Choral Coach is now starting!

[Tony]

Dear Friends,

Thank you for your patience!  I have now completed all the pre-concert talks and recorded them for Bay Chamber Concerts and can turn my attention to the Choral Coach experiment. 

Please keep in mind that this is only an experiment and that you are not being judged as a singer. All that's being judged is Choral Coach!

Yesterday I sent out the Kyrie (first movement) of Franz Schubert's Deutsche Messe (German Mass) translated into English. You should have received your own part and a full score. Play around with this and see whether it's a good way to learn the music. (Some of you may already know this piece since it is often sung in Episcopal and Catholic churches for services. Pretend you don't know it so you can judge how Choral Coach works.)

There is a steep learning curve for me at this end and there are bound to be mix-ups. That's all part of the experiment.

One of the features of Choral Coach that's maddening to me is that I cannot tell who certain people are who have signed up so I can't assign the correct part to them. These are people with e-mail addresses that don't hint at their identity. I have two mystery participants:

rbgrosbeak

Morse Farm Associates

If you're one of these two please e-mail me privately at <aant...@bowdoin.edu> and identify yourself. Please do not hit "reply" to this e-mail. The whole group doesn't need to know who you are!

The big picture: It is my hope that we will be able to make an audio-only recording of the Schubert Deutsche Messe with all of your voices, accompanied by Halcyon String Quartet. This would be for the December concert. Right now we're using Choral Coach as a way of evaluating whether this is a good way to learn and rehearse a piece of music.  In the meantime I'm working on an English version of Dmitri Bortniansky's Lord's Prayer that will be a test of whether Choral Coach can help us learn something that isn't already available through ACDA. (The Schubert Mass is a package - ready to go with no editing needed).

Good luck and don't let Choral Coach get you down!

Cheers,

Tony