Organizing a Complaints Choir

People had sent me quite a few complaints ahead of time in emails. I printed those out, organized them by categories, and used glue sticks to paste them onto pieces of poster board. I stuck these boards up around the room.

When the meeting opened:

1. Glenn and I introduced ourselves as the organizers, and then everybody in the group made a "hello."
   
2. I invited the participants to go around the room and have a look at the various boards.
   
3. We all sat down again. I introduced a "complaints warmup" I had concocted from some of the earlier emailed complaints.
   
4. Participants had an opportunity to compose more complaints - I had brought scratch paper squares for them, and glue sticks.
   
5. People took their new complaints and added them to the correct boards.
   
6. We invited participants to cluster near the boards which were nearest to their hearts. Those gathered around the "Traffic" board, for instance, used the next twenty minutes or so to discuss and edit complaints, starring the ones they liked best and crossing out the ones they rejected.
   
7. We sat again. Then one representative from each board stood up and read the selected, edited complaints from their category.
   
8. We ate, chatted, and said good-bye until next time!
   
9. Glenn took the boards home with him and over the next two weeks wrote a song using about half the complaints; we rehearsed that half at the second meeting.
   
10. I took the rest of the complaints and added them to the song, using modules of the song Glenn had already written. We practiced the whole thing at our third meeting.

Glenn and I both use Sibelius to compose, arrange, and edit our musical arrangements. But since Glenn will not be available for our rehearsals, I needed to make wav files I could burn onto a cd to play through a pa speaker. (An alternate way: make the midis into mp3s and put them on an iPod or an mp3 player to plug into an amplifier the same way.)

After quite a bit of experimentation with freeware and shareware programs, I discovered the easiest way to do this if you are operating a Windows PC computer (macs have their own methods) is this:

1. Download Winamp (it's free).
   
2. Install it (being careful to turn down all the add-ons it offers you).
   
3. Click the OPTIONS menu - then click PREFERENCES
   
4. Under PLUGINS click "INPUT" and then highlight Nullsoft MIDI Player
   
5. Click "configure" and under "device" choose DirectMusic / Microsoft Synthesizer (with output) and under "DirectMusic" choose 44100 Hz Mixing Frequency. Click OK
   
6. Go back to PLUGINS click "OUTPUT" and choose "Nullsoft Disk Writer" and "configure" - type in the directory where you want your wav files saved. (I left the default choice, "My Music," which I don't use for anything else.) Close the dialog box.

Now, when you click file/open (or shortcut key L) and choose one of your midi files, instead of playing it out loud it reads it into a wav file which it automatically saves in the directory you designated. You can work on the wav files in cooledit or audacity or soundforge, etc. to boost volume etc. if necessary.

The how-to sent from headquarters says: "There should be only one musician." I thought that was an odd dictum, and certainly many of the complaints choirs seen on youtube have several musicians! But I think what they meant was: there should be only one musician "in charge."

Glenn and I are both used to running choruses and we each have our own method. He found my collaborative style intrusive (I like to do things "together," he likes to get a project and go away and do it himself). He teaches from the piano, because he's a pianist, and I teach by singing parts within the circle of singers (because I'm a singer). As it turned out, Glenn got too busy to attend our rehearsals anyway, so I'm going to finish teaching the song and he's going to come back for performance day.

Headquarters also states: "There should be a meal at the end of every rehearsal." This was problematic for us because the space where we rehearse is not set up for eating. We had snacks and drinks, but I think eating a real dinner together (they suggest soup) would be friendlier.

As anticipated, our singers range from complete beginners - who do not read music and have never sung with anybody before - to experienced and even professional choristers. They have different needs as far as learning goes. For experienced musicians (and for everyone of course) we have nicely-printed out sheet music (Glenn and I both use Sibelius).

For people who don't read music, we have posted files on our website: midi files made from the Sibelius score, and some mp3s of me singing the various parts.

We have looked at a lot of the videos of complaints choirs on youtube, and see that many different kinds of venues have been used, from concert halls to stop signs under elevated train stations.

We are currently trying to figure out good places to sing on our target date, May 2. They should be:

• easy to get to;
  
• have a lot of natural traffic;
  
• not be too noisy.

It would be nice if they were photogenic too, but let's be honest: Chapel Hill can't compete with the Shinto temples and giant statues of Polish war heroes featured in some of the videos.

I made this logo, and got stickers of it for our notebooks. Maybe t-shirts or hats?

We have our first location set: noon at the community commons area at Weaver Street Market in Carrboro, NC, May 2 2010.

However, it turns out to be very hard to find legal public spots to perform in this area. I tried the spot in front of the main post office but the Town of Chapel Hill says they won't issue a permit for Sunday because of "church." UNC campus, across the street, has a lovely spot there AND electric power but they say "the spot is not approved for performances." I've tried several other locations and been refused or my phone calls are not answered. Finally I turned to "Public Arts of Chapel Hill" and the coordinator there says he'll try to find us a space.

Lesson learned: no wonder many Complaints Choirs don't ask permission, they just go someplace and do it, figuring they'll be gone before the police show up with the paddy wagon. However, with an electric piano and a speaker and mics, we are not that mobile! It would be annoying to set up and then have the police come along and break it up...

Also, I'd like to be able to publicize the places we're appearing.

Then back to our rehearsal space to do our final task: the actual recording of the audio for the youtube video we'll make.