Global Song and Dance Collaboration 12.12.12

Global Song 11.11.11 part 1 - Good Tines from One Day on Earth on Vimeo.

PARTICIPATION INFORMATION

Once again as part of One Day on Earth we are inviting the world to participate in a collaboration of music and movement on Wednesday, December 12th, 2012. Take a look at the video above created from last years submissions and read up below on how to participate.

We are providing three sets of guide tracks this year. Each guide track within a set is in the same key and has similar structure to the other tracks in its set. All of the guide tracks are at either 70 or 140 BPM and in complementary key signatures which will allow lots of layering off the parts that everyone records on December 12th. The guide track sets are:

Swamp Logic - A minor (3 Variations)
Sailing the Seas Major - C Major (3 Variations)
Between Us and the Stars - E minor - (3 Variations) - Download simple sheet music for these tracks here.

Listen to the tracks below to see if any of them inspire you. All tracks are downloadable. Please contact us if you have any issues downloading the files.

How to participate
Singing and playing an instrument:
If you would like to sing or play an instrument one of the most important aspects of recording yourself to the guide track is that your voice or instrument is the only thing we should hear in your footage. We should not hear the original guide tracks. The beginning of each guide track contains four clicks/tones (1 bar) followed by another bar where you can hear a human voice counting. After those 8 beats (2 bars) is when the music starts. You are welcome to do a count-in on video to help us with placement of your parts.

A fairly easy way to record yourself is to put the guide tracks on a playback device like an ipod, wear headphones and play your instrument while recording it on your video camera. If you have professional audio recording gear and want to use that, please do but keep in mind that we really want video of you too, not just audio. When you are submitting your parts, let us know which guide track you played to and/or record yourself saying it on the video recording.

Dancing:
Dancing should be easier because, unlike musical parts, we WANT to hear the guide track in the video recording as it will help us immensely when combining all the footage. Basically just set up your camera/shot, play one of the guide tracks and dance to it.

Other filmable synchronized events:
Any kind of activity synchronized to 70 or 140 BPM would be great material to submit. Blinking lights, robotics or any other kind of movement you can think of. Can you get old hard drives to play music or are you a Max/MSP or Arduino expert? If you can sync stuff to 70/140 BPM and film it, this could be a great collaboration for you to contribute to.

Six other useful tips:
1. If you are using an iPhone or other smartphone, the footage is more useful if it is recorded in landscape mode.

2. While certainly not required, it might be more fun to do this with a friend or even a group. It is nice to have a dedicated person to operate the recording devices.

3. In a group jam, one person could wear headphones with the guide track and the other performers in the group could follow that person's lead.

4. On a similar note, a teacher or conductor could wear headphones to hear the guide tracks and conduct a group of performers.

5. While ideally, the guide track should not get onto your recordings, if you MUST have it on quietly and it gets onto your footage, it will still be useful.

6. Please don't send just audio. We very much want video as well. If you have professional recording gear and would like to record the audio seperate from the video, please do but if you only have a smartphone, point and shoot or DSLR with a built in microphone, audio recordings on these devices should be acceptable as long as there isn't a ton of wind noise or pops from the camera getting bumped around.

Other Resources:
Join the Facebook group here:
http://www.facebook.com/events/178722825599845/

Check out One Day on Earth's page for this project here:
One Day On Earth Global Song - 12.12.12

One Day on Earth is a project that asks you to contribute by filming what is important to you on 12.12.12:
http://www.onedayonearth.org