How to set up virtual Christmas carolling, as told by Malaysian churches

One of the staples of the Christmas festivities for many is carolling in the neighbourhood! Whether you’re a caroller, or you live in the vicinity of regular carollers, the joyful sound of hymns being performed by choirs through the night can be one of the best things about the year-end holidays.

But in 2020, Christmas carolling will certainly be different. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it may not be advisable for carollers to congregate in crowds—be it to practise carols, or to perform them on the day of Christmas. However, a number of churches have taken a different approach this year by digitalising the entire process, proving that with the right tools and mindset, Christmas does not have to be a quiet affair this year.

So, how did they set everything up? The Malay Mail reached out to representatives from St Mark’s Anglican Church and St Simon’s Catholic Church, with choristers from the Seremban and Sabah-based churches explaining the process.

Step 1: Practise, practise, practise

Choirs are traditionally large in size, and Elvy John Ansibin, St Simon Catholic Church’s assistant choir leader, explained that choristers are used to having up to 44 people in a group for practice sessions. This year however, four choristers were chosen to represent each vocal range group (bass, alto, tenor, soprano), before passing on the experience to other choristers in their respective groups—online.

“We took a lot of time off to come to church to practise the songs and make sure that no one was off beat and we made sure each one of us practised hard enough as we represented each vocal range group.”

Then, members of the choir practised their parts at home, singing along with playback from recording devices. Of course, the feeling wasn’t quite the same as the carolling/practising in person, as Elvy explained:

“From singing in a group to singing to recording devices definitely felt strange in the beginning as we didn’t have a proper audience to share the same joy with us.”

Step 2: Avoid contemporary Christmas songs

St Mark’s Anglican Church decided to stay away from contemporary Christmas songs, opting to carol more traditional hymns for their virtual Christmas carols. This is because contemporary Christmas songs tend to be newer, which means that there might be copyright issues, according to the church’s choral advisor, Maria Thomas.

“It was a refreshing experience for the audience which were social media users including our church members who praised us for virtual carolling and incorporating the songs that they like listening to.”

Step 3: Record everything from home, and piece it together

According to Maria, some choristers found it challenging when recording the carols at home—the combination of devices used to record and listen to a backing track proved to be “demotivating”.

“When we asked the choir members whether they still wanted to continue singing and recording for Christmas, all of them said yes.

“So that was when we met in November, choristers came in batches where two of the youth members recorded them singing.”

Additionally, combining everyone’s recordings and putting them together into a single video proved to be difficult, although one of the choristers involved participated in a two-week online course and managed to produce the video above. But the experience was still a rewarding one—although Maria mentioned that it was still “not as fun as being together and singing in a group.

Regardless, it’s truly heart-warming that folks have banded together to bring Christmas cheer in 2020, despite the challenges and obstacles that COVID-19 has caused. I’ll also add that the type of recording equipment used is essential when producing a multi-layer track like the above, while you should also pre-record everything before streaming the video for your audience. This is because latency (lag/delay) issues often cause livestreams to go out of sync, particularly if you’re livestreaming from 44 individuals at the same time.

We’ve also compiled a more detailed guide on taking your Christmas celebrations virtual this year, which you can read about here. Or, you can simply watch the embedded video below:

[ SOURCE , IMAGE VIA ]

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