Almost immediately when closures hit for Covid-19, I was inundated with well intentioned messages from students, singers and parents with shares of Virtual Choirs with the suggestion of “we should do this.” While I know that each suggestion came with the best intentions and were not meant to stress me out, I immediately felt pressure to complete a project that I had no idea of where or how to start. Of course, I know of Virtual Choirs. I have played the projects completed by Eric Whitacre for my classes many times and I am not in any way against sharing choral music through this medium. I think in many ways the VC projects helped to invigorate choral singing. However, having some experience with video editing for small projects, I knew that I did not have the proper hardware to complete such a project to the level I felt that everyone would expect. Not everyone understands what really goes into audio and video editing for this magnitude and the general perception is “there has to be an app for that,” or can’t we do that on Zoom?” This is not the case. It’s complicated. It’s time consuming. It’s expensive.

Thankfully a good friend and colleague who had his entire workflow stopped due to Covid-19 pivoted to redirect to help put together virtual ensembles. After much thought, I decided to proceed to attempt a first project for my students. I tried to assemble the resources they would need along with instructions for completion. During online class meetings, I would review the procedures and answer questions. In the end, participation was not very high. Some students didn’t feel all that comfortable recording their own voice. Some students didn’t have the equipment that was needed. Some students simply could not find a quiet space to make a recording or they didn’t want to disturb others at home who were needing to work. My students asked me to do it with them and at first I was hesitant because I felt it was self-indulgent, but then I thought, no, I should do this for them if it's important to them. It was also helpful to go through the process myself so I could help students through the process.

After several reminders and deadline extensions, I organized all of the video submissions, and I sent them off to Arts Laureate so they could work their magic putting everything together.

The final product was so well done by Arts Laureate and if you need someone to handle the editing process for you, I would highly recommend Christian Amonson and his team.

When the time came, I was happy to share it with my students. However, I also experienced pangs of sadness and guilt. While the final video is wonderfully done, it can never replace singing together and part of me mourned not being able to BE WITH all of the people on my screen. I also felt tremendous guilt for having the resources to be able to make the project happen. While I was really happy to share this with my students and school community, the LAST thing I want is for one of my colleagues to have my video forwarded to them and feel the same pressure and anxiety that I felt.

In the end, am I glad that I did it? Yes. I think that the song brought people joy in a time where it is desperately needed. I was surprised by the genuine impact the video has made. It did keep my students engaged and still singing on some level. If we can keep finding ways to do this until we can all be back together then I am fine with continuing to make these kinds of projects. When I shared the VC project out to my community I thought it was incumbent upon me to educate my “audience” about how difficult this process is to complete. I also directly expressed to everyone that in no way is this a substitute or replacement for our art form. Lastly, a Virtual Choir is not the only way to keep students engaged, or make them feel loved or cared for during this time. I was just lucky enough to have enough singers being able to make recordings and financial resources to hire someone to do the editing.

There are many ways to go about doing this and not every “virtual ensemble” has to be a professionally edited HD video. Realistically for most of us in the education world, that is not possible. As I go through this learning process myself, I hope to share what I have learned with my colleagues to help make this kind of temporary medium accessible and less overwhelming. It might even on some level be able to turn into a project for students. Thanks for taking the time to read about my process and my very conflicted feelings about all of this. Most of all, I just want to be back with my singers. Until then, I will try to learn new things and share what I can.

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My Virtual Choir Experience

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