Virtual Concert Sound

From: Allan Kugel <kugel@connect.rutgers.edu>

Sent: Monday, August 3, 2020 8:17 PM

To: 'FP Board' <fullboard@folkproject.org>

Subject: fast learning: virtual concert sound

I thought we should try to learn quickly about what generally works in the current environment. I wrote up a short text about learning quickly from StayAway sound quality (attached).

Cheers,

Allan

From: Mark Schaffer <markschaffer100@gmail.com>

Sent: Monday, August 3, 2020 9:08 PM

To: Allan Kugel <kugel@connect.rutgers.edu>

Cc: fullboard@folkproject.org

Subject: Re: fast learning: virtual concert sound

Alan,

I’ll forward this to the committee members that are working on performance tech and on artist relations.

Thanks.

Mark

From: Allan Kugel <kugel@connect.rutgers.edu>

Sent: Tuesday, August 4, 2020 1:04 PM

To: Mark Schaffer <markschaffer100@gmail.com>

Cc: fullboard@folkproject.org

Subject: Re: fast learning: virtual concert sound

Great, Mark, I appreciate your endorsement.

I had thought this proposal could use some discussion about whether it was worthwhile enough, or whether there were different or additional questions we could ask. I also thought we should add volunteer resources to help with this if we/you were doing it. If you think you don't need those, that's fine.

If this works out, it'll be a resource for our FP performers and outside our organization too.

I look forward to hearing what you find out!

-Allan

From: Allan Kugel <kugel@connect.rutgers.edu>

Sent: Tuesday, August 4, 2020 7:49 PM

To: fullboard@folkproject.org

Subject: Re: fast learning: virtual concert sound

Well, Mark,

To be clear, I was planning on volunteering to do a large part of the work to collect this. The benefit is mostly going outside of your committee's projects, at least that's how I see it. It doesn't seem like a "special concerts" project to me.

If you guys want to take it on internally, that'll be OK with me. If you want to make sure that if it's done, it's done well, that's OK with me too. If you want it not done and don't think you need to bother justifying why, that's quite another matter.

I'd be happy to discuss whether this would really be useful and worthwhile; it might not be. And there's certainly details about how we might go about it that need some care and thought. I don't mind doing it well if it's to be done.

On the other hand, if this proposal gets deep-sixed in the special concerts committee for what seems to be lightweight excuses (or not explained at all) well, you might not like it, but I'll think of you as having become one of those "anti-champions" we used to fight against. If you don't give this idea a fair shake, maybe others should think that too.

Let me summarize, and add a couple more points. I think this proposal would most appropriately be a Folk Project general project, not a committee sub-project. I think this could be of some value to people that the Folk Projects believes it serves. I think it could be done with a fairly light amount of contribution from the heavily-loaded special concerts committee, and done in a way that won't annoy or be unkind to our StayAway (or other) past performers.

So I'm not wedded to this project happening; but I put some hours into thinking about it and writing it up, and I want to make sure it gets reasonable and fair consideration. If it's a good idea, let's find a way of doing it. If it's not, let's not. Just that.

-Allan

From: Mark Schaffer <markschaffer100@gmail.com>

Sent: Tuesday, August 4, 2020 8:21 PM

To: Allan Kugel <kugel@connect.rutgers.edu>

Cc: fullboard@folkproject.org

Subject: Re: fast learning: virtual concert sound

Allan,

I’ll be happy to bring your opinions up with the committee I chair.

Looking forward to your followup.

Mark

From: Allan Kugel <kugel@connect.rutgers.edu>

Sent: Tuesday, August 4, 2020 10:08 PM

To: Mark Schaffer <markschaffer100@gmail.com>

Cc: fullboard@folkproject.org

Subject: Re: fast learning: virtual concert sound

Well, this is a data-and-analysis project, and the benefited people are mostly outside of those your committee serves. So it's not really what your committee does. But this might be a way forward. Perhaps I should virtual-attend the committee meeting where you discuss it?

For the most part, I don't want to pester our past performers, so I was thinking a single email to past-performers explaining what we're doing, and the voluntary nature of participating, and providing a link to an on-line form. I'd create the form and database (or maybe some other form generator would work). You guys would send out the email, a couple of you might advise me of particularly good sound/video performances, and I (perhaps with assistance if I can drum up some other volunteers) would try to summarize the findings, which could be made available on the FP website. I have not yet thought about how to let people know about its availability.

If we were to go with the single-email process, I'd want to have whoever was willing among FP boardies to make sure the email text was good, and the survey questions were smart and covered the right issues. So I think wide review prior to sending among willing FP boardies would be good.

For the analysis stage we do need some subjective reviews about what performances sound is "really good", "good", "not so good". For recorded performances, I (again perhaps with any helpful volunteers I can scare up) can check some aspects for ourselves. (The recordings might miss live-time drop-outs, and sampling might just be listening for 5 minutes or so, but we can only do what we can.) Perhaps some people who've viewed the non-archived performances can volunteer comments on those.

We compare the subjective evaluations to the reported equipment setups to see if there's patterns or particularly good setups, and write up what we find.

So this is the kind of process I'm thinking about. I think we might be able to generate something of some value, with light impact on your committee and polite participation requests to some or most past performers. There might be a better process if somebody has suggestions.

If somebody else wants to ask about other post-performance feedback, that probably should be asked at the same time, but from your earlier comments, what we'd most want to know might be what they don't want to be asked about, so maybe we should just ask about these sound/video questions.

While we're all hoping for some kind of earlier relief from current conditions, it might still take a year or so before we can go back to normal,

so the ideas and information we collect could be useful for many months yet

So that's how I think we might go about this. Maybe a more limited, targeted approach would be better, but I would like to catch if possible "cost-effective" sound/video setups as well.

-Allan

From: Mark Schaffer <markschaffer100@gmail.com>

Sent: Tuesday, August 4, 2020 10:55 PM

To: Allan Kugel <kugel@connect.rutgers.edu>

Cc: fullboard@folkproject.org

Subject: Re: fast learning: virtual concert sound

"I was thinking a single email to past-performers explaining what we're doing, and the voluntary nature of participating, and providing a link to an on-line form. I'd create the form and database (or maybe some other form generator would work). You guys would send out the email, a couple of you might advise me of particularly good sound/video performances, and I (perhaps with assistance if I can drum up some other volunteers) would try to …”

Allan,

The appropriate committee members already received your proposal.We’ll discuss this after we finish with two current major issues.

Dealing with past performers as you suggest is a committee issue, not a board matter.

Mark