COVID Music Project - Part 2
Author: Richard Moxley
[email protected]
Date: October 28, 2020
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Ottawa Jazz Happenings or of JazzWorks Canada.
Introduction
Rick continues the saga of his COVID music project, involving regular emails of home-baked recordings coupled with historical information and personal anecdotes. If you haven't already, it is suggested that you read Part 1 first.
COVID Music Project - Part 2
Management 101 (All Over Again)
The process of selecting songs to email to people sounds simple enough. However, it still requires determining which songs to distribute, whom to send them to, the distribution method, and the frequency of distribution. While each activity seems simple enough, challenges are introduced when these activities are scaled up. In our case the challenge is to scale up to some 100 songs for 150 people, with a weekly schedule of two songs to keep the project on track. The aim is to finish about the time that COVID-19 is no longer an issue. Monitoring and feedback are required to help improve the process. Lastly, all of this work should be backed up. Who knows, this project may provide information for strategies to deal with future pandemics.
Whom to Send It To
Given that I have email addresses for my family and friends, they are the logical first choice for people on the mailing list. The second choice includes many of the musicians (also friends) that I play with and other groups from JazzWorks or the Federation of Musicians in Ottawa. Often these groups refer their friends, who also like music.
Care has to be taken in managing a list of other people’s email addresses. I looked at Mail Chimp as a candidate for a mailing service. It lacked the flexibility of the material that I have ended up sending: music files, text, and pictures, which change every week with new material. The most important thing is to protect people's emails by using the blind copy option, BCC, which hides their email address from prying eyes. People should also have the option of having their email addresses removed from the list if they ask. That hasn't seemed to be an issue to this point.
Songs to Distribute
I started with a small prototype set of songs to send out to a small group of friends. That forced me to think about what I should distribute, how often it should be distributed, and to make the recipients part of the process by requesting their feedback. Given the effort and time involved with the fact that other people had their own time demands and interests, I settled on a frequency of distributing two songs per week, which seems to have worked well. The American Song Book, with well over 1000 songs, provides a repertoire of songs that most people of my generation have heard before. The lists include a variety of interesting styles and tempos. Many of these songs have been played regularly for decades. The top singers and musicians of today keep these songs current with their own takes on them.
I often include one of my own compositions and try to pair it with an appropriate standard. Many standards come with the date embedded in the title, which often forms the basis of a schedule (e.g. My Funny Valentine, Easter Parade), while others are seasonal, (e.g. Autumn Leaves, Summertime). Be careful of spring, though, because it can hang you up the most <groan-er alert>.
A few of the people I play with have offered to team up to produce a song with me. Given that everything that I have been doing is part of a virtual process, additional challenges are introduced when creating these songs with people who may live in a province you can't travel to. I am very grateful to all of them for taking the time to make music with me.
Technical Information
I would like give those technicians among you an idea of the steps involved in producing two songs each week. I use two computers for this project: a portable HP and a desktop PC. The software that I use on the portable is Band in a Box (BIAB), which is available for a fee, and Audacity, which is a shareware product similar to Cubase. The desktop also uses Audacity and supports the Apex435 Large Diaphragm Studio Condenser Microphone sound system connected through a Yamaha USB Audio Interface. The Internet allows me to transfer songs between people. I use email to distribute the songs and information to people on the mailing list.
This configuration lets me record into Audacity and combine it with the BIAB track of the band. Back Tracks are also available from YouTube, although they have to be converted into mp3 format for use by Audacity. In one situation I used a recorded voice track of Summertime from a phone to merge with the band track that had been sent to the singer. The challenge for that song was to synchronize both tracks. That experience has taught me that humans have the ability to distinguish or hear sound differences of 1/120th of a second.
Both computers are linked by Dropbox, which also serves as an additional offsite backup. I also use Google’s and Apple’s offsite storage facilities. I have separate storage areas for completed and uncompleted songs and for my borrowed material and my own material. A work-in-process database is used to track the transitory files created when completing a song.
Management – Feedback, Review, Innovate
That's basically the plan and process that I follow. Management is not an exact science. Life happens after you have made your plans. The best one can do is to keep track of what was done in light of what was planned to be done. I will follow up in the next installment by looking at things that may be coming as part of the second half of this project. I have had many suggestions for ways to create more interesting distributions. One was from my wife Sue, who suggested adding pictures to watch with the music. I will try to make that a feature in the future. Carole has asked for a playlist. That would be a great thing to have when I conclude this project.
To be continued…
Richard Moxley
[email protected]
P.S. If you would like to receive Rick Moxley's COVID Project emails, please let him know.
Rick continues the saga of his COVID music project, involving regular emails of home-baked recordings coupled with historical information and personal anecdotes. If you haven't already, it is suggested that you read Part 1 first.
COVID Music Project - Part 2
Management 101 (All Over Again)
The process of selecting songs to email to people sounds simple enough. However, it still requires determining which songs to distribute, whom to send them to, the distribution method, and the frequency of distribution. While each activity seems simple enough, challenges are introduced when these activities are scaled up. In our case the challenge is to scale up to some 100 songs for 150 people, with a weekly schedule of two songs to keep the project on track. The aim is to finish about the time that COVID-19 is no longer an issue. Monitoring and feedback are required to help improve the process. Lastly, all of this work should be backed up. Who knows, this project may provide information for strategies to deal with future pandemics.
Whom to Send It To
Given that I have email addresses for my family and friends, they are the logical first choice for people on the mailing list. The second choice includes many of the musicians (also friends) that I play with and other groups from JazzWorks or the Federation of Musicians in Ottawa. Often these groups refer their friends, who also like music.
Care has to be taken in managing a list of other people’s email addresses. I looked at Mail Chimp as a candidate for a mailing service. It lacked the flexibility of the material that I have ended up sending: music files, text, and pictures, which change every week with new material. The most important thing is to protect people's emails by using the blind copy option, BCC, which hides their email address from prying eyes. People should also have the option of having their email addresses removed from the list if they ask. That hasn't seemed to be an issue to this point.
Songs to Distribute
I started with a small prototype set of songs to send out to a small group of friends. That forced me to think about what I should distribute, how often it should be distributed, and to make the recipients part of the process by requesting their feedback. Given the effort and time involved with the fact that other people had their own time demands and interests, I settled on a frequency of distributing two songs per week, which seems to have worked well. The American Song Book, with well over 1000 songs, provides a repertoire of songs that most people of my generation have heard before. The lists include a variety of interesting styles and tempos. Many of these songs have been played regularly for decades. The top singers and musicians of today keep these songs current with their own takes on them.
I often include one of my own compositions and try to pair it with an appropriate standard. Many standards come with the date embedded in the title, which often forms the basis of a schedule (e.g. My Funny Valentine, Easter Parade), while others are seasonal, (e.g. Autumn Leaves, Summertime). Be careful of spring, though, because it can hang you up the most <groan-er alert>.
A few of the people I play with have offered to team up to produce a song with me. Given that everything that I have been doing is part of a virtual process, additional challenges are introduced when creating these songs with people who may live in a province you can't travel to. I am very grateful to all of them for taking the time to make music with me.
Technical Information
I would like give those technicians among you an idea of the steps involved in producing two songs each week. I use two computers for this project: a portable HP and a desktop PC. The software that I use on the portable is Band in a Box (BIAB), which is available for a fee, and Audacity, which is a shareware product similar to Cubase. The desktop also uses Audacity and supports the Apex435 Large Diaphragm Studio Condenser Microphone sound system connected through a Yamaha USB Audio Interface. The Internet allows me to transfer songs between people. I use email to distribute the songs and information to people on the mailing list.
This configuration lets me record into Audacity and combine it with the BIAB track of the band. Back Tracks are also available from YouTube, although they have to be converted into mp3 format for use by Audacity. In one situation I used a recorded voice track of Summertime from a phone to merge with the band track that had been sent to the singer. The challenge for that song was to synchronize both tracks. That experience has taught me that humans have the ability to distinguish or hear sound differences of 1/120th of a second.
Both computers are linked by Dropbox, which also serves as an additional offsite backup. I also use Google’s and Apple’s offsite storage facilities. I have separate storage areas for completed and uncompleted songs and for my borrowed material and my own material. A work-in-process database is used to track the transitory files created when completing a song.
Management – Feedback, Review, Innovate
That's basically the plan and process that I follow. Management is not an exact science. Life happens after you have made your plans. The best one can do is to keep track of what was done in light of what was planned to be done. I will follow up in the next installment by looking at things that may be coming as part of the second half of this project. I have had many suggestions for ways to create more interesting distributions. One was from my wife Sue, who suggested adding pictures to watch with the music. I will try to make that a feature in the future. Carole has asked for a playlist. That would be a great thing to have when I conclude this project.
To be continued…
Richard Moxley
[email protected]
P.S. If you would like to receive Rick Moxley's COVID Project emails, please let him know.