January 4, 2021
Emily Tsai
Happy new year everyone! Even though it is past the holiday season, we never think it's too late to spread a little holiday cheer around after a year like 2020. While we've been unable to perform live together, we have been busy making multitrack videos, one of which is our new commission, Hold Sacred, by Akshaya Avril Tucker that was premiered on December 17, 2020. Check out our projects page to watch it and other WindSync commissions!
For me personally, I headed up our holiday video project which consisted of the old WindSync tradition: 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. It's made up of 6 holiday tunes interspersed with lines from the famous poem, "A Visit from St. Nicholas" by Clement Clarke Moore. To start the project, I created a click track on my music writing software and brushed off my old music theory skills so I could put a bass line drone along with the click for intonation's sake! Several songs had tempo changes and fermata holds so it wasn't as straight forward as some of the other pieces we've multi-tracked together where it was one consistent tempo the whole way through. Making sure that my colleagues knew where to change tempo and exactly how fast or slow to change caused me to really think of upbeats and how important that information is when we perform music. In an orchestra, the conductor is there to give everyone the upbeat so all 50-100 people on stage can start, change, and stop together. In chamber music, we give each other upbeats with our breaths and body language. To try and capture all that in a click track was not easy, so to make extra sure my colleagues knew what was going on, I made scratch recordings (and oh were they complete and total scratch!!) of myself playing the melody lines over the click/drone so they could follow along as they recorded.
Luckily, everyone seemed to have no problems with all the tempo changes and once I had all the recordings, I uploaded them into my audio editing software and went to work on lining us all up and mixing our sound so it hopefully gave the illusion that we were playing together in the same room and acoustic. As experienced a group of musicians as we are, there are still small inconsistencies in terms of where we put rhythms within each beat that are agreed upon when we perform live together. On our own, however, some of us naturally play on the back of the beat and some on the front so there were many edits to be made in moving our parts around by microseconds to ensure that we lined up with all of our rhythms. This was especially precarious in the Miriltons piece where everything is short and precise! Once everything was lined up and mixed together, it was time to line up the audio with the videos.
I didn't want to just put our 5 videos on screen all at the same time because it reminded me too much of zoom meetings that we all love and hate by this point. I went through each piece and wanted to show who was playing a particularly interesting part at any given time. Maybe something like how a live audience member would look at each of us playing at different points in a performance and not just keep one viewpoint the whole time. This didn't always mean I focused in on the person playing the melody of course because I also wanted an even mixture of all 5 of us in the spotlight for each piece. Then came the fun part of sprucing up the video with little animations and decorations! As a very amateur video editor, everything was new and foreign to me so I spent more time than I should have researching how to animate certain things, especially the sleigh at the end of Jingle Bells and the red nose in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Although it was quite time consuming, in the end it was a super fun challenge and learning experience! (See below for the finished product.)
Now on to my next video project where WindSync will quiz each other with instrument trivia! Coming soon!
For me personally, I headed up our holiday video project which consisted of the old WindSync tradition: 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. It's made up of 6 holiday tunes interspersed with lines from the famous poem, "A Visit from St. Nicholas" by Clement Clarke Moore. To start the project, I created a click track on my music writing software and brushed off my old music theory skills so I could put a bass line drone along with the click for intonation's sake! Several songs had tempo changes and fermata holds so it wasn't as straight forward as some of the other pieces we've multi-tracked together where it was one consistent tempo the whole way through. Making sure that my colleagues knew where to change tempo and exactly how fast or slow to change caused me to really think of upbeats and how important that information is when we perform music. In an orchestra, the conductor is there to give everyone the upbeat so all 50-100 people on stage can start, change, and stop together. In chamber music, we give each other upbeats with our breaths and body language. To try and capture all that in a click track was not easy, so to make extra sure my colleagues knew what was going on, I made scratch recordings (and oh were they complete and total scratch!!) of myself playing the melody lines over the click/drone so they could follow along as they recorded.
Luckily, everyone seemed to have no problems with all the tempo changes and once I had all the recordings, I uploaded them into my audio editing software and went to work on lining us all up and mixing our sound so it hopefully gave the illusion that we were playing together in the same room and acoustic. As experienced a group of musicians as we are, there are still small inconsistencies in terms of where we put rhythms within each beat that are agreed upon when we perform live together. On our own, however, some of us naturally play on the back of the beat and some on the front so there were many edits to be made in moving our parts around by microseconds to ensure that we lined up with all of our rhythms. This was especially precarious in the Miriltons piece where everything is short and precise! Once everything was lined up and mixed together, it was time to line up the audio with the videos.
I didn't want to just put our 5 videos on screen all at the same time because it reminded me too much of zoom meetings that we all love and hate by this point. I went through each piece and wanted to show who was playing a particularly interesting part at any given time. Maybe something like how a live audience member would look at each of us playing at different points in a performance and not just keep one viewpoint the whole time. This didn't always mean I focused in on the person playing the melody of course because I also wanted an even mixture of all 5 of us in the spotlight for each piece. Then came the fun part of sprucing up the video with little animations and decorations! As a very amateur video editor, everything was new and foreign to me so I spent more time than I should have researching how to animate certain things, especially the sleigh at the end of Jingle Bells and the red nose in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Although it was quite time consuming, in the end it was a super fun challenge and learning experience! (See below for the finished product.)
Now on to my next video project where WindSync will quiz each other with instrument trivia! Coming soon!
September 24, 2020
Emily Tsai
As one of the members of WindSync who doesn't live in Houston, I am sad to be missing our first live performance together since COVID that will take place in Blanco, TX this Saturday. However, I know it will be a fantastic performance and I look forward to a time when it is safer for all of us to travel and perform live together again!
In the meantime, I've been keeping busy with teaching online music lessons, making reeds (of course!), home recording projects (check them out here!), and working on multi-track recordings and video for WindSync. I've sort of become a self-taught, very rudimentary "sound engineer" and "video editor" during my time stuck at home! The learning never stops and I am so fortunate to have the time and means to continue learning new skills.
I've also had the great fortune of being able to perform in a few outdoor concerts in the DC area where I am based. After not performing for so long, playing music live with other musicians for socially distanced audiences was a fantastic feeling. You never know how much you miss something until it's gone. Those performances made me look forward even more to my first concert back with WindSync!
Recently, I drove out to Indianapolis, IN (9 hours!) to visit with some relatives and my high school oboe teacher, Malcolm Smith, his wife, and the fantastic oboe repairman expert, Carlos Coelho! The drive was surprisingly not dull or difficult and luckily in my little hybrid car, I made it almost the whole way there on one tank of gas! Seeing my old teacher was a huge inspirational boost for me during this time when the arts are so hard hit. I studied with Dr. Smith since I was in middle school and he was one of the main reasons why I chose to major in oboe performance in college. I started young on the violin at age four and had kept up with both the violin and oboe throughout my middle and high school years. When it came time for me to look at colleges, my parents heavily suggested that I do a science degree of some sort (they were hoping for pre-med!) in addition to my music degree but I had wanted to major in both violin and oboe. Three degrees would probably not have been a good idea! I still remember when Dr. Smith and I had a long conversation during one of my lessons about the reasons why he thought I could succeed as an oboist. He was also the one who suggested I audition for Mr. Killmer at Eastman. Am I ever glad that he nudged me in that direction!
Good luck to Anni, Garrett, Julian, and Kara at their concert this Saturday! Can't wait to see them and all of you someday soon!
In the meantime, I've been keeping busy with teaching online music lessons, making reeds (of course!), home recording projects (check them out here!), and working on multi-track recordings and video for WindSync. I've sort of become a self-taught, very rudimentary "sound engineer" and "video editor" during my time stuck at home! The learning never stops and I am so fortunate to have the time and means to continue learning new skills.
I've also had the great fortune of being able to perform in a few outdoor concerts in the DC area where I am based. After not performing for so long, playing music live with other musicians for socially distanced audiences was a fantastic feeling. You never know how much you miss something until it's gone. Those performances made me look forward even more to my first concert back with WindSync!
Recently, I drove out to Indianapolis, IN (9 hours!) to visit with some relatives and my high school oboe teacher, Malcolm Smith, his wife, and the fantastic oboe repairman expert, Carlos Coelho! The drive was surprisingly not dull or difficult and luckily in my little hybrid car, I made it almost the whole way there on one tank of gas! Seeing my old teacher was a huge inspirational boost for me during this time when the arts are so hard hit. I studied with Dr. Smith since I was in middle school and he was one of the main reasons why I chose to major in oboe performance in college. I started young on the violin at age four and had kept up with both the violin and oboe throughout my middle and high school years. When it came time for me to look at colleges, my parents heavily suggested that I do a science degree of some sort (they were hoping for pre-med!) in addition to my music degree but I had wanted to major in both violin and oboe. Three degrees would probably not have been a good idea! I still remember when Dr. Smith and I had a long conversation during one of my lessons about the reasons why he thought I could succeed as an oboist. He was also the one who suggested I audition for Mr. Killmer at Eastman. Am I ever glad that he nudged me in that direction!
Good luck to Anni, Garrett, Julian, and Kara at their concert this Saturday! Can't wait to see them and all of you someday soon!