{"id":32853,"date":"2020-09-04T16:22:52","date_gmt":"2020-09-04T16:22:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/?post_type=cu_story&p=32853"},"modified":"2025-02-03T11:30:16","modified_gmt":"2025-02-03T16:30:16","slug":"saving-carletons-performance-ensembles","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/story\/saving-carletons-performance-ensembles\/","title":{"rendered":"Saving Carleton’s Performance Ensembles"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Saving Carleton’s Performance Ensembles\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Music student Rebecca Cowal holds a small sound mixer up to her webcam and points somewhere off-screen towards a new microphone setup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI had no idea. I didn\u2019t know anything about sound recording, or live sound for that matter,\u201d she admits over a Zoom call from her bedroom, now doubling as a home studio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cowal is entering her 4th<\/sup> year of the Carleton Music program this fall. But first, for a few weeks over the summer, the saxophonist has participated in an experimental project with faculty, instructors, ensemble directors, technicians, and fellow students to prepare for the realities of learning and playing music online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Undergraduate
Undergraduate music student Rebecca Cowal\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The project has been dubbed OMER (Online Music Ensemble Research) and was spearheaded by Professor and Helmut Kallman Chair for Music in Canada Ellen Waterman<\/a>. It\u2019s one of 59 projects funded through Carleton University\u2019s COVID-19 Rapid Research Response Grant<\/a> initiative, and has received additional support from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and School for Studies in Art and Culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the University called for proposals, OMER Project Director Prof. Waterman seized the opportunity to pull Carleton\u2019s expertise together. Instead of lamenting the loss of in-person interactions and music-making, she and the team are hopeful and optimistic.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s less of an unhappy sacrifice, and more of an opportunity to do something brave and exciting.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The main purpose of OMER is to rework Carleton\u2019s jazz and choir ensembles and applied rhythm class for an online format. Prof. Waterman says the goal of the summer experiment is not to invent new technologies, but to respond to the question: \u201cWhat is the ensemble experience, both pedagogically, and in terms of affect, emotion, intimacy, and community building?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Helmut
Helmut Kallman Chair for Music in Canada Ellen Waterman<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Risk of Not Finding a Solution<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The team\u2019s proposal stressed that ensemble music pedagogy develops core skills such as listening, timing, expressiveness, and teamwork, and so an effective methodology for online choir, band and ear-training was urgently needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The risk of not developing such a methodology for real-time online musical collaboration is all the more significant because making music together is a primary motivation for students to undertake post-secondary music studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn academic theory and musicology courses, we don\u2019t really play too often, so the ensembles are hugely important \u2013 it\u2019s where it\u2019s at,\u201d says Cowal. \u201cSo I think the OMER project is really putting a lot of time and effort into trying to deliver those ensembles in a way that still offers that camaraderie and collaboration, and makes you feel like you\u2019re part of a community.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

OMER\u2019s timeline was carefully planned out and began with a preliminary literature review and testing of technologies in June and July, followed by three weeks of Lab Ensemble, wherein strategies were tested through three ensemble case studies: choir, jazz, and applied rhythmic training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The primary software programs the team has used are Zoom, SoundJack, BandLab, My Choral Coach and JamTaba. Some of the initial options explored were promising new technologies three months ago, but no longer exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople have been trying to do remote online \u2018real-time\u2019 jamming since the early days of the internet, so there is a lot of info to go through and refine,\u201d says John Rosefield, audio specialist with Carleton University Event Support and member of OMER\u2019s research team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rosefield teaches a Live Sound course for the Music program, and was asked to test out synchronous (real-time) software solutions for OMER\u2019s lab ensembles. He says he arrived at SoundJack<\/a> after exploring nearly ten other platforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was looking at everything through the filter of \u2018is this software cross-platform\u2019, \u2018is it accessible for all, minimal to no cost, open source\u2019, and \u2018is it user friendly\u2019.  We needed to find something that could be deployed out to all students fairly easily and seamlessly,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"John
John Rosefield (Photo: Mary Giles)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When he looked into SoundJack, it seemed to check all the boxes. The program uses \u2018peer to peer\u2019 connections, so every participant connects individually to every other participant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSoundJack is the only platform I\u2019ve used so far that gives the user access to controls at the input stage, at the network stage and at the receive stage of the signal,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This means that buffer settings can be adjusted to compensate for variances in the unique way  that digital information is being sent from and received by each connected participant.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cFrom a sound engineer\u2019s standpoint, this is advantageous because I can connect to a session and have up to 16 individual feeds into my mixer, allowing me to record or potentially remix and re-broadcast the session,\u201d he adds.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Listen below to the Lab Ensemble students playing jazz standard Georgia together online using SoundJack<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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