Melbourne uke’n’Sing Orchestra

Welcome to MUSO

MUSO is all about the blend - making music together while helping each of us develop our unique voice. Each fortnight MUSOs will luxuriate in vocal harmony, while extending our uke playing, as we bust out new arrangements that transcend the ukulele canon.

Comfortable beginner strummers* through to accomplished noodlers will all find something of interest at MUSO and we promise that singing will get just as much love as the fab four strings.

*Budding MUSOs (i.e. absolute beginners), can sign up for individual or small group lessons to get up to speed and join MUSO the following term.

MUSO TERM 2

Money Where Your Mouth Is video

We want to make a music video with you to celebrate the learning and connections we made in our first term together. No doubt by now you have seen some of the popular "isolation" videos that have been made by groups like Couch (Pub) Choir, Camden Singers and many others. Have a google to find your favourite. Here are some of ours (there is almost nothing that a bit of reverb cannot fix!)

The original Virtual Choir was made popular by Eric Whitacre (of Depeche Mode fame) – uniting voices around the planet. Check out Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir - 'Lux Aurumque'. It's 10 years old, but the idea is potent right now.

We think the MUSO music video could look something like this Money Where Your Mouth Is - Lo-fi Demo: but with way less of us and much more of you!

What do you do?

1. REMIND yourself how the song goes:

VOICE: The learning track for your voice part (high, middle, low) is also your guide track for the recording. Find the one you need in this playlist: MUSO Learning Tracks. The most important thing to focus on is trying to get the phrasing as close to the demo as possible for a nice clean audio finish – almost more important than worrying about the notes!

UKE: There are two options for ukulele – a BASIC strum which is demonstrated in the HIGH voice video. And an INTERMEDIATE strum which is in the MIDDLE and LOW voice tracks. If you would like to develop a u-bass part or have an idea for some additional tricky licks get in touch so we can work out how best to fit them in.

2. PREPARING your location:

Notice the LIGHT in the room you want to do your recording – make sure that if the room has a window you face toward it so that there is nice light on your face (and so you are not backlit: we won't be able to see out the window anyway and you will just be a silhouette)

BACKGROUND can be whatever you want but remember that other people will see it, so if you have this weeks washing in the background remember it is a look that is gonna be shared! And some of us might enjoy that - who am I to say?

3. RECORDING:

PLAY THE GUIDE TRACK on your desktop PC or tablet or someone else's phone and listen with HEADPHONES or ear buds so we don't hear the guide track on your finished video

USING YOUR PHONE to record is probably the best way to do this as phone cameras have lovely lenses and record in terrific resolution.

COUNTDOWN – please read it out loud with the video so that we can sync the sound

HAVE FUN. Yes it is confronting to film yourself but in the end you will be surrounded by friends and have a lovely memento of our MUSO term together and a positive reminder of his crazy time. No copyright issues here! This will be your video to share as you wish.

3. UPLOAD:

You can upload to either our MUSO Shared Google Drive, or use this file transfer service https://wetransfer.com/.

Go to the link,
hit the "Send a file?" button,
click the "+" button and choose your file from your camera roll (no need to put a message)
hit "next", leave the button on "send an email", hit "next"
enter email muso.melb@gmail.com then enter your email and hit "TRANSFER" you'll have to verify your email but then you'll be done!

You can contact us to troubleshoot if you need any support. Please upload by end of day Friday 1 May so we can the editing process underway ASAP!

We hope to launch the video in our SUNDAYS@6 FB live concert series, provided it can be finished by then!

If you are interested in the film making process you can read up about it HERE!

Thanks so much for being part of our uke community – we love what you've made of MUSO and hope we can continue to bring you fun stuff through our lockdown lives.