Scantlings

Last night I attended two Zoom meetings hosted by folks at St. Francis YC. One was the two photographers, Sharon Green and Daniel Forster, talking about taking pictures of the Rolex Big Boat Series over the last 20 years. Some of the shots of IOR boats brought back great memories. Then, I got to attend a virtual singing event put on by our women's group the High Seas. (The guys group is called the SOTS Sons Of The Seas) Both were wonderful, but I was gobsmacked at what the ladies did in this Youtube:

https://youtu.be/8OMoQtsm7GM

Beau, that is amazing - I can't believe that was produced with Zoom! Perhaps I'm reading too much into that phrase, maybe the only part Zoom had in it was it was how they talked to each other to coordinate assembling the recordings, and each part was recorded in series on each person's local computer

avramd wrote:Beau, that is amazing - I can't believe that was produced with Zoom! Perhaps I'm reading too much into that phrase, maybe the only part Zoom had in it was it was how they talked to each other to coordinate assembling the recordings, and each part was recorded in series on each person's local computer

I don't know how they did it - but I know who to ask. I'll find out, in large part because I want to do it too.

My _guess_ is that each person sang against the piano part and a click-track. Then they were all mixed into what you see. I can tell you, having heard these woman live for many years, they could have just sung it and probably nailed it in one or two takes. What I don't know is how Zoom would have mixed all this. I don't know how that was done.

BeauV wrote:

avramd wrote:Beau, that is amazing - I can't believe that was produced with Zoom! Perhaps I'm reading too much into that phrase, maybe the only part Zoom had in it was it was how they talked to each other to coordinate assembling the recordings, and each part was recorded in series on each person's local computer

I don't know how they did it - but I know who to ask. I'll find out, in large part because I want to do it too.

My _guess_ is that each person sang against the piano part and a click-track. Then they were all mixed into what you see. I can tell you, having heard these woman live for many years, they could have just sung it and probably nailed it in one or two takes. What I don't know is how Zoom would have mixed all this. I don't know how that was done.

I just did this with an audio track with Adele last night. She recorded a viola track on top of her classmate's violin. We used a mic and an audio interface connected to her computer. The software was some sort of cloud-based Garageband. We played back the recorded violin and just recorded the viola track on top of it.

A friend sent this around recently. One Voice Children's Choir.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB6yjGVuzVo

kdh wrote:A friend sent this around recently. One Voice Children's Choir.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB6yjGVuzVo

Keith, thank you. The choir is WONDERFUL!!

We were sent a link to virtual concert of our granddaughter's orchestra. Neither the music nor the production are quite up the standard of the ones above, but it was great to see. Evidently, the knowledge of how to do its widespread.

SemiSalt wrote:We were sent a link to virtual concert of our granddaughter's orchestra. Neither the music nor the production are quite up the standard of the ones above, but it was great to see. Evidently, the knowledge of how to do its widespread.

Semi,

I dug into the way One Voice Children's Choir produced the video - that won't be "doable" by normal folks for quite a while. However, a lot of folks are starting to perform music to a click track, which allows the sound to be aligned far more easily. (It also has the great side effect of getting folks to practice with a metronome so that they stop wondering around the target beat.) It's interesting to see that if the sound is perfectly aligned, the alignment errors in the video aren't nearly as important.

I've been working with Adele's school's conservatory to find a low latency/delay way of moving sound over the internet so ensembles can play together remotely live. We decided on something called "Jacktrip." It might work, but the internet really isn't designed for controlling latency.

kdh wrote:I've been working with Adele's school's conservatory to find a low latency/delay way of moving sound over the internet so ensembles can play together remotely live. We decided on something called "Jacktrip." It might work, but the internet really isn't designed for controlling latency.

Yes, the internet is almost pathologically bad for synchronous transmission. You'd almost be better off using CB radio to sync the kids if they weren't very far apart. But they wouldn't be able to hear each other. Someone must have a click-track synchronizer package, but that would be after the kid had recorded the take - not real-time.

Keith, I haven't tried this, but they claim to solve your problem. YouTube Company Web Site

Also, Zoom has a "Music Mode" which you can read about HERE

EDIT: I just watched the video on "Music Mode" and it's for one person sending high-quality sound to a group or teacher. Won't work for jamming.

Elizabeth has played in quite a few video projects during the pandemic. They have all been organized the same way--there is a click track that you play along with, and then send your recording into the organizer who stitches it together. It's pretty much the only way to accurately sync a remote ensemble. Here's one with 73 harpists from around the world:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e74JuI5 ... M&index=12

It's the same way movies scores are recorded, except that occurs in a 'regular' rehearsal. Musicians all have headphones with the click for starting. The conductor has an electronic 'score' with a lighted vertical bar line that moves l-r across the page indicating where the music should be to line up with the action on the screen. If you ever go to a concert where an orchestra plays the soundtrack live and the movie is screened behind you'll see this on the conductors stand.

BeauV wrote:Keith, I haven't tried this, but they claim to solve your problem. YouTube Company Web Site

Also, Zoom has a "Music Mode" which you can read about HERE

EDIT: I just watched the video on "Music Mode" and it's for one person sending high-quality sound to a group or teacher. Won't work for jamming.

Interesting. My flute teacher and I tried Zoom for one session. Zoom modifies the audio for regular sessions that are optimized for speech. If it detects tones or hums it removes them. It removed all notes more than a couple of octaves above middle C. Also, strangely, if I played the D above middle C, my teacher heard it an octave higher. A music teacher pointed us to a "use original sound" option, but we didnt have success with it, perhaps because we didn't do it right.

We switched to Facetime.

Speaking of virtual performances ... Here's my wife and our daughter featured on the Naden Band Facebook page playing 'The Swan' by Saint-Saens. Happy Canadian Thanksgiving all!

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1081004272351415

Tigger wrote:Speaking of virtual performances ... Here's my wife and our daughter featured on the Naden Band Facebook page playing 'The Swan' by Saint-Saens. Happy Canadian Thanksgiving all!

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1081004272351415

Lovely.