What is a multitrack music video (or virtual choir)?

In the past few years, a really cool Internet phenomena has developed. Its called the virtual choir or multitrack video, and the primary venue for these videos is Youtube. This is what it is:

• Each part of a musical selection (choral, barbershop, quartet, really any vocal piece) is recorded separately with audio and video.
• These videos are synced so that the audio from each part lines up with each other, therefore completing the harmonization. 
• The videos are edited with multiple picture in picture style, so that a small thumbnail of each part video can be simultaneously viewed while being played in the same area.

Multitrack music videos can be any of these styles of music:

• Mainstream choral literature
• Barbershop / Sweet Adeline choruses
• Barbershop / Sweet Adeline quartets
• Mixed ensembles
• Popular music arranged for all men, all ladies, or mixed voices.
• Any music arranged for any number of voices combined with real or 'beatboxed' vocal instruments. Some vocal performers can effectively imitate some instrument sounds, such as trumpet and certain kinds of drums with just their voice. Other performers utilize digital audio manipulation tools to produce 'voiced' wind instruments, whistles, synthesizers, and full drum sets.

Multitrack music videos can be done entirely by one person, or as many as 3000 voices with videos collaborated across the world. The possibilities are endless!

Multitrack music videos are often combined with some kind of special effect (i.e. green screen effect) or music video type of footage. 

Multitrack music videos require audio recording hardware, audio editing software, video recording hardware (i.e. digital camera or webcam), and most importantly, non-linear video editing software. I will list some possibilities later on. 

Successful Multitrack music videos can amass hundreds of thousands to millions of hits on Youtube. Why?

• Vocal harmony just sounds good. The voice has been the primary means of making music for thousands of years. People identify with it. 
• The human voice is sensational as a musical instrument and deliverer of lyrics.
• Because videos are of people singing, and singing is communicating with the face, eyes, mouth and body, people identify with the kind of message that vocal collaborators bring to music. 
• Probably the most important reason, is that most successful video multitracks are covers of songs that have already been made popular, and the video multitrack is appealing to an already large fan-base. 

Here, I am going to compile a short list of successful musical multitrack videos. These are done by some quite talented folks out there. And there are many more multitracks.

• Eric Whitacre, a brilliant modern choral composer, has compiled a series of Virtual Choirs. His virtual choirs are made up of a conducting track that he uploads to Youtube, along with synchronization instructions. Whoever wants to can view the video, and tape themself singing to his conducting track while listening for correct intonation and starting / stopping points through headphones. Those 'choir members' upload their singing videos to Youtube using the labeling format specified, where they are collected by Whitacre's team. The often low-quality audio is cleaned up and their videos are mixed on a grand 3-dimensional virtual stage. 

• Next, we move to some other choral renditions of Whitacre's works (as well as plenty of other music) by one young man that splits his voice into as many as 32 tracks, and unbelievably, sings every part from Bass to Soprano with perfect intonation and seemingly no amount of vocal strain. His name is Dan Wright, and these are only 3 of his many successful multitracks.

• Next, we move to the realm of American Barbershop style music, and this is a huge field in the multitracking world. It consists of many many self-quartets and also some great virtual collaborations from barbershoppers across the world. One of the best artists in my opinion of this unique niche is, ironically Frenchman +Julien Neel 

• Christmas music is a great venue for multitrack collaboration, as evidenced by these tremendous videos.

• Finally, American mainstream pop, Broadway, and Disney music covers, as well as some quite elaborate arrangements specifically for vocal multitracks. Disney songs have made a huge comeback as popular vocal multitracks. This man has the voice of a female and the voice of a male inside of his vocal instrument, and it is quite impressive. His name is Nick Pitera, and he has amassed millions of views.

• Vance Perry has some very impressive popular covers.

• Here's just a smattering of some more great videos. 

I'll be writing a blog on how to make basic multitracks. Hope you enjoy these.

Photo Journey: Kiwi's Mansion!

When we bought Kiwi in May, we bought a tiny pink cage that we could afford.

Once he got territorial and nippy while in the cage, I thought of an idea. I did odd jobs for a guy that had bamboo growing along the side of his driveway, so I cut some down, cleaned it out, and went to work.

I started with a drawer that was pulled from an ailing kitchen island, and I used it as a base. Then I built a wall-free structure about 3 feet tall with angled bamboo shoots for perches. I covered these with perch covers. I attached the bamboo together by drilling holes, using some screws, but mostly cable ties. I attached his swing to the top, and made a ladder out of wooden pipes from a cheap panflute.

I attached his bell and millet holder to the middle shaft. His food and water are at the bottom, secured to the sides of the drawer.

Its sitting on a coffee table. Its shoulder height on my wife, who is about 5'4.

This became Kiwi's new home. His wings were clipped, so I had no concerns about him staying there. I even made a ladder out of pipe cleaners and popsicle sticks for him to climb up if he jumped out. He used this a lot. The biting got a lot better with him having so much space to run about, and he had plenty of fun hanging upside down and jumping from perch to perch. His attitude became much better.

I'm not a big fan of mirrors when the parakeet is in the training / bonding stage of his life. He has one, but I keep it away a lot so he doesn't bond with it.

This was the first stage - construction. My wife did the second, the decoration. She made back and side walls for the entire cage from pipe cleaners (yes he can crawl through them). Next, she added fake moss on top of the bedding in the bottom. She added two-three ladders made from pipe cleaners, and fake floral decorations throughout. We added more toys, and even got a mirrored waterfall from Kmart! This is his favorite, as he likes the sound, can see his friend in the mirror, get wet when he wants to, and it doubles as a cool shower.



The Kiwi Mansion is a safe, fun place for him to run and play, and he's already lit up with the added stimulation of color and greenery. Its the perfect playhouse home, NOT a cage. His wings are grown in and he's getting to the point where he'll fly to me from a few inches away.

Kiwi can say "Kiwi Kiwi Kiwi KiwiKiwiKiwiKiwiKiwiKiwi!!!" and "pretty bird" and "Commeerreee!". We're teaching him how to say "Whoa Baby!" (he almost said it today). His cere just finished turning blue within the past month or so.

By the way, he likes to land on my wife's roses!

"Special Music" and the "performance" of playing / singing in church

While I was researching John W. Peterson to do a paper on him, I came across two quoted paragraphs in Don Hustad's book Jubilate. 

John W. Peterson is a man that wrote many gospel songs and hymns that appear in YOUR  hymnbook. 

This is a very insightful look into  the whole musician / performance-idea in church thing. I don't know how else to describe it, but I think musicians understand what I mean. Here's what he said:

"Throughout the evangelical world, there is a kind of star system, just as there is in every other sphere of life. Human nature is human nature, and despite the grace of God and every good intention, people will put you on a pedestal if you achieve some measure of success. This is especially true where the performing arts and the mass media are involved. The element of entertainment - of show biz - is always present. In a religious telecast or concert. In a Billy Graham crusade. Even in a small-town evangelistic meeting. Why pretend otherwise?

The crucial thing is to keep this element in perspective. If the Lord is using and blessing someone's fame, fine. If it becomes an end in itself or a means to glorify the person, it's another matter. Since the limelight is the inevitable result of a ministry like mine, I have to try to view it through the eyes and understanding of people far wiser than I. How do some of the old catechisms put it?-- The chief end of man [sic] is to glorify God and enjoy him forever."

This is an area that's relative to me, because in our fundamental circles there's such an emphasis on "special music" (we HAVE to have it), and there's almost an expectation that if you are a member of a church and "do" music in any way, then you're expected to perform special music in church. Granted, I LOVE singing in church and playing piano, playing trumpet, whatever it is that I may think of doing. But nothing is more awkward for me than afterwards (even if the actual performance wasn't that technically great), coming down and people come up to me and say "Oh that was so good" "You're so talented" (or worse, people come up to you in tears) and on the list goes. Don't misinterpret this - I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but what in the world do you say? 

Its been common practice in my circles as I was growing up to just say "well Praise the Lord!" The effort is to get the limelight off of you, the musician/performer and onto Christ. But this makes me feel more proud and stuck-up, cause I'm not the guy that walks into church and someone walks up to you and says "hey brother! and I respond "well Amen! Praise the Lord! I'm doing grrrrreat!" There are some people that are like that and are very genuine, but not everybody wears their spiritual life on their shirt sleeve. With some people, including me, its more internalized, and I talk to people and tell them what I'm doing, how I'm overloaded that week, whatever it is. I don't try to fake a high-energy uppity bouncy persona when I'm in church. Some people naturally have it and its NOT fake for them. If I were like that, it would be fake for me. I'm in church to worship God, just like they are. I come to church with needs and burdens too, but I also am in a position of leadership with music and am one provider of special music in my church. 

So when people come to me and express appreciation for the song or the performance of it, I have to humbly remember what JWP said and that my chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him (which I could do if I were in my car by myself singing at the top of my lungs, I don't have to sing in church to glorify God). So what do I do? I have two options - 1. Give a response that would make me feel fake, or 2. Not respond to the personal affirmation at all, which would be rude. Musicians tend to be very analytical and over critical of themselves, whether or not the audience even knows that a wrong note was pressed, or we messed up here, or forgot the words here, or went flat here, etc. At least with me, if I sing or play, all of this is going through my head as I sit down, and somebody comes up later and congratulates on my performance and how much it meant to them, and I'm like "um..... um.... *insert awkward silence*.... thanks?!" 

I've found it to be better to be prepared with a response that is both humble for me, respectful of them, and still gives glory to God, and that is "I'm so glad that ____ song was a blessing to you." That way, I'm not affirming my own personal level of ability, and therefore it gets the attention off of me. I LOVE to be a blessing to people and encourage them, thats what makes me tick. And if God uses my abilities to accomplish that, that makes me happy. 

And I say all that, but question WHY is there special music in the church anyway? What make it "special"? Is there a Biblical precedent for it? No. Historically, the church sang CONGREGATIONALLY to worship God in their assembly. Our gospel-song Christian Baptist culture has created the idea that we need a person to "bless our hearts before the preaching, Amen!" Before 1874, when historic hymnody was the urban (city folks) standard and the folk-hymn shape-note styles were the standards of the rural (country) folks, they still sang together as a congregation. Now, I'm working within a cultural framework that's been created, and in my time, in my church, right now, this is what's wanted. If I said, NO, I'm not going to do special music (And I really do want to because I enjoy it so much - is that bad?) then people would look at me as a snob that has training but "isn't using it for the Lord."

So within the cultural framework that I have, in my church, my desire two-fold: 1) Worship God corporately, and 2) Encourage the hearts of the congregation. I don't cause them to worship. They should be worshiping already, that should be why they came to church. But there's nothing wrong with hearing even a gospel-song (it doesn't always have to be this deep theological hymn) that "stirs the heart" or even makes a person excited. I don't believe that it interrupts the flow of worship and praise towards God. 

There you have it. Its' something that I think most church musicians in not just our fundamental circles deal with, because we work hard and practice and write and prepare rehearsals, and pray about it, and when we "perform" (even though its not about being a performance, its about directing praise to God), we have to deal with the after-shocks of pride that WILL come, and we have to be ready to direct praise off of us, onto God.

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Thank you, Fred Coleman, for your inspiring and thought-provoking classes in American Hymnody and Church Music Administration this semester!

Teaching Kids how to sing hymns!

While I was researching for a project in the library (i'm behind right now), I came across these articles in an old Lutheran volume called "Hymns - How to Sing Them" published by Augsburg Publishing House in 1966. In it, I found some awesome articles about teaching kids to sing hymns, and I can relate to this because I had some awesome leaders in my children's choir when I was growing up, and had some good ones in school too. 

One thing I think a lot of teachers face today is that kids just WONT SING! And in churches too, some kids know more Justin Bieber songs than actual hymns. I won't rant here, but these little articles are great for elementary and Sunday School music teachers. Enjoy. 

http://michaelsmusic.synthasite.com/resources/teachingkidshymns.pdf