Remote Livestream #3:
Animated. Graphic. Novel.
PROGRAM
Want to read more about the technology involved in these performances?
Scroll to the bottom of the page!
Scroll to the bottom of the page!
"Neighbors at 7"
by Jamie Klenetsky Fay
poem by Twitter user @onaggregate
semiconductor: Melissa Wozniak
(world premiere)
In April, WNYC (New York’s public radio station) collected poems written by listeners under the hashtag #PAUSEPoetry. These poems reflect how people were coping with the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City.
As the pandemic wore on, safe in my New Jersey home, I felt a severe disconnect from New York – my friends there, my choir, and the city itself, which was in a state unlike any I’d ever seen. #PAUSEPoetry helped me find that connection, specifically the poem I used for this piece’s text setting.
We all have our pandemic rituals, actions to make us feel connected during isolation, whether it's Zoom calls or games with friends online. Waving to the neighbors at seven, cheering for healthcare workers, went on for weeks in New York. It gave me hope that we would persist, and I wanted to celebrate that through this piece!
~ Jamie Klenetsky Fay
TEXT
What was I thinking?
(Wave to neighbors at seven)
Small things seemed so big!
"Dawn" from Watercolors
by Christopher Fludd
poem by Jade Tiara Blocker
semiconductor: Perry Townsend
Watercolors stems from my senior composition project. This project entitled “A Child’s Gift” reflects my life and all the wonderful blessings that have come my way. Being able to grow in patience is a true gift and I’ve compared that gift to my favorite element of life - water. This piece is separated into three different movements/colors.
[The first,] “Dawn” gives the imagery of the still and unwavering water. It is calm, surrounded by the blue sky. It’s the moment right before the sun begins to rise and you will hear the theme return towards the end with reassurance and passion as we move to our next image.
~ Christopher Fludd
TEXT
Dawn
Still and unwavering
Through the depths and surface alike
I see my world clear and bright
As my sun begins to rise
"Hey / Keep in Touch"
by David See
text by David See
semiconductor: the score!
(world premiere)
Hey/Keep In Touch is a short choral composition that is also a sort of personal R&D project that came out of COVID quarantining. Choral music nearly always has a conductor, naturally, and in our livestreams C4 continues to conduct via Zoom, but I wondered if there was a way to “cut out the middle-person” by projecting the score onto the screen as a movie and having us sing from that. And to keep a beat when needed, how hard would it be to make little animated pointers to move over the picture of the music score? And the answer turned out to be, in Final Cut software, not too incredibly hard. Is there anything the pointers can do that a conductor can’t? Probably not. If there’s a practical advantage, it might be that the singers’ attention isn’t split quite as much between UP at the conductor and DOWN at the book.
(I can imagine going whole hog, developing a sort of niche art form out of this, with more complicated illustrations, composite movement vectors, shifting color gradients, what-have-you, but that might require a few college courses.)
For this piece, I quickly wrote up a lyric which is one half of an imagined phone conversation (listing the nice things the speaker is missing under quarantine). Much of the music in this is in a free-rhythm misty-foggy sort of choral texture, while in other places the ensemble is expected to try to be together on cue, but with the understanding that the coordination won’t be quite perfectly tight due to lag over the internet — but that is part of the fun.
TEXT
Hey! Hi! Hey! Hi! Are! You! Free! To! Talk?
We're hangin' in there
I'm so glad we can Zoom
Tho I miss face-to-face, ya know
I miss going to movies
concerts
ballgames
beaches
I miss seeing my father
nephew
ballgames
grandmom
I mistook last Thursday for a Monday
I miss exercising
I miss hugs
I miss singing together
I miss coffee shops
I miss not having to worry so much, I think
I miss...applause
You have to go?
Yes, we're all well.
Thanks for letting me vent.
Let's meet again when we can.
Keep in touch (but don't get too close).
"The Last Transmissions of Amelia Earhart"
by Robbie LaBanca
text by Amelia Earhart (1897-1937?) and various confirmed and unconfirmed sources
semiconductor: Joshua Chai
There is much mystery and intrigue surrounding the disappearance of Amelia Earhart that occurred during her attempt to
circumnavigate the globe in 1937. What I feel is often lost in the morass of legends and conspiracy theories is that Amelia
Earhart was a human being with a complex and beautiful life that was suddenly erased when she became a missing person.
Written for Inversion Ensemble’s 2019 concert Aether: Air, "The Last Transmissions of Amelia Earhart" combines the text both
confirmed and anecdotal transmissions shortly after her disappearance near Howland Island in the Pacific along with lines of
poetry written by Earhart herself. Earhart submitted many poems to literary magazines under assumed names and this text seemed fitting for the context of this piece as it speaks to “merciless life” and how fleeting both love and existence can be
when it is “burned in the passion paws of life.” This piece is what is referred to as a “graphic score,” combining both written
notation as well as shapes, lines and even photos that have been arranged on the pages of the score. While some directions are
provided, much of the score is left up to interpretation of the director and performers. This piece is intended to create a sense
of disorientation, confusion and isolation. You will hear lines both sung and spoken, vocal sound effects and extended
techniques such as ingressive singing (sung by inhaling over the vocal folds), overtone singing and more. May the spirit of
exploration and boldness of Amelia Earhart live on through this piece alongside her humanity and whimsical personality.
~ Robbie LaBanca
TEXT
Merciless life
Laughs in the burning sun
And only death
Slow-circling down
Shadows with buzzard wings
The arid flesh
Burned before the passion paws of love.
Can you read me? This is Amelia Earhart
Please come in
My navigator is badly hurt and must have help
can't hold on much longer
We have taken in water
We are in need of medical care
Plane down....an uncharted island, small uninhabited
seriously injured
down in ocean
on or near little island at a point near
our plane about out of gas
Water all around
Very dark
We must be on you but cannot see you
Gas is running low
been unable to reach you by radio ... we are flying at 1,000 feet.
We are on the line 157 337
We repeat this message on 6210 kilocycles
by Jamie Klenetsky Fay
poem by Twitter user @onaggregate
semiconductor: Melissa Wozniak
(world premiere)
In April, WNYC (New York’s public radio station) collected poems written by listeners under the hashtag #PAUSEPoetry. These poems reflect how people were coping with the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City.
As the pandemic wore on, safe in my New Jersey home, I felt a severe disconnect from New York – my friends there, my choir, and the city itself, which was in a state unlike any I’d ever seen. #PAUSEPoetry helped me find that connection, specifically the poem I used for this piece’s text setting.
We all have our pandemic rituals, actions to make us feel connected during isolation, whether it's Zoom calls or games with friends online. Waving to the neighbors at seven, cheering for healthcare workers, went on for weeks in New York. It gave me hope that we would persist, and I wanted to celebrate that through this piece!
~ Jamie Klenetsky Fay
TEXT
What was I thinking?
(Wave to neighbors at seven)
Small things seemed so big!
"Dawn" from Watercolors
by Christopher Fludd
poem by Jade Tiara Blocker
semiconductor: Perry Townsend
Watercolors stems from my senior composition project. This project entitled “A Child’s Gift” reflects my life and all the wonderful blessings that have come my way. Being able to grow in patience is a true gift and I’ve compared that gift to my favorite element of life - water. This piece is separated into three different movements/colors.
[The first,] “Dawn” gives the imagery of the still and unwavering water. It is calm, surrounded by the blue sky. It’s the moment right before the sun begins to rise and you will hear the theme return towards the end with reassurance and passion as we move to our next image.
~ Christopher Fludd
TEXT
Dawn
Still and unwavering
Through the depths and surface alike
I see my world clear and bright
As my sun begins to rise
"Hey / Keep in Touch"
by David See
text by David See
semiconductor: the score!
(world premiere)
Hey/Keep In Touch is a short choral composition that is also a sort of personal R&D project that came out of COVID quarantining. Choral music nearly always has a conductor, naturally, and in our livestreams C4 continues to conduct via Zoom, but I wondered if there was a way to “cut out the middle-person” by projecting the score onto the screen as a movie and having us sing from that. And to keep a beat when needed, how hard would it be to make little animated pointers to move over the picture of the music score? And the answer turned out to be, in Final Cut software, not too incredibly hard. Is there anything the pointers can do that a conductor can’t? Probably not. If there’s a practical advantage, it might be that the singers’ attention isn’t split quite as much between UP at the conductor and DOWN at the book.
(I can imagine going whole hog, developing a sort of niche art form out of this, with more complicated illustrations, composite movement vectors, shifting color gradients, what-have-you, but that might require a few college courses.)
For this piece, I quickly wrote up a lyric which is one half of an imagined phone conversation (listing the nice things the speaker is missing under quarantine). Much of the music in this is in a free-rhythm misty-foggy sort of choral texture, while in other places the ensemble is expected to try to be together on cue, but with the understanding that the coordination won’t be quite perfectly tight due to lag over the internet — but that is part of the fun.
TEXT
Hey! Hi! Hey! Hi! Are! You! Free! To! Talk?
We're hangin' in there
I'm so glad we can Zoom
Tho I miss face-to-face, ya know
I miss going to movies
concerts
ballgames
beaches
I miss seeing my father
nephew
ballgames
grandmom
I mistook last Thursday for a Monday
I miss exercising
I miss hugs
I miss singing together
I miss coffee shops
I miss not having to worry so much, I think
I miss...applause
You have to go?
Yes, we're all well.
Thanks for letting me vent.
Let's meet again when we can.
Keep in touch (but don't get too close).
"The Last Transmissions of Amelia Earhart"
by Robbie LaBanca
text by Amelia Earhart (1897-1937?) and various confirmed and unconfirmed sources
semiconductor: Joshua Chai
There is much mystery and intrigue surrounding the disappearance of Amelia Earhart that occurred during her attempt to
circumnavigate the globe in 1937. What I feel is often lost in the morass of legends and conspiracy theories is that Amelia
Earhart was a human being with a complex and beautiful life that was suddenly erased when she became a missing person.
Written for Inversion Ensemble’s 2019 concert Aether: Air, "The Last Transmissions of Amelia Earhart" combines the text both
confirmed and anecdotal transmissions shortly after her disappearance near Howland Island in the Pacific along with lines of
poetry written by Earhart herself. Earhart submitted many poems to literary magazines under assumed names and this text seemed fitting for the context of this piece as it speaks to “merciless life” and how fleeting both love and existence can be
when it is “burned in the passion paws of life.” This piece is what is referred to as a “graphic score,” combining both written
notation as well as shapes, lines and even photos that have been arranged on the pages of the score. While some directions are
provided, much of the score is left up to interpretation of the director and performers. This piece is intended to create a sense
of disorientation, confusion and isolation. You will hear lines both sung and spoken, vocal sound effects and extended
techniques such as ingressive singing (sung by inhaling over the vocal folds), overtone singing and more. May the spirit of
exploration and boldness of Amelia Earhart live on through this piece alongside her humanity and whimsical personality.
~ Robbie LaBanca
TEXT
Merciless life
Laughs in the burning sun
And only death
Slow-circling down
Shadows with buzzard wings
The arid flesh
Burned before the passion paws of love.
Can you read me? This is Amelia Earhart
Please come in
My navigator is badly hurt and must have help
can't hold on much longer
We have taken in water
We are in need of medical care
Plane down....an uncharted island, small uninhabited
seriously injured
down in ocean
on or near little island at a point near
our plane about out of gas
Water all around
Very dark
We must be on you but cannot see you
Gas is running low
been unable to reach you by radio ... we are flying at 1,000 feet.
We are on the line 157 337
We repeat this message on 6210 kilocycles
C4: The Choral Composer/Conductor Collective Members & Guests Performing:
Daniel Andor-Ardó
Colin Britt (C4 alum)
Timothy Brown
Joshua Chai (Inversion Ensemble)
Emily Drossell
Jamie Klenetsky Fay
Alissa Floyd (Inversion Ensemble)
Mario Gullo
Adrienne Inglis (Inversion Ensemble)
Angela Irving (Inversion Ensemble)
Brian Mountford
David See
Fahad Siadat (C3LA)
Karen Siegel
Joy Tomayo
Perry Townsend
Sam Wise (Inversion Ensemble)
Melissa Wozniak
Daniel Andor-Ardó
Colin Britt (C4 alum)
Timothy Brown
Joshua Chai (Inversion Ensemble)
Emily Drossell
Jamie Klenetsky Fay
Alissa Floyd (Inversion Ensemble)
Mario Gullo
Adrienne Inglis (Inversion Ensemble)
Angela Irving (Inversion Ensemble)
Brian Mountford
David See
Fahad Siadat (C3LA)
Karen Siegel
Joy Tomayo
Perry Townsend
Sam Wise (Inversion Ensemble)
Melissa Wozniak
Half of the funds raised through the virtual tip jar from tonight's performance will be donated to BYP100 (Black Youth Project 100), a member-based organization of Black youth activists creating justice and freedom for all Black people. Please feel free to donate through any of these methods, and to consider supporting BYP100 independently as well.
Feel like making a donation to C4 & BYP100 to support this work with our virtual tip jar? Venmo us at @c4ensemble! (Tips can also be made via credit card through our website, as well as through PayPal at [email protected].)
Thank you for your support!
Feel like making a donation to C4 & BYP100 to support this work with our virtual tip jar? Venmo us at @c4ensemble! (Tips can also be made via credit card through our website, as well as through PayPal at [email protected].)
Thank you for your support!
TECH DETAILS
How are we doing all this? The short answer is that we are all connected to Jamulus, a piece of software which lets up to 50 participants share audio. For video, we are also connected to a Zoom call with the sound turned off. We combine the audio from Jamulus and the video from Zoom, and stream the results to YouTube.
Of course it’s a bit more complicated than that. Here is an in-depth description of the setup that I (Brian Mountford, the person in charge of streaming) am using at home to try and both sing in the group and simultaneously stream the results. See the diagram below for an overview.
First off, there are two computers. I am using my laptop to be a singer. Like all the other singers, I am running both Jamulus and Zoom. Jamulus is connected to our private Jamulus server, and Zoom is connected to a call set up by Karen Siegel, another of our members. I have my headphones on, and a microphone to sing into, and am using Zoom to watch the conductor as needed. For more information about using Jamulus for choral singing, see our in-depth document.
Then there is my desktop computer (a Mac Mini), which handles the streaming. Much of the software described below is Mac-specific, but there should be Windows equivalents for everything. The desktop is connected to both Jamulus and Zoom. Yes, I am connected twice, once from each computer. But the desktop is connected to Zoom with no camera, so we have hidden that in the Zoom output. All it is doing is watching everyone else. Likewise, the Jamulus connection has no microphone or headphones. In addition, the Jamulus client is set to mute itself in the mixer panel, for reasons to be made apparent later.
The audio and video are processed very differently, so let me cover them separately. First, the audio. I am running a DAW (digital audio workstation). I am using Waveform Free, but you could use any number of programs for this; see our Jamulus document for details. The DAW has two purposes. First, it is the source of the pulse track we follow to perform one of the pieces. I made a audio recording of it, and the DAW just plays it into the Jamulus client, from whence it gets distributed to everyone’s headphones. Second, the DAW takes the returned sound from Jamulus and adds reverb to make it sound better, before sending it out to OBS to be streamed. Note that, if we aren’t careful, the pulse track will also come back from Jamulus, and assault the ears of our listeners. This is why we need to set the desktop’s Jamulus connection to mute itself. That way, although the singers hear the track, the audience does not. Magic!
In order to route the audio around between different programs, audio routing software is needed. I am using BlackHole, a free piece of software that lets programs send and receive a total of 16 channels of data. I use channels 1 and 2 to send from the DAW to OBS, channels 3 and 4 to send from the DAW to Jamulus, and channels 5 and 6 to send from Jamulus back to the DAW.
Now the video side of things. The nature of the Zoom software makes it difficult to capture the video output. One way I found to do it is a program called CamTwist, which is set up to capture a certain portion of the screen (I connected a second monitor so I would have plenty of screen real estate). I then move the Zoom video window to exactly the part of the screen CamTwist is looking at, and CamTwist grabs the feed. CamTwist is then set to act as a Syphon server. Syphon is a method for routing video on the Mac, not unlike BlackHole routes the audio.
To do some video processing, I use Isadora. Isadora takes in the Syphon feed, adds whatever crazy effects we feel like using, and sends the result out as another Syphon feed. I experimented with also using Isadora to delay the video slightly so it would be in better sync with the audio, but it put too much strain on my little Mac Mini, so I had to abandon the effort.
Finally, OBS, a popular streaming application, puts everything together. It is configured to get the audio stream from the DAW via the BlackHole router, and the video from Isadora's Syphon output, combine the two and send the results to YouTube’s streaming service. With a little luck, the results show up in the audience's browsers 20 seconds later.
Of course it’s a bit more complicated than that. Here is an in-depth description of the setup that I (Brian Mountford, the person in charge of streaming) am using at home to try and both sing in the group and simultaneously stream the results. See the diagram below for an overview.
First off, there are two computers. I am using my laptop to be a singer. Like all the other singers, I am running both Jamulus and Zoom. Jamulus is connected to our private Jamulus server, and Zoom is connected to a call set up by Karen Siegel, another of our members. I have my headphones on, and a microphone to sing into, and am using Zoom to watch the conductor as needed. For more information about using Jamulus for choral singing, see our in-depth document.
Then there is my desktop computer (a Mac Mini), which handles the streaming. Much of the software described below is Mac-specific, but there should be Windows equivalents for everything. The desktop is connected to both Jamulus and Zoom. Yes, I am connected twice, once from each computer. But the desktop is connected to Zoom with no camera, so we have hidden that in the Zoom output. All it is doing is watching everyone else. Likewise, the Jamulus connection has no microphone or headphones. In addition, the Jamulus client is set to mute itself in the mixer panel, for reasons to be made apparent later.
The audio and video are processed very differently, so let me cover them separately. First, the audio. I am running a DAW (digital audio workstation). I am using Waveform Free, but you could use any number of programs for this; see our Jamulus document for details. The DAW has two purposes. First, it is the source of the pulse track we follow to perform one of the pieces. I made a audio recording of it, and the DAW just plays it into the Jamulus client, from whence it gets distributed to everyone’s headphones. Second, the DAW takes the returned sound from Jamulus and adds reverb to make it sound better, before sending it out to OBS to be streamed. Note that, if we aren’t careful, the pulse track will also come back from Jamulus, and assault the ears of our listeners. This is why we need to set the desktop’s Jamulus connection to mute itself. That way, although the singers hear the track, the audience does not. Magic!
In order to route the audio around between different programs, audio routing software is needed. I am using BlackHole, a free piece of software that lets programs send and receive a total of 16 channels of data. I use channels 1 and 2 to send from the DAW to OBS, channels 3 and 4 to send from the DAW to Jamulus, and channels 5 and 6 to send from Jamulus back to the DAW.
Now the video side of things. The nature of the Zoom software makes it difficult to capture the video output. One way I found to do it is a program called CamTwist, which is set up to capture a certain portion of the screen (I connected a second monitor so I would have plenty of screen real estate). I then move the Zoom video window to exactly the part of the screen CamTwist is looking at, and CamTwist grabs the feed. CamTwist is then set to act as a Syphon server. Syphon is a method for routing video on the Mac, not unlike BlackHole routes the audio.
To do some video processing, I use Isadora. Isadora takes in the Syphon feed, adds whatever crazy effects we feel like using, and sends the result out as another Syphon feed. I experimented with also using Isadora to delay the video slightly so it would be in better sync with the audio, but it put too much strain on my little Mac Mini, so I had to abandon the effort.
Finally, OBS, a popular streaming application, puts everything together. It is configured to get the audio stream from the DAW via the BlackHole router, and the video from Isadora's Syphon output, combine the two and send the results to YouTube’s streaming service. With a little luck, the results show up in the audience's browsers 20 seconds later.
