This week, members of the award-winning choirs at San Ramon Valley High in Danville would be on the big island of Hawaii, performing at other schools and enjoying beaches and hikes around Volcano National Park.
Instead, the some 100 singers have been sheltering in place around Danville. They also haven’t even been able to practice together since March 13, the day that would turn out to be their last day of school for the rest of the year. Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Superintendent Tony Thurmond announced that California schools would be closed to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
Despite the constraints of shelter in place, choral music director Ken Abrams and a former student came up with a way to use sophisticated video- and sound-editing software and social media to help the students perform together virtually and share a song they hope delivers a message of hope.
On Monday, Abrams posted a YouTube video of 45 of his choral students singing “Give Us Hope.”
“To say we are living in extraordinary times would be an immense understatement,” Abrams wrote in a statement accompanying the YouTube video. “Life has been chaotic and disruptive, but my students wanted to send an uplifting message in these trying times. We created this ‘virtual choir’ as a response to our need to sing, be positive and create healing art.”
The students had performed the song, by Jim Papoulis, at the Spring Concert March 5 and 6. In the YouTube video, the students sound as though they harmonized together in the same time and in the same space.
“Listen to the sound of my voice. Can you feel the beat of my heart,” the song begins.
About a week after school was closed, Abrams reached out to students to ask if they wanted to participate in something of an experiment, devised by him and by David Flashner, a former student who is now a Milpitas-based event manager and professional sound and video designer.
“We had gone on what we thought would be a two or three-week hiatus,” Abrams said. “I had nothing better to do, and the kids needed an opportunity to perform and sign again. We chose a song they had already learned.”
For the experiment, each student was asked to record him or herself singing their part of “Give Us Hope” into a laptop or phone. After Abrams and Flasher received each of the recordings, Flashner used video editing software to create an ever-expanding grid of images of the 45 students singing in individual windows. Abrams was in charge of the audio portion, using software to blend their voices together, along with piano accompaniment that had been recorded at the Spring Concert.
The result sounds seamless, but Abrams admits it took about two weeks to put together, longer than he and Flasher expected and mostly because neither had done anything like this before. They also tried to add more uplifting images to the video — of children playing and families waving to each other through glass. He said he is writing up the steps he and Flasher used, which they hope to share with teaching colleagues.
Unfortunately, Abrams said the technology isn’t sophisticated yet to allow him to conduct choir practices over Zoom or other videoconferencing platforms. The sound and video from individual screens don’t quite synch up, he explained. So, going forward, he will assign his choir students to create their own music videos, write their own music or do other music-related writing assignments.
