How to do on-the-fly MMO for chorus practice?

December 5, 2006 3:28 PM

Is there a multi-track audio format suitable for chorus practice? That and

I've recently joined a chorus, and in my continuing (and usually futile) attempts to leverage technology to make my life easier (since I don't read music that well), I'm wondering if there's a standardized way that you could assemble 5 independent synchronized audio tracks (likely mp3 format) -- accompaniment, and the 4 individual vocal tracks -- in such a fashion that the practicing singer could play it back and either punch out the three voices they don't sing (for learning your part) or punch out the voice they *do* sing (for practice).

I realize that this could be done with something like Multiquence or Cakewalk, but that would entail shipping something like a zip file around with all the tracks in it, which I'd like to avoid, not to mention requiring special playback software (it'd be nice if these files could be played back with J Random Player -- even if that player had to be Quicktime).

Any suggestions?

In a related story, I'd also like to carry my sheet music (and maybe these audio tracks) around on an eBook reader of some flavor; anyone got any experience with those -- particularly as they relate to sheet music?

posted by baylink to media & arts (11 comments total)

Hmmm. I am thinking...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
OK, here's what you need to do.

In order to ge what you want, you will need to record each instrument separately and layer them into the finalized multitrack recording. I think you would be better off getting an instrumental CD or tape of the days practice of the chorus and rehearsing from that.

Sheet music: You can scan your sheets into a PDF file on some copiers and carry it all on your computer.
posted by parmanparman at 4:15 PM on December 5, 2006

My father does something similar in his barbershop and a capella groups. They create one tape or CD for each vocal line, with that line in one track (left) and the other three voices in another (right). Then he uses a stereo's balance knob to switch between the two or play both simultaneously. My brother is a recording engineer in NYC, and he pops them out on protools, but you could surely do it through other, less expensive means.

I don't know about the piano accompaniment. You could center it, which would put it in the left and right channels, but then you could never hear anything without the piano.
posted by billtron at 4:41 PM on December 5, 2006

On second thought, you could even pay my brother to do it for you. :)
posted by billtron at 4:44 PM on December 5, 2006

I realize that this could be done with something like Multiquence or Cakewalk, but that would entail shipping something like a zip file around with all the tracks in it

MIDI files can be multitrack, so there's no need to have a bundled zip.

Also, I don't know about Multiquence or Cakewalk, but a number of sequncers these days come with a "print to audio file" feature. So if you could enter your parts into a sequencer, you could select which ones you want to hear, and then tell it to output those to a WAV or AIFF or MP3 or whatever.

There are also people producing and selling MIDI files for the purposes of choral rehearsal.

Recording is something you could do, and with something like a handheld portastudio, you could probably even get four parts separated, but I'd think it's likely to be a cumbersome process. I'd really only try for something like that if you're interested in the recording process itself.

However, if you just took a portable stereo recorder to rehearsal, and if you stand in sections, chances are what you'll get is a recording where you own part is the loudest and you can hear the others in the background.
posted by weston at 4:46 PM on December 5, 2006

Probably you could easily do something like this in ACID, assuming you recorded each vocal track separately.
posted by neckro23 at 9:21 PM on December 5, 2006

Ok; replies in order:

> In order to ge what you want, you will need to record each instrument separately and layer them into the finalized multitrack recording. I think you would be better off getting an instrumental CD or tape of the days practice of the chorus and rehearsing from that.

Thank you, Captain Obvious. :-)

My problem isn't multi-tracking; I know how to do that. It's *distributing the results* in a fashion that doesn't require every member of the chorus to buy Cakewalk for $A_BUNCH to be able to listen.

> MIDI files can be multitrack, so there's no need to have a bundled zip.

Alas, MIDI files can't contain *sound*, and while I could tolerate MIDI for the accompaniment, I really wanted the actual sung parts in the file for the vocals. The Google search was a nice pick, though; thanks -- I hadn't thought of those particular keywords.

> you could probably even get four parts separated

The singer, initially, will be our Artistic Director, who can do it in his own studio, and (I think) has his own multitracker.

Eventually, the parts will probably be replaced by our section leaders -- choruses do gain and lose members.

> Probably you could easily do something like this in ACID, assuming you recorded each vocal track separately.

Yeah, ACID would work as well as Multi or Cake -- both of which similarly allow multitracking of audio clips.

Some thought last night at rehearsal led me to hijack my own thread:

FLASH people: how hard would it be to construct a flash player applet -- very roughly akin to the flash video player used by YouTube et al -- that would permit me to package 5 mp3s up in a SWF file, and play them all in sync, with Loud, Soft, and Mute buttons for each (labeled) channel, in addition to the expected transport-control buttons?

Cause, on reflection, that seems like the easiest way to do it: the files could be in the private section of our website (which would hopefully be enough protection to qualify us under fair use), and could be downloaded for members to practice with even off-line.
posted by baylink at 6:36 AM on December 6, 2006

Well, either my low-tech suggestion was too banal or irrelevant to receive a snarky response, but it works for a bunch of 70 year old farmers, so it wouldn't be that hard to explain to other non-L337 haxxors.

By the way, I am revoke my brother's assistance.
posted by billtron at 7:24 PM on December 6, 2006

I apologies for not snarking at you, Billtron; I'll try to do better next time. ;-)

My goals include the one I didn't mention: not making my artistic director have to master 9 different mixes of the 5 possible tracks (4-part, 4 MMO's and 4 solos), which he would have to do manually. All I want him to have to do is record the tracks, perfect the sync, and trim them all to size, then hand them to me so I can plaster them into something like the aforementioned SWF container. This is probably key to getting it to happen at all; he has way more to do than we do.

I wish Grumblebee was here; archive searches suggest he may be a flash wonk.
posted by baylink at 8:14 PM on December 6, 2006

Baylink, I'm pretty sure this is possible to do in Flash... I'm aware of at least one example like what you're talking about, though I'm not sure if it's audio or MIDI based.

I don't know exactly how to do it in Flash, but it does seem to me this is more or less what Flash is set up to do -- play multiple movie clips (including audio clips) simultaneously.
posted by weston at 10:03 AM on December 8, 2006

No more calls; we have a winner.

Yeah, Weston; that's within about 20% of what I was looking for. The parts are MIDI, the other stuff is streaming audio. Whether it's possible to play *synced* MP3's, or bundle them in the SWF file, that example doesn't demonstrate, but that, as it stands, may well be good enough for what I want to do -- and I can always track down the Mormon guys who implemented it, and get some hints.

Very nice pick; thanks.
posted by baylink at 1:18 PM on December 10, 2006

Weston is exactly correct, as it happens; MediaRain's newest version of that app is MusicRain 2.0... which has a one page website and no pricing; you have to call them.

People like that give me hives.

Thanks, though.
posted by baylink at 8:49 PM on December 12, 2006