OP Choirs Reminders
Good morning Oak Prairie Choir Folks,
Just a few reminders:
Hi-C, I need your MIOSM recordings by today. That’s for Ad Astra, There Will Come Soft Rains, and Will the Circle Be Unbroken. Please remember to be listening to the tracks with your headphones.
8th graders, I need your baby/current pics. Otherwise I’m using your school photo!
All choirs: the virtual choir videos are due by the end of the day TOMORROW. I’ve received a handful already, so thank you to those of you that worked ahead! Remember that even if you mess up a little, it’s okay—it can be edited. When you mess up, just keep singing! If you need to do the videos first and the sheet music later, I can give you time as long as you let me know. The last thing we want is for the students to feel discouraged, so please reach out if there are any questions or concerns about the Virtual Choir Project.
Here are the guidelines again if you need a reminder:
1. VISUAL: when you record the final video, you should be square and centered in your video. You should also be wearing either the OP Music Polo OR the OP Choir Bulldogs T-Shirt (unfortunately, some people won’t have this and that’s okay!). Make sure you have a good background (school appropriate) and no one walking behind you. Please make sure that there is decent lighting. 2. AUDIO: there should be no other sounds in the video other than your voice. You MUST be listening to the MuseScore tracks in a pair of headphones from a separate device (except for Uptown Girl and We Are the Champions - you can use the individual voice part tracks to follow). This is SUPER important in order to line up your voice rhythmically with everyone else and the accompaniment tracks. If you are using a computer, it is possible to have a window with the tracks playing while you are recording using a webcam application. 3. VIDEO SUBMISSION: please submit each individual song into the designated assignments (i.e. Africa should go into Africa on Classwork). This means there is a separate recording for each song, and NONE of them should be combined. 4. SHEET MUSIC: all songs should have solfege labeled. Circle of Life is the only one that should need IPA (not every instance - a few measures is fine for each section), and I posted that in the Stream. Please DO NOT submit individual pictures into the assignments, as there will be too many attachments. Please DO use Notability OR Google Docs. You can create a new file and take a picture of each page and put them into the Notability file or Google Doc. For Notability, you may need to export to Drive first before you can attach it to the assignment. The music should be attached along with your final video in the designated assignment. Other notes: *This means you DO NOT have to be memorized, but you should be comfortable enough to sing through the song without interruption. *You are allowed to have the music off to the side for you to view while recording. The videos will be done that weekend and released on Monday, May 18th. You will have a full two weeks after that to watch the Virtual Choir Concert and complete the Concert Evaluation, which is similar to the process of the MIOSM Concert Evaluation.
Finally, I shared this with the students on Google Classroom:
“Impromptu made this last night because I was thinking about you all and missing choir 💔 Our last concert of the year would’ve been today. If any of you are feeling down, upset, stressed, frustrated, or alone during this quarantine, “just call my name and I’ll be there.” You can reach out to me if you need to talk. Special shoutout to the 8th graders because this was one of their songs from 6th grade. ❤️
(Disclaimer: this was obviously thrown together because I’m in a hoodie and the videos are placed kinda randomly, and the violin/guitar was also improvised)“
I promise that the Virtual Choir videos will be much nicer!
If you need a little pick-me-up after that one, here’s a video I made a while back of one of the songs we are currently working on:
Hope everyone stays safe and healthy,
Miss T.