We are listening to the first Virtual Choir, curated by Eric Whitacre, the composer of this music, with 185 singers from 12 countries. These people did the recordings at their homes, wearing headphones, some people singing some parts, some singing other parts, and they were singing by looking at the conductor-composer himself in a silent film, who conducts everybody’s singing in an asynchronous way.
What we mean by “asynchronous,” is that they were not actually singing at the same time. They were singing in their spare time. Some people sing a few sentences, go to work, then back to home to record another two sentences.
They uploaded all their singing records to YouTube. And then Eric composed all these images, overlaid everybody’s voices on top of each other, and then formed a wall of everybody looking at their camera, singing together in perfect harmony.
After this one, the next one is 2,000 people, followed by “3.0”, “4.0” — they sung a lot more songs, in a way like this. In his most recent work, Eric also gave the permission of using the master tracks of all the voice tracks, so people can remix and use this music, compose and overlay them on other songs.
All this work are people contributing, sharing their time, to a commons on the Internet. It’s something everyone can draw from, can get inspiration from, and it’s something that’s bigger than any one of us.