Dear Singing Friends,
I have joined the ranks what I am sure must be thousands of church choir directors creating virtual choir movies for weekly virtual church services. It is always surprising and moving to listen to the range of individual voices coming in from our choir singers with their wide range of abilities, and to hear how wonderful they sound when I put them all together.
Here are a few of the virtual choir pieces I have put up since my note last June about our virtual choirs. You can see more of them on my Amidon Choral Youtube channel which you can subscribe to by clicking on “Subscribe” on any of the below videos.
Magnificat – short, simple setting of the Magnificat text for piano/SAB.
Balm in Gilead – my harmonization of the classic African American spiritual.
Abolitionist My Country Tis of Thee – I collaborated with my pastor Lise Sparrow to update
A.G. Duncan’s 1843 abolitionist re-write of “My Country ‘Tis of Thee”.
Dreams to Be – sweet song by Donovan, solo by our grandson.
Dear Singing Friends (Take Two),
Since I sent the virtual choir email this morning, a few folks have asked how I produce these. I have left the original email at the bottom of this. I have pasted below a tutorial for using the free iMovie program that comes pre-loaded in every Mac. Note that I have since switched from iMovie to Final Cut Pro (you can download a fully functional Final Cut Pro program for a free 90-day trial) and much of the below is the same. It is set up very much like iMovie, but is faster and more powerful. The main difference is placing the individual films, which is much easier and more flexible with Final Cut Pro. I will send a Final Cut Pro tutorial soon.
Creating a Virtual Choir with iMovie – Peter Amidon
I used: iMovie, Audacity (thought everything I did in Audacity you can do in Garage Band), Quicktime Player, and iTunes.
Here is a Youtube tutorial I used that was most helpful.
Whenever I had a question or problem not answered by the above Youtube I Googled the question and usually got a useful answer.
Here is my tutorial: …