My wife and I have been regularly attending the same church for over 50 years.
During the Coronavirus lockdown, we have had to resort to 'virtual' meetings, using Zoom, which none of us had heard of before, YouTube, FaceTime and WhatsApp. It has been a steep learning curve for us non-techy older folk.
On July 5th 2020, our church ran an 'on-line guest service' and beforehand, members were invited to submit tracks for an on-line choir, to be played in that service. I thought I'd have a go, even though my voice is cracking up, but at least I could add to the overal volume of sound.
57 of us sent in our tracks, and you can hear the result, by selecting the YouTube clip, below.
The man in the bottom left hand corner, is a professional music teacher at a local college, but only one of the rest of us is a trained singer.
Later, that man playing the piano, collected the tracks and combined them. This must be a major exercise, just ask Gareth Malone.
I sang the tenor part. Recording this was a unique event for me.
With hearing aids, I can't wear ear buds, and didn't want to record myself wearing headphones.
So I pinned my music to the French Door window in our lounge, clipped my mobile (my chosen recording device) to a lamp, played the backing track from my iPad, which was mirrored to my Television, which in turn was muted, as I was listening to the sound through my hearing aids, because I have a TV loop installed, in my lounge.
Setting all this up was sort of complicated, but fun.
All my wife could hear was my singing, and although I think it was harmonious, my wife never regards my singing tenor as melodic! She didn't think I should even submit it.
I did one take, which wasn't bad, but at my age my voice and breath control is nothing like it was in my prime, whenever, that was, and I felt I could do better, so I immediately had another shot.
To send this one in was much more tricky.
We were invited to use WeTransfer, something else I had never heard of before. I tried 3 times, with each one taking nearly an hour, but apparently, on every attempt, the email arrived without the attachment.
Frustrated, and on the point of giving up, I resorted to something else, that I knew how to do.
I simply sent it via WhatsApp. It went within a few minutes, and because I know such transmissions can be truncated, was relieved that it arrived safely the first time.
I'm glad I persisted, and can now claim that, like so many others in this unusual period for all of us, I have sung in a virtual choir.
Now you can judge our success, and try to pick me out in this YouTube video.
This is our rendition of the song, 'Christ our hope in life and death', which has been written, over the last two years, by five critically acclaimed songwriters, Keith Getty, Matt Papa, Jordan Kauflin, Matt Boswell, and Matt Merker. This is the first song that these writers have written together as a team.
We chose it because the words are so timely for the situation we are facing in these days.
The lyrics can be found underneath the video on the YouTube website. After you click on the LINK below, click on the words YouTube that will appear bottom right. This will launch you onto the YouTube website. Comments under the video are disabled, but if you click on the words SHOW MORE you will see the words displayed underneath. Or click the written LINK underneath this video to be taken to the YouTube site directly.
https://youtu.be/mIsdwrs5T1Y
Peter