What follows is an email I wrote in response to the Virtual Choir team's request that we send in our story about our experience with Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir 3.0. I hadn't thought to share it here, but a dear friend, and fellow Kossack, suggested I do so. I don't know that it will be of any use to you, but you never know. And anyway, another Kossack I queried about it request I do so. So, there you go.
I'd like to thank elfling right here at the start, as if it hadn't been for her diary, I would never have found out about this at all.
Without further ado then, please follow me over the orange embellishment for my Virtual Choir story.
I didn't overcome any great adversity, so I don't know if my story will be of interest, but I'll share it anyway.
I'd never heard of Virtual Choir or even (gasp!) Eric Whitacre, until about two weeks ago. On January 18, elfling published this diary on Daily Kos.
I almost never take the time to click on vids embedded in diaries, but the comments about this one were so intriguing, I set aside 15 minutes.
So amazingly glad I did.
I cried the first time I watched Eric's TED talk about Virtual Choir. I cried each subsequent time I watched it. When I shared it with my kids, my friends, or just couldn't resist and watched it once more before bed. It touched something deep inside of me.
Then I started researching Eric. Watched everything I could find on the tubes. Of course, I stumbled upon VC3, and saw the submission date was only a little over a week away.
!
I begged my elder daughter and my son to participate. My daughter is a beautiful singer, chosen for all-state high school chorus in NY, went on to study vocal music in college. My son is currently in choir in high school. Will probably be singing "Sleep" at some point, as the choir director is fond of it.
When my daughter asked me why I wanted her to take part so badly, I stuttered on about "great opportunity" and "worldwide community" and "be a part of something so inspiring" and finally got to, "because I'm not a singer, so I can't, and if you do, I can take part vicariously."
Oh.
She wondered aloud why I couldn't, exactly. It's true, I'm not a trained singer, never sang in a choir, but I don't have an awful voice. I lead chant circles, and use chant in my devotional practices. I supposed maybe I could. The very thought of it dissolved me in tears again. I recognized a message in all those tears. Clearly, there was a call to me. I decided to listen. To make it stick, I announced to my kids and a couple dear friends that I was going to take part. They would hold me to it.
I printed the sheet music for the alto part, and downloaded the music for Alto 1 - Predominant onto my phone. And tried to sing along. Um. Wow. This was much, much harder than I expected. It took me an entire day, just to learn the first line. I was going to need to do better than that! I didn't have very much time. My daughter helped me a bit. I did many of the 'lessons' on the resources page, and mostly I just listened and sang and listened and sang, until I was singing it in my head and out loud pretty much all the time, without even realizing it.
Several times I considered not doing it. It was too hard. I couldn't sustain the long phrases. I couldn't figure out when to breathe. I couldn't hit the high notes. I didn't have an external mic. Etc., etc. But I kept on. It took going to four stores and spending more than I wanted, but I got an external mic. Started reading the facebook wall of the virtual chorus and found I could simply not sing a note, and take a breath; in fact, I could not sing that entire devilish high phrase! and still take part.
Ok, I was in.
The Sunday before deadline I tried singing along to the conductor video, in preparation for recording. Um, wow. I couldn't hold my line AT ALL with all those other voices doing other parts. I got pulled off into soprano or tenor or bass land over and over and over again. I despaired. I posted my problem on the facebook wall, and was greeted with warmth, encouragement and support. Also, concrete ideas for how to deal with the issue. One earbud. Lower the volume so I could barely hear the vid. Ok. I tried it. Better. Not great, but possibly doable.
The big recording day arrived. I started three times before I was able to finish without stopping in disgust at myself. Not to say that last take was great, but it wasn't quite as horrible. I hit Save and waited to hear the playback. never happened. wouldn't save. What?! I didn't think I could do it again. Sweating and nervous and running out of voice.
Back to the facebook wall, where Jack and Kevin, and many others, were busily providing tech support and encouragement. They invited me into a Google + hangout, where they taught me how to set my mic levels, and how to use iMovie to record my piece and then upload onto YouTube and send in. Most importantly, they reassured me that I was welcome to participate, even though my voice and my ability to stay on key were not very good at all.
I managed to record my piece the next day, set up a YouTube account, figure out how to finalize a project in iMovie, and get the whole thing sent in. Victory!
I was not done yet. In fact, I had just started the best part.
Hanging out on the facebook page, giving support and encouragement and cheerleading to the folks still working on getting theirs done. I joined a couple more hangouts and met a bunch of truly fantastic people, with whom I hope to continue to engage. Britlin joined in via messaging through Emily once. Felt like meeting a celebrity, after all those views of the TED talk. We had a mini-choir on the last night, singing together the last line of Water Night. None of us wanted it to be over. We've even talked about getting some choir geeks together and recording Water Night in cat meows. It's surprising how good we sounded doing that for a bit. Lots of us are cat people, apparently.
I also managed to support one local friend through the process, and she joined too, during the night of the server crashes, sending her YouTube to the support email address. =)
Woke up this morning after the extended deadline and started haunting the facebook page. It's so lovely to hear folks reflecting on the experience, and not quite wanting to let it go. I've been amazed at the true sense of compassionate community that sprang up so quickly. Never having been in a choir before, I didn't know many choir geeks, and I must say, my life has been the poorer for it. I'm now going to contact the choir director at my kids school, to see about getting voice lessons, and maybe finding a local choir to join. I'll be in much better voice for VC4. Can't wait! Thank you so very much for this opportunity, and this community.
If you made it all the way down here, thanks for reading. It was a truly incredible experience, mainly because of the open, warm, friendly, fun, lovely people. I'm having a hard time letting it go.