Mix My Part

Comments

1. Joshua Oppenheim says

   May 21, 2012 at 9:24 pm

   Hi Andrew –

    

   Yes, not as slick as the app you’ve created – your app has much quicker access to those parameters.  

    

   Best to you and the success of your app/site.

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2. Andrew St. Hilaire says

   May 21, 2012 at 4:09 am

   Hi Joshua,

    

   I think I finally understand what you were saying about the panning by twisting a knob or having a media player that allows that sort of control.  It still seems like more work to me on the end of it but if that system works for you, no need to change I guess.

    

   Good discussing this with you.

    

    

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3. Joshua Oppenheim says

   May 19, 2012 at 6:52 pm

   Hi Andrew –

    

   The panned version of the recording does allow for dynamic control of the balance of the learned part and the harmony.  If I pan the playback to hard left or right, it will present a different amount of the lead track as opposed to a percentage of hard left or right.  It’s just an issue of how the end user plays (balance l/r) of the recording playback.  It’s not as effective as volume control but very similar.

    

    

   Again, I’m not trying to persuade someone against the service you’re providing but just had some thoughts about it.

    

   And in terms of time, I’d be surprised if a person could record via software instrument accurate accompaniments, and all voice parts with divisi in 30 minutes.  I’ve been doing this for 10 years and while there is a wide range involved here – I give myslef about 1-4 hours depending on a the piece.  30 minutes is only enough for a short 4-part unaccompanied piece.

    

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4. Andrew St. Hilaire says

   May 17, 2012 at 9:07 pm

   Hi Josh,

    

   I’m not sure if I’m not understanding you or if you’re not understanding me, but if I understand, I don’t see how a static recording with a single part set louder and panned over the other remaining parts would have a greater benefit than being able to let users do all of that dynamically as they need.  An important benefit of the dynamic capabilty, not to be overlooked, that those static recordings don’t allow is that once the targetted harmony part is learned, you can then mute the part and turn all the other parts up to practice “holding” the learned part against the other harmonies.  Sometimes this transition to “holding” the part needs a little support by turning the targeted part back on for a moment to hear what might be an uncertain passage and once it becomes familar again, it can be turned off once more.  This empowers the users to not only learn the part but to also practice singing along without being forced to hear the part they might be trying to learn.

    

   I believe this way of practicing will make a choir stronger more quickly and this can be done outside of regular group rehearsal time.

    

   I’m pretty sure that 2-4 hours is not a realistic amount of time for how long it would take a conductor to prepare recordings for a song.  They don’t necessarily need to be sung and beautifully performed as this is only a learning tool.  Of course a real singer is better than just the notes, but a teacher could easily prepare the piano accompaniment and all the voice parts played on piano or a different virtual instrument in 30 minutes for most choral selections.  If they choose to sing the parts, I think an hour at the most would be a more reasonable estimate.

    

   My intention is to be as informative as possible and maybe point out a few of the benefits you may not have yet considered.

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5. Joshua Oppenheim says

   May 17, 2012 at 4:18 am

   Hi Ray –

    

   There is nothing wrong with actually teaching singers to read music.  Literacy is not the only concept conductors should be teaching.  There are hopefully a lot more concepts that a choir is learning (technique, tone, balance, phrasing, expression, rhythmic consistency, stories, etc.)  

    

   But even if you isolate “reading” it’s not a zero-sum game – “rote learning vs. music literacy.” Let’s remember, you (and everyone else) had many years of “hearing” and “imitating” the spoken language before you were “taught how” or “expected” to read.  Once you started learning to “read” you were still being “read to” and “experiencing” new words, phrases, and concepts that you couldn’t “read” or “comprehend” without assistance, context of imagery, explanation etc. 

    

   The musical language (although probably less complex) should be taught 

   without abandoning the obvious methods used for teaching other languages.  Again, it’s not a zero-sum game.  We should always be working toward more comprehension, but I’ve never met or heard of a conductor only programming repertoire which is “100% readable” by their choir.  Hopefully, though in many cases – they are being taught literacy concepts within those pieces.  

    

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6. Joshua Oppenheim says

   May 17, 2012 at 4:18 am

   Hi Andrew –

    

   Sorry, I thought I read on your website that you needed to have a track for each voice part to be highlighted.  If that is indeed the case, once the recording process is complete – which is the majority of the work, exporting the track as you need it with the volume adjusted for each track, it wouldn’t be that much more effort to turn the pan nob as well.  In other words, let’s say it takes a conductor 2-4 hours to record a song, then about 10 seconds (per track) to adjust the volumes as you’d need them.  It’s only another 3 seconds to move the pan nob per each track. 

    

    

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7. Andrew St. Hilaire says

   May 16, 2012 at 9:19 am

   Hi, I created this website and software and I really appreciate reading your comments.  Respectfully, I’d like to respond to address your concerns and be sure what I’ve created is clearly understood.

    

   Ray:  I believe full heartedly that sight reading is extremely important!… but I also know there are a lot of groups that would find this service useful.  Some groups already use recordings of parts and I think this would be very useful to them with the extra control it offers.  It may not be for everyone or for every bit of repertoire but I think there is a place for this.

    

   Joshua: The price was determined considering that the media can be accessed for free once it’s been created and posted so if you take a group of 10 members, that’s less than $1 each per month and a lot of groups are larger than that.  The end users don’t get charged to use this service, only the person posting the media needs a paid account.  Yes, the director has to do a bit of work to create the media files but you’d be doing more work to produce those panned recordings when you could do less work and get more control out of what I offer because the user can dynamically control everything like the volume, panning, solo or mute each part, which means you wouldn’t need to pan each part and make all those individually exported audio files.  Also, the 10 media spots for that $100 per year can have up to 12 tracks each and the intention is that the spots will be used seasonally.  When the new material becomes old, it can be deleted to make room for more new material throughout the year as many times as needed.  That means you could easily use the 10 spots to fit 10 songs per month for a total of 120 songs in the year.  That’s a LOT of music for a single year.

    

   Also, very soon I’ll be adding a Store section where ready-made media files will be available for sale and requests can even be made to have recordings made for most available printed music.  The price for each media file will probably be $0.25 per title for an hour of access since it will be a fully licensed, streaming service with royalties I’ll need to pay to publishers.  I can’t set the price to any less while covering all the costs involved in producing and licensing.  Considering this price for the ready-made media, which I feel is very low, I think the cost for the self-made media is also very reasonably priced.

    

   I welcome any feedback or questions and I do hope the price seems a little more reasonable with my explanation.

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8. Ray Herman says

   May 14, 2012 at 9:35 am

   So what’s wrong with actually teaching our singers to read music?!

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9. Joshua Oppenheim says

   May 14, 2012 at 12:34 am

   Interesting post.  I think it’s a fairly neat idea – but the cost seems to be a bit prohibitive.  From what I see you’re only allowed 10 tracks at a time at a cost of $100/year.  You can add more songs for more money.  I think the functionality is neat, but since the user/creator is doing MOST of the work (creating the files, exporting each part “solo”, the service provided seems to be a bit expensive for the final 1%.  I think it’s nice to give the singers control over their learning process, but this can be done by panning the solo (part highlighted track) so that the singer can control the “presence” in the mix if they so desire.  It does look like a lot of effort went into this project – and I do think it’s somewhat novel; the overall cost doesn’t seem to be equivalent to the value to the end user.  No doubt, the pricing structure is more equivalent to the R&D that went into the project in addition to the hosting costs.  

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