amateur singers, we know all the problems we have with them when singing live and yet we can
produce excellent audio and video.

That’s the “Uncanny valley” effect: too perfect to be real.

Still, they are our choir members struggling to sing alone in front of a camera: they deserve our applause.

Action for everyone: consider virtual choirs not as live events, but as a way to spread your work across the world.

Downside #6 – Directors (or editors) need to do a lot of work.

When all videos are delivered, it’s up to the director to make the magic.

It’s a lot of work because original material it’s everything but perfect: crappy video, crappy audio, errors in pitch and
timing…

The main problem is that you have no control over during the recording stage: you can only rely on your rehearsal
tracks.

Directors haven’t signed up to be digital editors, but to teach and conduct music: this could be frustrating for many
people.

Action for directors: you can learn a new skill after all this digital editing.

Action for directors #2: stay focused on the satisfaction of your choir members after they see the final video.

Downside #7 – Final result might not meet expectations.

I suspect that many people around virtual choirs world expect an Eric Whitacre video every time someone speaks
about creating a new virtual choir.
Well, ehm…

If only they knew how much work is needed to reach that level…

Every virtual choir deserve to be commended for the amazing effort that has been made by each singer, by editors
and by directors.

Action for singers: do your best to create a great virtual choir and enjoy the result.

Action for directors: don’t pursue perfection, be true to your choir nature and you’ll get a great result.

Final thoughts
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25/05/2020 7 downsides of singing in a Virtual Choir - Virtual Choir 101

It’s a new form of art: someone might love it, someone might hate it.
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Maybe in few weeks initial enthusiasms might wane. VIRTUAL CHOIR HOW TO GUIDE VIRTUAL CHOIR SOFTWARES BLOG ABOUT
How to start a virtual choir project 
Right now I think we are opening to a brand-new way to enjoy our passion, together with our people.

The internet is full of virtual choir proposals you can join simply by asking: it might be a new experience worth living
before getting back to our live choral activities!

Thank you very much to Ben Sobel for his contribution to this post!

Tips for singers

Share this free resource with your singers and help them to catch
the greatest recording session

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2 thoughts on “7 downsides of singing in a Virtual Choir”

John W Austin

I am considering some of these problems from a programmer’s perspective.

I imported my producer’s accompaniment track into Audacity and added a rhythm track. There was a bit of extra work
building the rhythm track because the Audacity tool only builds a track with one time signature for a fixed number of
bars. Our piece (Person/Holden’s Home arranged by Greg Gilpin) has one bar of 2/4 time inserted between long
sections of 4/4. That required bit of cut and paste in Audacity. That should be fixable with a higher-level plug-in that
generates multiple sections of arbitrary time signatures. I include a four-bar lead-in count in my project to give
everyone time to jump into position on the couch in front of the TV with Homer, Marge and the kids. I also string out
the piece as if repeats and Codas were written out in a continuous stream. I do this with most scores because I never
get lost backing up or jumping over pages.

When I looked at a few of the submissions from other choir members I began to suspect that synchronization
imposes a big workload on the audio/video engineers who integrate submissions from thirty or more singers.

I like to work with Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) because it can always be improved upon independently of
a development organization. Audacity fits this requirement and it is a well-known and reliable project. In this case, I
might be willing to develop a video plug-in for Audacity so that I can synchronize the recording of both video and
audio. With the plug-in approach I can add vital timing information before and after the video recording.

My goal here is to simplify the integration (synchronization) of video and audio tracks from multiple sources. It might
be productive to automate the production of a partial sound track as feedback to the singers.

Choral performance is like software development in the respect that both are collaborative activities which can
benefit from simplified and distributed work-flows. Each performer should be able to submit their recording and
receive a mixed recording back from the project a short time later. They can work from an updated Audacity project in
which they hear, rhythm track, accompaniment and an integrated choral track (everyone else with or without the
singers own own audio). This could approach the experience of singing in a rehearsal (with no talking in the
background). My software development basis for this is ‘continuous integration’ under the proviso ‘test early, test
often’.

25/05/2020 at 06:52 Reply

sgiorgetti
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25/05/2020 7 downsides of singing in a Virtual Choir - Virtual Choir 101

Hi John,
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I think that such a plugin would be great, not only for virtual choir production.
VIRTUAL CHOIR HOW TO GUIDE VIRTUAL CHOIR SOFTWARES BLOG ABOUT
How Itosee a huge
start problem
a virtual with effective synchro of the whole newly submitted track, as singers must keep correct
choir project 
tempo during all the recording, and I know that that’s often not true.

25/05/2020 at 07:18 Reply

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