Singing together, separately
November 2, 2020 11:36 AM Subscribe
Driveway Choir
NYT: A Choir Finds a Way to Sing. Just Ignore the Steering Wheel.
Driveway Choir's most recent event was October 24, 2020:
What is it? In 2020, musical groups are looking for ways to sing and play together while following social distancing recommendations. We've tried Zoom/Skype and we've tried virtual choirs, and they are better than nothing...but it doesn't compare to making music together live. With the Driveway Choir project, Bryce and Kathryn Denney have found a safe way to sing together live, with no latency, using audio gear.
NYT: A Choir Finds a Way to Sing. Just Ignore the Steering Wheel.
Driveway Choir's most recent event was October 24, 2020:
We teamed up with Chorus Pro Musica and invited members of other choruses to sing the Brahms Requiem together! Around 50 people came to a parking lot in Newton, MA, and sang (from inside our cars) under the direction of Jamie Kirsch, with professional pianist and soloists.
More information about the event can be found on the invitation page. It was filmed by a TV crew for release in a few weeks. We will post links as soon as soon as it airs!
This 10 minute video contains 1-2 minute highlights from each movement.
Our church choir has had a really hard time during COVID. To do anything they've had to record their own parts over a backing track, send them to another guy to mix, and then he has to share the final file with the worship team to play during the service. Very involved and the sound quality is often rough.
I love the idea of this being a way to do *live* music, though. Being inside the car does cut down on wind/traffic, though of course it doesn't work well in a Texas summer.
posted by emjaybee at 3:57 PM on November 2, 2020
I love the idea of this being a way to do *live* music, though. Being inside the car does cut down on wind/traffic, though of course it doesn't work well in a Texas summer.
posted by emjaybee at 3:57 PM on November 2, 2020
My choir did this last night! It is pretty different, especially if you're in a section without too many people, so you can't really hear anyone else singing your part, but it was fun. The results were recorded, but I haven't heard them yet...
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 3:58 PM on November 2, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 3:58 PM on November 2, 2020 [1 favorite]
Just yesterday my partner and I recorded our two songs, with video, for Toronto's Singing Out queer choir. It's not great, singing alone at a camera. However we're paying some professional editors to whip up a nice hour long concert video out of songs and spoken word pieces and reminicences etc, it should be fine.
It's not what I want. But given that we're spread out all over the place and not very many of us are privileged enough to have a car -- a portable isolation booth, jesus christ -- it's what we got.
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:13 PM on November 2, 2020 [2 favorites]
It's not what I want. But given that we're spread out all over the place and not very many of us are privileged enough to have a car -- a portable isolation booth, jesus christ -- it's what we got.
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:13 PM on November 2, 2020 [2 favorites]
especially if you're in a section without too many people, so you can't really hear anyone else singing your part
Shouldn't be beyond the capabilities of a modern mixing facility to provide each singer with foldback that approximates what they'd hear if actually standing in a choir. Plenty of room for refinement here!
posted by flabdablet at 10:58 PM on November 2, 2020
Shouldn't be beyond the capabilities of a modern mixing facility to provide each singer with foldback that approximates what they'd hear if actually standing in a choir. Plenty of room for refinement here!
posted by flabdablet at 10:58 PM on November 2, 2020
Shouldn't be beyond the capabilities of a modern mixing facility to provide each singer with foldback that approximates what they'd hear if actually standing in a choir.
Note that this is essentially what the Driveway Choir in the FPP is doing by using the wireless microphones and FM radio transmitter.
It would be totally possible to do something more section-focused for foldback monitoring, it would just take a lot of wires and speakers and is not the kind of thing necessarily easily done by folks putting something together with scrounged & donated equipment and volunteer personnel.
Thanks for posting this, Lexica - listening to this just now on Election Day morning was like a big slow deep breath that I really needed.
posted by soundguy99 at 7:49 AM on November 3, 2020 [1 favorite]
Note that this is essentially what the Driveway Choir in the FPP is doing by using the wireless microphones and FM radio transmitter.
It would be totally possible to do something more section-focused for foldback monitoring, it would just take a lot of wires and speakers and is not the kind of thing necessarily easily done by folks putting something together with scrounged & donated equipment and volunteer personnel.
Thanks for posting this, Lexica - listening to this just now on Election Day morning was like a big slow deep breath that I really needed.
posted by soundguy99 at 7:49 AM on November 3, 2020 [1 favorite]
it would just take a lot of wires and speakers
or more low-power FM transmitters. If the cars were parked in sections, it might be completely feasible to service each section with one of these cheap Bluetooth-to-FM dongles mounted on a stand in the middle of the section.
posted by flabdablet at 9:31 AM on November 3, 2020
or more low-power FM transmitters. If the cars were parked in sections, it might be completely feasible to service each section with one of these cheap Bluetooth-to-FM dongles mounted on a stand in the middle of the section.
posted by flabdablet at 9:31 AM on November 3, 2020
Minimum Bluetooth audio latency is about 35ms IIRC, so even working perfectly it'd be a bit marginal for staying in sync. They're often worse than that though. Once you get above 40 or 50, choral singing breaks down.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 9:35 AM on November 3, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 9:35 AM on November 3, 2020 [1 favorite]
Fair point. Cables and old-school FM dongles then.
posted by flabdablet at 9:43 AM on November 3, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by flabdablet at 9:43 AM on November 3, 2020 [1 favorite]
Mmmmmm.
Kinda depends on what you're going for with your foldback monitoring situation, though.
If the idea is that you want the singers to hear the whole choir but also be able to get an additional feed that emphasizes/is only their section, then you've basically gotta have two FM receivers per car - one for the main choir broadcast, and one for the section broadcast fed off auxiliary routing and output of the mixing board. FM availability can be, uh, highly variable here in the US, so that would make me a little nervous WRT interference & poor reception, and a bit more inclined to try to do one of those monitor feeds with hardwired speakers.
There's also the practical consideration that a mixer that could do multiple auxiliary outputs won't have multiple 1/8" output jacks (honestly, most mixers don't have any), so you're looking at a bit of a rat's nest of cables and adapters to adapters, which just kinda gives me the heebie jeebies on principle.
Minimum Bluetooth audio latency is about 35ms IIRC,
Yup, and considering the rule of thumb is that sound in air travels about 1 foot per millisecond, at those kind of times you might as well just have everyone in a big field 35 feet apart and good luck.
posted by soundguy99 at 3:17 PM on November 3, 2020 [1 favorite]
Kinda depends on what you're going for with your foldback monitoring situation, though.
If the idea is that you want the singers to hear the whole choir but also be able to get an additional feed that emphasizes/is only their section, then you've basically gotta have two FM receivers per car - one for the main choir broadcast, and one for the section broadcast fed off auxiliary routing and output of the mixing board. FM availability can be, uh, highly variable here in the US, so that would make me a little nervous WRT interference & poor reception, and a bit more inclined to try to do one of those monitor feeds with hardwired speakers.
There's also the practical consideration that a mixer that could do multiple auxiliary outputs won't have multiple 1/8" output jacks (honestly, most mixers don't have any), so you're looking at a bit of a rat's nest of cables and adapters to adapters, which just kinda gives me the heebie jeebies on principle.
Minimum Bluetooth audio latency is about 35ms IIRC,
Yup, and considering the rule of thumb is that sound in air travels about 1 foot per millisecond, at those kind of times you might as well just have everyone in a big field 35 feet apart and good luck.
posted by soundguy99 at 3:17 PM on November 3, 2020 [1 favorite]
If the idea is that you want the singers to hear the whole choir but also be able to get an additional feed that emphasizes/is only their section
"Emphasizes" is what I had in mind, and I don't see why this would take an "additional" feed.
For example, if I'm singing with the basses in a normal choir, what I'm going to hear is going to be dominated by my fellow basses. I will certainly hear the rest of the choir, but very much in the background of my own section.
If I were singing bass in my car, and expecting to hear something similar to what I was accustomed to while singing in person, what I'd ideally want for foldback would be a single mix simulating a stereo mic pair planted right in my own spot in the bass section. Obviously that's not practical in a car park situation, but I would have thought that a foldback mix heavily favouring the bass section as a whole would still give me more of what I was accustomed to hearing than one that balanced the entire choir.
Is the US FM spectrum really so crowded that, say, four to six empty channels couldn't usually be found in any typical car park?
posted by flabdablet at 10:02 PM on November 3, 2020
"Emphasizes" is what I had in mind, and I don't see why this would take an "additional" feed.
For example, if I'm singing with the basses in a normal choir, what I'm going to hear is going to be dominated by my fellow basses. I will certainly hear the rest of the choir, but very much in the background of my own section.
If I were singing bass in my car, and expecting to hear something similar to what I was accustomed to while singing in person, what I'd ideally want for foldback would be a single mix simulating a stereo mic pair planted right in my own spot in the bass section. Obviously that's not practical in a car park situation, but I would have thought that a foldback mix heavily favouring the bass section as a whole would still give me more of what I was accustomed to hearing than one that balanced the entire choir.
Is the US FM spectrum really so crowded that, say, four to six empty channels couldn't usually be found in any typical car park?
posted by flabdablet at 10:02 PM on November 3, 2020
foldback mix heavily favouring the bass section as a whole would still give me more of what I was accustomed to hearing than one that balanced the entire choir.
Sure, sure, fair point. It's if they also want an additional "everything" mix that things get more complicated, but to do that would be a matter of taste & input from the choir. Like, if I was doing a series of these the first one I would do an "everything" mix for everyone, because simplicity. Then if folks in the choir started wishing to hear "more me" I would go with your idea of 4-6 different mixes to separate the sections - although IME doing this kind of thing is where you would see the breaking point of volunteer techs and donated gear. If then folks were like, "more me" but also "more whole choir" we're into the weeds.
Is the US FM spectrum really so crowded that, say, four to six empty channels couldn't usually be found in any typical car park?
Highly variable by location, plus commercial FM stations tend to jam their amplitude to the max for overpowering signals as far as they can. Like, I've never gotten any of those ipod-to-FM things to work reliably in my cars (in the urban area of Cleveland/Cuyahoga County, Ohio), and when we did tech work for a few pop-up drive in movie events this late summer the (very techy) college kids who provided the low power transmitter said they had to run several frequency analyses to come up with 3 or 4 possible useable frequencies down in the lower bands, which in Cleveland are mostly occupied by lower-power non-commercial stations. So, yeah, I personally wouldn't feel great about recommending an all-FM solution without at least a trial run.
posted by soundguy99 at 4:54 AM on November 4, 2020 [1 favorite]
Sure, sure, fair point. It's if they also want an additional "everything" mix that things get more complicated, but to do that would be a matter of taste & input from the choir. Like, if I was doing a series of these the first one I would do an "everything" mix for everyone, because simplicity. Then if folks in the choir started wishing to hear "more me" I would go with your idea of 4-6 different mixes to separate the sections - although IME doing this kind of thing is where you would see the breaking point of volunteer techs and donated gear. If then folks were like, "more me" but also "more whole choir" we're into the weeds.
Is the US FM spectrum really so crowded that, say, four to six empty channels couldn't usually be found in any typical car park?
Highly variable by location, plus commercial FM stations tend to jam their amplitude to the max for overpowering signals as far as they can. Like, I've never gotten any of those ipod-to-FM things to work reliably in my cars (in the urban area of Cleveland/Cuyahoga County, Ohio), and when we did tech work for a few pop-up drive in movie events this late summer the (very techy) college kids who provided the low power transmitter said they had to run several frequency analyses to come up with 3 or 4 possible useable frequencies down in the lower bands, which in Cleveland are mostly occupied by lower-power non-commercial stations. So, yeah, I personally wouldn't feel great about recommending an all-FM solution without at least a trial run.
posted by soundguy99 at 4:54 AM on November 4, 2020 [1 favorite]
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posted by dbx at 12:31 PM on November 2, 2020