Until last Sunday. As the video for the Mother’s Day/Christian Family Sunday revealed the choir singing together “virtually.”
It may look at first like a Zoom call – with the rectangular board of faces – but the 3:30 minute performance of John Rutter’s “For the Beauty of the Earth” is in fact a compilation of 13 video and audio files, each recorded separately, then artfully blended to sound just as we would hear it from the chancel on a Sunday morning.
Credit choir member Peter Bull with the audio production, while I worked on the video editing. All 20 – plus hours on the virtual choir video was worth it.
The first challenge was how to amass all of the shots, each recorded in different places with varying levels of technology. I began by recording a guide track and conducting video, which included the piano accompaniment music for the singers. That file went out to all the choir members so that they could listen, follow my direction and record themselves singing their individual parts.
We had to contend with the sounds of kids and outside construction noise. Some of us also took multiple takes. By May 1st, all of the files were uploaded to a Google drive. Peter dropped all of the video files into the audio editing software called Reaper, then started working on the sound. He eyeballed the visual waveforms of each file to align the opening notes and continued from there.
Even with the conductor’s guide, there were many variations in tempos and keys.
When you are singing by yourself, instead of beside a singer, even with trained musicians it’s not always possible to be as precise as in a live scenario. Peter Bull, as the audio editor, had to really dig in to clean up the phrases, breaths, and tuning.
More specifically, Peter worked at cleaning up any timing issues, intermittent noises or rogue “s” were cleaned up using the stock editing tools in Reaper, while specialized pitch correction software, Melodyne, was essential in blending the tuning of the voices. To equalize the frequency spectrum of each voice, Peter used the stock EQ in Reaper. Also, a noise filter Ozone 9 from Isotope audio was used to clean up the hiss and background noises. Peter then explained that a good reverb is essential and can hide a lot of imperfections if you don’t have the tools to fix them. It’s always a good idea to put the reverb on its own separate track in Reaper so you can process it individually. Peter says that “If all of this technical audio stuff is intimidating, don’t worry! It’s mostly about getting the last 10-20% of the sound quality. You can do a lot just by panning the sections, balancing the individual voices and adding just a splash of reverb.”
Even more time consuming was the video. I laboured over some colour corrections and uploaded each video one by one into a video software called iMovie. I had to pre-plan where I would like each face to appear on the screen and how I wanted them to appear. I also had to crop every video so they would fit in the frame as well. The performance begins with the soprano melody, so I wanted to just view the sopranos at the beginning, and then add all of the faces for the unison entry. Much thanks to Courtney for helping me pre-plan the video frames throughout the video editing process.
Both Peter and I completed For the Beauty of the Earth on May 6, which was later shared in last Sunday’s Mother’s Day/Christian Family worship service. After sharing this video, many churches have asked me to discuss the process exactly how we were able to record members of the choir and add them to the digital service. I believe that although it was a time consuming process, it was our first attempt, and we will learn and be more efficient as more and more choirs are attempting to do this as well. I believe that our current situation has created a space for creativity and thinking outside the box. That’s what made this video possible. We are all just doing what we can to continue connecting by sharing our art and our music.
Matthew Boutda, Director of Music Leaside United Church