News and Notices

I think we can all agree that these are strange times. Unless we’re epidemiologists, a viral pandemic probably isn’t on our daily list of Things To Worry About.

The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, however, has wreaked havoc on life as we know it. Across the country and around the world, we’re seeing shutdowns of schools, businesses, national parks, and other ‘nonessential’ services. In a move that hits especially close to home, we’ve seen choruses cancel concerts, fundraisers, and remainders of entire seasons.

A quick scroll through my Facebook feed shows what happens when the world enters a state of social distancing and self-quarantine: people get creative. Pop-up virtual choirs, Facebook Live dance parties, sing-alongs, and memes galore. (Where would we be without memes?)

All these expressions of creativity underscore a critically important idea for me: while we may not be able to create together right now, staying connected during this pandemic is critically important. For the sake of balance, we should all be comfortable with unplugging and taking a moment to breathe, but here are a few reasons why it’s so important to stay connected.

For many of us, our ensemble rehearsals and performances are cancelled for the foreseeable future. The community found within the choral rehearsal or in the concert between singers and audience is now even more precious since we find ourselves without the ability to make music – together. Resulting feelings of sadness, frustration, pessimism, loneliness and even a bit of anger are real emotions for many. These emotions, though real, are obviously negative. There are virtual ways of addressing some of these concerns and I am sure that we will become very creative in seeking more ways and methodologies as we move into unchartered waters. However, we must try to replace those feelings with ones of intentional positivity.

Looking for ways to seek beauty and reminding ourselves that we are all in this together, with more in common than we have differences is very important. This need was vividly demonstrated by the Facebook posts from the streets of Italy as people stood with their windows open and sang from their hearts in unison. It was further underscored this past Sunday afternoon as Joyce DiDonato and Piotr Beczala sang excerpts from “Werther” from her apartment living room as appreciative listeners from around the world were joined in community (LIVE) through their music.

Community is at the heart of what we do as musicians, but most especially, as singers. Each of us possesses that God-given instrument, the voice. Recent studies from Sweden show that when choirs sing, after a period of time, heart beats begin to sync with one another (Vickhoff et al., 2013). Through song, our hearts seem to become ‘one.’ Though ‘different,’ we are reminded of the commonalities that make us also ‘same’ – each of us in need of solace which music can provide. We can either respond to our situation with hurt, sadness, and frustration or we can become more intentional in our approach toward sharing our music and our hearts with others, reaching out by email, phone, Facetime, through all the mediums that are available to us – to lift the spirit of those around us — perhaps, to share a recording, or a word or just a thought.

We need each other and a sense of community. Music and song – from the past, from the present, and that which will come in the future will continue to be one of the ties that binds us together and uplifts our spirits even during this challenging time.

Community choruses are in for a rather long dry spell.

Over the weekend, the CDC announced their newest recommendation to U.S. event organizers: cancel all mass gatherings with more than 50 people for the next eight weeks. And many other countries, if not already at that point, are undoubtedly headed in that direction.

The whole world could soon be on a long choral hiatus. For choruses canceling their spring season, this means they could potentially be on break until the fall — that’s 5-6 months from now!

Luckily, we live in the age of technology. So, the good news is that it’s relatively easy for us to stay connected virtually.

How can choruses move from a physical rehearsal model to an online one? We’ll discuss how to do just that in this article.

TO MY COLLEAGUES, AND CALLING ALL GENIUS TECH FRIENDS AND AUDIO MASTERS:

I issue a challenge for collaboration on a realtime solution to the problem of remote-participant ensemble rehearsals in a time of temporary enforced social isolation. Most ensembles I know have postponed or canceled concerts and stopped rehearsals. Schools are making this mandatory. But folks still need to make music together, or at least “together” in a way that feels enough like live ensemble. We might be able to create a decent ersatz for this activity. In this time of increasingly-acute social media separation, we are already used to communicating remotely with our friends and groups from our isolated devices.

THE CHALLENGE:
Come up with a hybrid of real-time telecommunications and live audio mixing that puts each participant adequately in a “virtual real-time ensemble” without being colocated physically.

DETAILS IN THE ATTACHED DOCUMENT (TLDR if put in FB post)

IDEAL FEATURE SET
1. All participants can be heard in the mix.
2. All can hear the mix (as in a good live show monitor speaker)
3. Timing is nearly-instantaneous (minimal or no lag)
4. Individual volume can be throttled/managed into the mix that all hear (central control)
5. Conductor/leader can be both seen and heard.
6. EXCEPTION: Not all player/singer participants need to be seen, or see each other. This reduces the problem by, say, an order of magnitude (no split screens or toggled views).
7. Solution is not too expensive either to ensemble/institution or individual participants.

All these elements are available in at least partial form in existing technology for live audio recording and mixing, and video conferencing.

OBSTACLES/ISSUES
1. Big-brand teleconferencing and video-phone platforms have bad lag and generally awful sound quality. Video-phone requires all to be on one camera at one end.
a. Are there better platforms less known? Not expensive.
2. All individuals are likely to have widely different microphones and acoustic environments.
a. Partial solution: set minimum standards for both, not ideal or expensive.
3. Individuals have their own volume controls.
a. Partial solution: Set standards, desired levels, do sound checks on all individuals before starting; like meta-tuning.
4. Not all instruments sound their best close-miked.
a. Partial solution: Provide guidelines per instrument type; adjust in the mix.
5. Ditto voices. Plus, choral singers who lack soloist vocal quality or temperament are often more likely to sing out when with others, losing themselves (and their inhibitions) in the crowd.
a. This freeing effect will be hard to replicate remotely in isolation, even when folks can hear their section in the mix.
b. In our favor is that more and more folks, especially youngsters, are comfortable on solo mike making a mix or a cover or a youtube spot. Pop to the rescue.
6. You need a genius at the mixing board, but you need that in a live miked performance too.
7. Individuals need to wear headsets to hear the group mix.
a. Studio instrumentalists and singers are used to this, but normal choristers and orchestra/band players probably less so. It changes how your voice or instrument sounds to you.

These are only my initial observations. I’m sure plenty of other folks are chewing on some sort of approach to this problem right now. But I bet it can be done, to a satisfactory (B+) level, mabye not well enough to replace making music all together in the same room in the long run (what could ever do that?), but well enough to tide us over the current pandemic isolation at least. And the next . . .

I welcome inputs; perhaps somebody wants to take up the task of creating a collaboration site and a test bed. And a consortium of ensembles and schools to support, contribute, even underwrite this effort.

Warm regards to all,

David Avshalomov
Composer, Singer, Guest Conductor
Santa Monica, CA

www.davidavshalomov.com 310-480-9525