Whilst it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, we have been
working hard for our members, friends, and followers, over the past
year, rehearsing on Zoom, increasing our listening through our
Facebook and Twitter pages, and hosting additional sessions with
experts all over the world. Up until now we haven’t done our own
Virtual Video, but we are delighted to launch this today, with our
performance of Jonathan Reid’s Measure me, sky! - a setting of words
by Leonora Speyer (1872-1956).
Measure Me, Sky! on YouTube
The process for making these recordings is quite complex! We
learn our parts individually and in rehearsal, and then sing
individually - alone and at home - each line. This requires
headphones and at least two devices - one to play the backing music
and one to record the videos. All of these audio and video feeds
then have to be uploaded to a website (which seems to be the
trickiest bit of all) and an editor (in this case the wonderful Alex
Haigh) brings them all together, gets them in sync, and edits so
that everything is as aligned as possible. Compared to our previous
experience of making our own recordings it is quite different, with
considerably fewer problems with tuning, but considerably more
problems with rhythm!
We are delighted that such a large number of our membership decided
to give it a go, even though it certainly lived up to Lee’s
expectation of being a pretty gruelling experience (think about
listening to your own voice on an answerphone, and then imagine
listening to your own singing voice, a cappella)! Huge thanks to
Alex for the editing, and to Dan Forrest for recording the backing
piano part via his Beckenhorst Press scheme of virtual choir kits.
But the greatest thanks to our members who gave up so much time
during our Easter break to help keep our profile up in these times
when live music-making is impossible.
UPDATE : as of 1 May 2021 the
video has been viewed nearly 1,700 times on YouTube and over 8,000
times on our Facebook and Twitter pages.
