Virtual Folk Nights

Bollington Folk Club Virtual Folk Nights

(note that virtual folk nights have now been discontinued)

General Zoom Meeting Information

(This information may change as we learn….)

The zoom meetings can now be accessed using the same id and password each week. They are :-
Meeting ID: 883 9264 5405
Passcode: 600600

Everyone who is on the club's email list will receive the link to join the club's virtual folk nights. (Go to Contact Us get on the list) The meeting will be active from 7:30, so you are encouraged to join early, both to meet-and greet, and also to give us time to sort out any bugs in the process!

Firstly, we assume that participants have downloaded Zoom. If you are a first timer see youtube clip below.

Crucially before joining a meeting all users should make sure that their zoom options have the 'show in-meeting option to enable original sound' box ticked in their 'Advanced' audio settings' (Toggle 'on' the 'Use Original Sound' for i-pads,i-phones and tablet zoom settings) This will only need to be done once as your settings will be saved ( See youtube clip below). Once in the meeting there will be a facility to turn on 'original sound' in the top left corner of the screen (For i-pads, i-phones and tablets, it is under the three dots ('more') button in the top or bottom right corner of the screen). This will ensure your audio is not distorted.

The way this will work is as follows - after initial chit-chat I will have drawn up an ”order of batting and will announce the first singer, and give an idea who will be following.  Once the first singer has been introduced I will ask all other participants to mute themselves and for the performer to unmute. (You toggle on and off the mute using the microphone symbol in the bottom left of the screen)

When you have sung all other participants can unmute themselves so that the performer can hear the tumultuous applause. Then after a bit more chit-chat, we repeat with the next victim!

The mute has to be used to prevent distractions during a performance and because the audio/video delay makes it impossible to join in. As a fail safe, the host or co-host can jump in to mute anyone who forgets to mute themselves.

We are currently planning to run for approximately 2 hours.

Below is the best youtube description for setting up zoom for music that I have found :-

At the end she forgets to remind ipad and iphone users to 'enable original sound' once in the meeting which will be found under the 'more' tab.

She has subsequently released a further video to explain Zoom's high fidelity music mode which is only recommended for those with high quality mikes and audio interfaces. She does stress that everyone should tick the 'Echo cancellation' box as that will stop their speakers feeding back through their mikes back to the rest of the zoom participants. The 'Stereo audio' box should be left unticked as we are all happy to be listened to in mono. Note that both ' High fidelity music mode' and 'Stereo audio' will put unnecessary strain on your CPU and bandwidth possibly causing your picture and audio to freeze so that's another reason not to tick those boxes. This is especially important for wifi users and if possible they should restrict any others in their household using the wifi during a zoom meeting. ('Good luck with that' I hear some say!)

Hint :-  With the Windows version, you can open the Zoom app and start a meeting just on your own to see how you look.  Then there is a “record” button at the bottom of the screen.  If you press this and record a few bars or whatever, you can finish this “meeting” and a video recording will be automatically created and downloaded in mp4 format in the folder specified in your zoom settings. Open the mp4 file so you not only see yourself but hear what you sound like and so confirm that you’re happy with your setup.  I found his really useful – just don’t expect to look/sound quite as good as in real life…