by Peter Amidon
Dear Singing Friends,
I have joined the ranks what I am sure must be thousands of church choir directors creating virtual choir movies for weekly virtual church services. It is always surprising and moving to listen to the range of individual voices coming in from our choir singers with their wide range of abilities, and to hear how wonderful they sound when I put them all together.
Here are a few of the virtual choir pieces I have put up since my note last June about our virtual choirs. You can see more of them on my Amidon Choral Youtube channel which you can subscribe to by clicking on “Subscribe” on any of the below videos.
Magnificat – short, simple setting of the Magnificat text for piano/SAB.
Balm in Gilead – my harmonization of the classic African American spiritual.
Abolitionist My Country Tis of Thee – I collaborated with my pastor Lise Sparrow to update A.G. Duncan’s 1843 abolitionist re-write of “My Country ‘Tis of Thee”.
Dreams to Be – sweet song by Donovan, solo by our grandson.
Dear Singing Friends (Take Two),
Since I sent the virtual choir email this morning, a few folks have asked how I produce these. I have left the original email at the bottom of this. I have pasted below a tutorial for using the free iMovie program that comes pre-loaded in every Mac. Note that I have since switched from iMovie to Final Cut Pro (you can download a fully functional Final Cut Pro program for a free 90-day trial) and much of the below is the same. It is set up very much like iMovie, but is faster and more powerful. The main difference is placing the individual films, which is much easier and more flexible with Final Cut Pro. I will send a Final Cut Pro tutorial soon.
Creating a Virtual Choir with iMovie – Peter Amidon
I used: iMovie, Audacity (thought everything I did in Audacity you can do in Garage Band), Quicktime Player, and iTunes.
Here is a Youtube tutorial I used that was most helpful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyYqh3ol-xM&t=1577s
Whenever I had a question or problem not answered by the above Youtube I Googled the question and usually got a useful answer.
Here is my tutorial:
1) Create an mp3 or use an already-existing mp3 to send to folks to sing. I created the original mp3 by filming our accompanist playing the piano accompaniment, then recorded Mary Alice and me singing the soprano, alto, tenor and bass parts while listening to the piano accompaniment. I put all those together in Audacity and exported the final file; that is what folks used to listen to while they recorded their vocal tracks. •• The singers use one device to listen to the recording, and another device to film/record themselves. Then they send me their movie files by text, email, Drop Box, Sendit, Googledrive, thumb drive, whatever works.
2) I use Quicktime to export the “audio only” from each film.
3) using iTunes, change all those files into mp3s.
4) Import those mp3s into Audacity.
5) line them up and mix them.
6) Add reverb to taste.
7) Open iMovie and start by putting a solid background onto the editing area.
8) import the audio-with-reverb of all the singing.
(Steps #1-8 are the same with iMovie and Final Cut Pro.)
9) import one of the singing movies and put it on top of the Black Background. Trim the beginning. Line up with the audio you’d imported. Trim the end.
10) selecting the singing movie (top), select “Video Overlay Settings” (little box on the left of a few icons) and in the drop-down box select “picture in picture”.
11) Resize the picture and put it where you want it. (You have to visually calculate how big to make it and how to design the whole thing at this point.)
12) Selecting the singing movie, select from “Modify” menu “Detach audio”. Then delete the detached audio.
13) Export (share file)
14) Import the file you just exported and put it on the editing area. It is a black background with one small singing movie in it.
15) repeat #9 – #12, placing the new singing movie where you want it.
16) export that file then reimport it.
17) Continue until you have all the singing movies in the movie.
18) You might want to, at the end, detach the audio from the blackscreen with all the movies in it, re-import the original audio, and line it up with the completed black-background-with-all-the-singing-movies.
19) export this file – this is your final virtual choir movie.
It’s like anything; you just dive in and problem solve as needed.
Have fun!
Looking forward with you to when we can sing together again,
Best,
Peter