Virtual Choir

We are doing a Virtual Choir! And the entire Voices of Nevada community is invited to participate in this. Everyone! Current and former members, audience members, friends. Yes, you, if you want! Please feel free to invite others too!

This is going to be a very short commitment. You will need to do just three things.

1. Do your best to learn your part in the arrangement of "How Great Thou Art" by Craig Courtney, available from Beckenhorst Press. (We have temporarily shared digital copies, since we are unable to distribute our purchased copies to all choir members. Please delete your PDF copy after the performance, and purchase this lovely arrangement if you want it for your own.) If you would like to participate but think you might have trouble learning the part on your own, please email us, and we can arrange for someone to work with you over the phone or video chat.
2. Especially if you haven't sung this one with the choir before (or it's been a while), please have a look at the teaching video for this piece, which includes specific instructions on dynamics and breathing.
3. Record yourself singing your own part. Please record along with this video, where you'll be conducted by our interim artistic director Jon Marshall and have an accompanied quartet to sing along with.



It's going to be fun! it's a beautiful piece, and we really hope that you will join the choir in this creative process!

 INSTRUCTIONS:

Musical Preparation
  1. Download the sheet music if you don't already have it.
  2. Practice your part. Having it memorized is ideal!
  3. A great place to fine tune your performance is in the bathroom mirror!
Recording Pre-work
  1. Find a quiet, well-lit indoor spot with a solid (ideally light) background, like a wall. We're hearing from other virtual choirs that the best place for audio accessible to most of us is a closet. That can be tricky for both audio and video. If you'd like, you can send two takes: one optimized for audio, one optimized for video. We can easily link those together.
  2. Set up a laptop, tablet, or phone with a camera on a tripod, music stand, stack of books, whatever to record you against the background.
  3. Please set it up to show you from the waist up, with at least a little bit of room around the edge. Here's an example of proper placement:


    4.
  4. Don't use a visible microphone. Your mobile device's should be sufficient.
  5. Headphones
    • You'll need headphones so you can hear the accompaniment but so that the recording will be only of you.
    • Bluetooth headphones don't work well for this, since there will be a slight lag between the music you hear and the conductor's motions.
    • Earbuds are visually preferable to over-ear headphones. (The photo above has white headphones; black is preferable.)
    • Test your ability to watch this video, while also recording your own video. If you need to use two devices (one to play the conducting video and one to record), that's just fine.

The Recording Session
  1. Please dress in concert black
    • Men - just a black shirt, no suit or tie.
    • Women - Only simple jewelry.
  2. Make sure the quiet recording place is set up. Listen for fans and other noise that usually goes unnoticed.
  3. Start the video above and follow the instructions.
  4. Sing your best! Follow the conductor!
  5. Once you are satisfied with the video you've made, rename it as "FirstName LastName - Vocal Part" (i.e. "Jane Doe - Alto") and drop it into the Google Drive folder specific to this song.
  6. You're done! We'll send you a confirmation email when we receive your video and will let you know if there are any issues. If you don't get the confirmation, please let us know.
  7. You'll get a notice from VNV when the song is complete!

Tips and Tricks
  1. If you haven't recorded your voice before, you probably won't like it the first time! It's normal, and everyone has to get used to it. But it's a good learning experience to hear what others are hearing when you sing and then to make changes to get a sound you like.
  2. Feel free to do as many takes as you want, and send in the best one. But you can drive yourself crazy trying to get it absolutely perfect! We'd rather have a performance that you are only 80% happy with than not have one at all. We have some touch up tools available too!
  3. We're hearing from other virtual choirs that closets give the best recording acoustics. I don't think we've had any submissions from a closet in our past performances, and it's worked out fine. We can even edit out some mild noise like muffled kid noise coming from another room!
  4. Please comment below if you have any questions. It's likely that others have the same questions.

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