HOW CHOIRS ARE SINGING TOGETHER DURING QUARANTINE

For choir classes, remote learning is difficult right now. In order to promote unity and to have choir students still sing, choir teacher, Mrs. Pomeroy, has tried something new: a virtual choir! Eric Whitacre first popularized the idea of a virtual choir, accepting video submissions to create music with people from all over the world. According to Eric Whitacre’s website, the virtual choir is meant to “[bring] together singers from around the world and their love of music in a new way through the use of technology.” This idea, soon after its introduction to the world, became very popular, and he was invited to give a Ted Talk about the experience. The virtual choir has become more relevant today as students are unable to perform in a choir with anyone but their families. This opportunity allows choir members to create music while safe in their own homes.

While Eric Whitacre’s choir uses videos, the HHS virtual choir will be used with audio. Not long ago, Mrs. Pomeroy told her choir classes to submit an audio recording of a song they had been working on in class. Then, she began working on the complete video, adding together all of the audios and blending them to make a choir. The virtual choir is being done with Treble Choir (freshman and sophomore female voices), Concert Choir (junior and senior female voices and all male voices), and Chorale (all female voices, auditioned group).

When interviewed about the choir, Mrs. Pomeroy had this to say:

“This was my first time attempting to put together a ‘virtual choir’. Fortunately, our concert was supposed to be the week after we closed, so all of the learning of the music had already taken place. Students recorded just their voices while listening to learning tracks in their headphones, then uploaded them to Google classroom. I combined the thirty-two voices using Garageband to mix and balance the voices and lined them up with the piano accompaniment. Once all of that was done, I used iMovie to upload pictures and lyrics slides to the presentation. It sounds simple enough, but took me over 40 hours to complete. I will be doing a few more before the end of the year, but I miss making music in person!”

Check out the finished projects down below!