Mid-February of 2022, we received the sad news that one of the Madrigals, Julie, had passed away. One of the other members, Jody, really wanted to get the old group together to sing a song to dedicate to her family. With everyone spread out and Covid still a concern, it didn't really seem a possibility. But Covid has inspired ways to get together creatively (check out this popular Youtube virtual choir). One popular program for musicians is Easy Virtual Choir, and that's what we used. It's free to use, although there are charges to add creativity beyond the most basic offerings (we did end up paying a little to have some options). After tons of messaging on Facebook, we were able to gather a good number of our original group, more than I'd thought would be willing to participate. I hadn't seen many of these folks for 30+ years. I surprised myself a bit ... my first thought was "I can't sing anymore!"
At first we didn't have enough guys, so a few of the fellows recorded multiple parts, singing tenor and bass. I had been a soprano in my high school days, but I dropped to alto now, and I wasn't the only one. One of the old altos stepped up to soprano though.
The program was pretty easy to use. A group is set up, there is a base track laid down. With a computer and earbud, the person singing can hear the base track in their ear as they sing out loud, and the computer records just the voice. I originally used an earbud and Cooper's laptop, but the wireless aspect created a big of a lag. I re-recorded with earbuds that plugged in (I needed to have them in just one ear so I could still hear myself as well) and had to use my little laptop, as Coop's didn't have an audio intake. My Dell has the camera at the BOTTOM of the screen (this is a well known "nose-cam" issue), and I needed to stand to sing ... if you could really call it singing. Use it or lose it, and I don't have much of a voice anymore.
Still, it was a packed week or so, practicing the song, trying to get the parts, chatting with old friends. We finished up one for the funeral, and then had a couple more add their voices (who hadn't quite been able to make the deadline of the first rendering). Here's the final result (and here's the first one).
It's not perfect, but not bad for 30+ years since many of us had sung it.
