Radiolab
As I hinted in my previous post, I spent last night recording bits for Radiolab.
I knew it was going to be an unconventional night when I showed up to the church early and was told I couldn't go in until the trampoline class had finished. Yes, the class was in the sanctuary. It's a traditional older church, but has chairs instead of pews, so they clear the chairs and set up trampolines and tumbling mats. I snuck in to use the bathroom and was stuck downstairs for five minutes as an enormous rolled mat blocked my way. They were wrestling it onto a shelf above the stairs, climbing over the railings, and balancing on ledges. Trampoline class with kids jumping in a space with great stone pillars and climbing on stacked chairs and over staircases? I see no liability issues at all!
Once they'd cleared, about 120 singers from a couple dozen different choral organizations showed up. There was a core of people from the Young New Yorkers Chorus, whose rehearsal space we were using. I was briefly in the YNYC about eight years ago, where I discovered that it was where old college a cappella singers go when they retire. This is apparently still true as I had a surprise encounter with a Tigression I haven't seen in at least five years.
So. Radiolab.
Jad Abumrad was there, and explained that he was doing a show on colors. For one bit, he's explaining how different creatures see different parts of the spectrum. There's dogs, with their two colors, humans with our six, and then mantis shrimp--apparently the creatures with the widest range of vision known to man. So he wanted to show that with a chorus.
What's interesting is that he is a music guy, and we were all music people, but from entirely different worlds, and so with entirely different, non intersecting vocabularies. For example, at the start, he wanted to see what our vocal range is. So he said he'd have the basses sing low, and the sopranos sing high, and then "you middle people." It was clear he wasn't quite sure what the words for the middle people were.
And he'd cue us by going, "One! Two! Three!" and then pointing. Which took a little getting used to, but worked. The conductor of the YNYC was there and at one point told us to raise our soft palettes and round the sound a little so it wasn't so piercing, and Jad was like "yes! That!"
It took about two hours. Mostly what he was doing was having groups by section sing a color on a note. He'd picked out specific notes for each color, and I'm sure in post will layer them all on top of each other to get a chord that represents each animals vision. But as he was building up the chord, people were fighting kind of territorially over what notes "belonged" to what voice part. Jad didn't know, so he'd say, "Whoever sings an F, we need you, but not too many." And the sopranos were like, "that's us," and some altos were like, "An F is our note, too!" indignantly. And Jad's standing there like whatever.
For a random selection of 120 choristers, the blend was pretty good. We all defaulted to straight tone, clear, forward placement. And except when he was working with smaller groups, we stayed right on pitch. I have to say, though, I have been ruined forever for the "oo" sound. Dessoff uses a very far back placement for the "oo," making it more pure, like in a European language. When this group sang "blue," it was that flat American "oo" sound and gah. Nails on chalkboard to me.
At the start of the night, he said, "I hear that the 'Hallelujah Chorus' is something you all know. Do you think you could do that?" And, since we were representing the awesome vision powers of the mantis shrimp, we replaced "king of kings" and "lord of lords" with "mantis shrimp." (I did not think this was the best part of the song to stick "mantis shrimp" in since it's not at the beginning and isn't the most recognizable bit, but it scans the best, so that's what we did.) Hence us all singing it from memory with just a D major chord from the piano.
I have to say though, as we were trying to be wall-of-sound about it, I was singing full volume. As was everyone else. And my ears were definitely ringing when I got home.
Jad had a list on his phone of the things he needed us to record, so after he got all the colors (I am singing "super duper ultra violet" and a few others), he also had a few random bits he wanted to have us do. We are, apparently, the Greek chorus of the piece, so we said hi to each of the people he interviewed. And then recorded a portion of the credits. If you've heard the show, you know he always has interviewees read the credits. In this case, the producer "conducted" us, and tried to get us to read them at normal speaking speed rather than church reciting Lord's prayer speed. It was a bit of a mess.
I am eager to hear how this all pieces together for the episode. This episode will air next Tuesday.
Afterwards, I of course had to tell him what a big fan I was, and how fun it was to see how he puts a piece together. He said this was all a bit of an experiment--I told him he could experiment on us anytime. (Heh.) From the emails from his producer, it seems they didn't expect to be able to get a choir of 120 people to show up. Oh little does he realize how many fans the show has--or how many choirs New York has. (According to a fellow Dessie, 150.)
I knew it was going to be an unconventional night when I showed up to the church early and was told I couldn't go in until the trampoline class had finished. Yes, the class was in the sanctuary. It's a traditional older church, but has chairs instead of pews, so they clear the chairs and set up trampolines and tumbling mats. I snuck in to use the bathroom and was stuck downstairs for five minutes as an enormous rolled mat blocked my way. They were wrestling it onto a shelf above the stairs, climbing over the railings, and balancing on ledges. Trampoline class with kids jumping in a space with great stone pillars and climbing on stacked chairs and over staircases? I see no liability issues at all!
Once they'd cleared, about 120 singers from a couple dozen different choral organizations showed up. There was a core of people from the Young New Yorkers Chorus, whose rehearsal space we were using. I was briefly in the YNYC about eight years ago, where I discovered that it was where old college a cappella singers go when they retire. This is apparently still true as I had a surprise encounter with a Tigression I haven't seen in at least five years.
So. Radiolab.
Jad Abumrad was there, and explained that he was doing a show on colors. For one bit, he's explaining how different creatures see different parts of the spectrum. There's dogs, with their two colors, humans with our six, and then mantis shrimp--apparently the creatures with the widest range of vision known to man. So he wanted to show that with a chorus.
What's interesting is that he is a music guy, and we were all music people, but from entirely different worlds, and so with entirely different, non intersecting vocabularies. For example, at the start, he wanted to see what our vocal range is. So he said he'd have the basses sing low, and the sopranos sing high, and then "you middle people." It was clear he wasn't quite sure what the words for the middle people were.
And he'd cue us by going, "One! Two! Three!" and then pointing. Which took a little getting used to, but worked. The conductor of the YNYC was there and at one point told us to raise our soft palettes and round the sound a little so it wasn't so piercing, and Jad was like "yes! That!"
It took about two hours. Mostly what he was doing was having groups by section sing a color on a note. He'd picked out specific notes for each color, and I'm sure in post will layer them all on top of each other to get a chord that represents each animals vision. But as he was building up the chord, people were fighting kind of territorially over what notes "belonged" to what voice part. Jad didn't know, so he'd say, "Whoever sings an F, we need you, but not too many." And the sopranos were like, "that's us," and some altos were like, "An F is our note, too!" indignantly. And Jad's standing there like whatever.
For a random selection of 120 choristers, the blend was pretty good. We all defaulted to straight tone, clear, forward placement. And except when he was working with smaller groups, we stayed right on pitch. I have to say, though, I have been ruined forever for the "oo" sound. Dessoff uses a very far back placement for the "oo," making it more pure, like in a European language. When this group sang "blue," it was that flat American "oo" sound and gah. Nails on chalkboard to me.
At the start of the night, he said, "I hear that the 'Hallelujah Chorus' is something you all know. Do you think you could do that?" And, since we were representing the awesome vision powers of the mantis shrimp, we replaced "king of kings" and "lord of lords" with "mantis shrimp." (I did not think this was the best part of the song to stick "mantis shrimp" in since it's not at the beginning and isn't the most recognizable bit, but it scans the best, so that's what we did.) Hence us all singing it from memory with just a D major chord from the piano.
I have to say though, as we were trying to be wall-of-sound about it, I was singing full volume. As was everyone else. And my ears were definitely ringing when I got home.
Jad had a list on his phone of the things he needed us to record, so after he got all the colors (I am singing "super duper ultra violet" and a few others), he also had a few random bits he wanted to have us do. We are, apparently, the Greek chorus of the piece, so we said hi to each of the people he interviewed. And then recorded a portion of the credits. If you've heard the show, you know he always has interviewees read the credits. In this case, the producer "conducted" us, and tried to get us to read them at normal speaking speed rather than church reciting Lord's prayer speed. It was a bit of a mess.
I am eager to hear how this all pieces together for the episode. This episode will air next Tuesday.
Afterwards, I of course had to tell him what a big fan I was, and how fun it was to see how he puts a piece together. He said this was all a bit of an experiment--I told him he could experiment on us anytime. (Heh.) From the emails from his producer, it seems they didn't expect to be able to get a choir of 120 people to show up. Oh little does he realize how many fans the show has--or how many choirs New York has. (According to a fellow Dessie, 150.)