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The Virtual Choir Project

Posted by samzenpus on from the is-it-real-or-is-it-youtube dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Conductor and composer Eric Whitacre has successfully created a virtual choir using the voices of 185 people who posted their performance on YouTube. The piece that's performed is called 'Sleep,' composed by the conductor himself in 2000. Anyone can join in — all you need is a webcam and a microphone."

3 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I disagree by ProfMobius · · Score: 3, Insightful
    It is exactly what internet is about. Taking pieces and bit from different willing people, and make something greater than just the sum of the parts.

    This is an amazing performance, coordinating hundred of people around the world, people who will never meet, but are working together to bring to life a project.

    Internet is not just for porn, facebook and WoW you know.

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    EULA : By reading the above message, you agree that I now own your soul.
  2. Nothing new, nothing unusual, still awesome. by Senes · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is an old trick, just record in studio (people's homes) and then put it all together for the final mix.
    But still, there is something brilliant and beautiful about this. Not that it reinvents anything, but it does a great job of demonstrating this trick to a new generation of people who can take interest and see what else they can achieve with it.

  3. Re:I disagree by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's entirely not original.

    Originality in art is highly overrated.

    All the originality in the world doesn't mean a damn if it doesn't touch someone's heart. This piece is pretty moving.

    Listen to the otherworldly ambiance created by the blending of so many varied different recordings by so many different microphones in so many different spaces. This odd effect almost becomes an additional voice itself. The video aspect doesn't do much for me, except to remind me of the fractured and disconnected nature of the multitude of individual recordings, mixed together.

    In my music, I use convolution a lot to create space, from the inside of my mouth to the middle of a lake. It never occurred to me that by blending so many individual elements you would come up with this, I guess, hyperspace reverb.

    It reminds me a bit of Heinrich Goebbels' Surrogate Cities.

    I mean, it's not exactly Miles'Agartha, or the first Stooges album, or even Wagner's Parsifal, but it ain't bad. Not at all.

    Bravo.

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    You are welcome on my lawn.