Massive online collaboration: Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir 4

As an amateur singer myself, I'm a bit ashamed that I only took notice of Eric Whitacre's virtual choir with the release of the fourth video on 11 July, premiered as part of the Coronation celebration gala concert.

It's a great example of how the online technology enables massive scale collaboration - in this case, the performance of a very large community choir: the volunteer singers (nearly 6000 of them in Virtual Choir 4, from over 100 countries) record their parts individually on a webcam and upload the recordings to Whitacre's team, who (funded by Kickstarter) mix the recordings together and create a video.

This is a method which excellently suits Whitacre, who for a classical composer has a huge worldwide fanbase ready to jump at the chance of singing his music to and with him. It also suits his trademark big-chord musical style: small differences and imperfections are averaged out in the aggregation process. (It wouldn't work so well, I think, for Bach's rapid counterpoint.)

Here's Whitacre being interviewed by Tim Lihoreau of ClassicFM just after the call for submissions, in which poor old Tim has to sightread the baritone part in front of its composer in order to show the working of the online interface (note the demonstration tracks, conducting and click tracks, and the ability to make multiple attempts).



Some of the singers have done their own video aggregations. One very skilled performer produced a video of himself singing all eight parts - but perhaps the more revealing aggregation is this one of fifteen singers (the originator did both soprano and alto parts); Eric Whitacre's conducting track is in the middle.



And here's the final product, with the addition of soloists, electronica instrumental track, and Manga-style animation.

Sign me up for Virtual Choir 5...


See also
Eric Whitacre's 2011 TED talk, reflecting on the Virtual Choir phenomenon and introducing Virtual Choir 2
Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir site