Virtual choir - anyone else doing it?

6 years ago

For those of you who sing in a choir or chorus.

I sing in a church choir. For the past three weeks the hymn-singing parts of our Zoom services have consisted of our organist playing the piano at home while everyone's audio is muted. We sing along at home, just our homebound voices with a piano accompaniment. We are a congregation that loves singing hymns together and this is the best we can do...until now.

For Holy Week we are attempting to do a Virtual Choir. (Not with video as that adds a whole other layer of difficulty.)

We print out the music and listen to the organ accompaniment via headphones, while recording our parts (either melody or SATB). I'm getting the audio from my laptop and recording on my iPhone. A floor lamp shade is my music stand. Upload the recording of our voices, and one of the guys is syncing it all up.

He sent me a synced up recording of the voices with the organ. I wasn't expecting much. OMG, was I wrong. I burst into tears. It was like being back in church, everyone together again. It's moving beyond words, even more than the real thing, because we're all apart and longing to be together again in song.

Sort by:Oldest

Comments (4)

bpath
6 years ago
Bunny, that’s a beautiful thing! I’m so glad your church has people who can manage all that! My friend’s husband is the choir teacher at our high school, he is not techie, and is having a time figuring out how to get everyone synced.

I’m in a bell choir and we could probably use technology to get us all on the beat at the same time lol. But we are out “for the duration”, and I miss it enormously.

Do you think you’ll be able to share the audio with us on Easter?
Bunny thanked bpath
Tina Marie
6 years ago
I sing along with our praise band - from home. Does that count?! LOL Seriously, it's great your church is doing that. Ours is streaming the services, but only the pastor and the praise band (which conforms with the 10 or less group; pastor is not up front while praise band is) and our media team (two people in back of sanctuary inside audio booth are in the church. I love our praise band so much and am thrilled to be able to sing along at home (although I'm sure my husband isn't!).
Bunny thanked Tina Marie
Related Professionals
Aberdeen Furniture & Accessories · Springfield Furniture & Accessories · Duluth Furniture & Accessories · San Jose Furniture & Accessories · Durango Furniture & Accessories · Mesquite Furniture & Accessories · Hattiesburg Interior Designers & Decorators · Vineland Interior Designers & Decorators · Frisco Interior Designers & Decorators · San Angelo Interior Designers & Decorators · El Dorado Architects & Building Designers · Mountain Home Architects & Building Designers · Portsmouth Architects & Building Designers · Parkersburg Architects & Building Designers · Burlington Architects & Building Designers
cawaps
6 years ago
My church choir isn't meeting, but my community choir is doing exactly as you described: the director sends out the music in advance, then on the conference call she plays while everyone else is muted, singing along by ourselves at home. It's not ideal, but better than nothing.
Bunny thanked cawaps
Bunny
Original Author
6 years ago
The guy putting it together is using Adobe Premier. He's able to adjust the volume of each track (person) so that no one is too loud. I was a little apprehensive that the world (we stream on FB) would hear my voice sticking out like a sore thumb, but when everyone is added to our splendid Casavant organ, it sounds like an entire congregation.

None of us are in the church. We've all been shelter-in-place since March 19. Obviously our organist and his wife were in the sanctuary to record the organ.

The key to syncing up is, his wife counts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. On the individual recordings we join her with 4, 5, 6. That helps our audio guy sync us all up.

bpath, I'll ask him for a recording from Easter. That one's gonna be emotional for me.