Will The Circle ... Online Collab

[keith.rogers]

The host of an open mic I go to created a FaceBook group to let people post videos and also give shoutouts to the venues that have supported live music. Someone said "let's do something together" and I volunteered. (I learned a lot about how to not write instructions and the extremely wide range of interest and technical ability that might result in enough pieces to complete something.)

Anyway, before I ramble on even more, here's Will The Circle Be Unbroken, in all kinds of varying input, pieced together over a couple days. One guitar player did not muster the attention span (his words), so it's a mite light rhythmically, and a quick mix, but I'll probably do it again next month.

[TomB'sox]

I think that was very well edited and put together, that must have been a lot of work, congrats.

[Greyhound]

Very nicely done! Herding that many must have been challenging...but the result is impressive.

[reeve21]

Very nice!

[H165]

Ezcellent - and may become "the new normal" for jam sessions.

[keith.rogers]

Thanks everyone for the comments.

Yes, the current situation is certainly requiring some folks to venture into new areas of how to still stay social when our normal avenues are suddenly gone. I have no idea what the future will hold, and whether this will have some "stickiness" and enough people will want to continue it, or not.

It was actually easier than I anticipated, though I have limited video skills and do it infrequently enough that whatever I learn rarely lasts until the next time .

FWIW, I first got volunteers and laid out a "roadmap" of who would do what when. Then, I set up a project in the DAW (Logic for me) with a set BPM, recorded the ad lib intro, 2 verse-chorus rhythm guitar tracks with the click, and the outro with a vocal. Sent that out asking folks for a phone video of them doing their parts. I also looped the rhythm tracks and sent a "full arrangement" backing track to the bass player. Everything came in over a couple days, and in the meantime I re-recorded the rhythm guitar with my vocal, playing along to the looped-full track. Input was a mix of phone videos, GarageBand projects (2), audio and lip-sync'd video, and just audio with some still photos. For phone videos, I exported the audio, did a de-noise where necessary, then dropped everything into the DAW, one "alternative" at a time. Lined up, mixed, sent out for comments, applied the comments (without much thought - it was their project, after all), then printed the master. That became the base for the video project, and then I just had to line up the videos to the performer's audio, or create slide shows where I had no video. Distributed the scratch tracks and instructions Tuesday lunchtime, finished the video yesterday before the wife got home from work. (Her deadline )

[Glennwillow]

That was cool, Keith!

Very appropriate for where we are today!

- Glenn