Frequently Asked Questions:
- What is a virtual choir?
A choir needs no defining, but you may or may not have heard of a virtual choir. it's virtual because you can participate from a quiet location anywhere in the world and at a time of your convenience. This has been enabled by the Internet, which facilitates online access to practice music provided by Elm and participant submission of videos of them singing their chosen part or parts (i.e. generally Soprano, Alto, Tenor or Bass). which they record individually or in small groups using a webcam, tablet, smartphone or equivalent. Team Elm then processes all videos received into a professionally produced movie of a unified Choir virtual performance. - How can you run a choir free of membership subscription fees?
The Elm Virtual Choir is a not-for-profit organisation, run by a dedicated team of volunteers who are motivated by altruistic ideals. Core members of this voluntary group are living with a degenerative condition or live with a person such as this. Typically, they are comfortably retired from a lifetime of paid work and do not need additional income. All music performed by the Choir will be royalty free original works or others where copyright and royalty constraints have been waived. Systems are based on, as much as possible, freeware software and low-fee or members' privately funded Internet service provision. Unavoidable operating and project costs will be kept as low as possible and will be met by donor/sponsor funding, affiliate link fees (commercial entities only) and joint venture capital. Development project costs may also be offset by Government funding grants. - Why are their no auditions?
The Elm Virtual Choir is a community choir of special people who share a common bond; a love of singing and a belief in the power of adopting a positive mind-set and life-style. Its modus operandi is to be inclusive rather than exclusive. The Choir's 'door' is open to all who wish to give it a go, no matter the quality of their voice and technique, in pursuit of joy and improved well-being and quality of life. As in conventional community choirs, we depend on the more expert, trained singers in our Choir to anchor each part. We encourage these more competent singers to join us with good heart, taking comfort and satisfaction that comes from supporting less capable members of the Choir. - Will the quality of the Choir's performances be mediocre?
No. Unlike live performances, singers in the Elm Virtual Choir enjoy many advantages, namely;
- their 'conductor' directs every part explicitly, from beginning to end,
- their 'conductor' is able to verbalise instructions during a performance,
- they can be uninhibited, as they can perform with complete privacy,
- they can perform at a time when they are most able,
- they can avoid missing concert dates/times due to diary conflicts,
- they can record their part as many times as necessary to achieve their best,
- they can record and consolidate multiple takes to smooth their voice,
- they will use state of the art tools with which to practise and record,
- they will receive accurate and immediate feedback of tempo/pitch accuracy and be provided with analytical data during each practice/recording session,
- they can hear exactly how they sound after each recording (a valuable albeit humbling advantage),
- they can ensure only their best singing is returned for compilation,
- their small errors of technique can be cleaned, and the quality of their voice improved using post-processing software,
- the melding of voices will be smoother, as the size of the Choir is not limited by the physical size of performance venues. - I don't read music! What does it all mean?
See Terms and Symbols
- How did the Choir's name originate?
The Bennett and Palmer families proposed and considered numerous options, before settling on 'Each Living Moment' as being the most appropriate. The suitability of the name is self-evident and reduces to the acronym Elm, on which the logo theme of an elm leaf was derived. This acronym is all the more appropriate given the Dutch Elm Disease challenge faced by the European Elm.