 Yeah, we're back. We're live. I'm Jay Fiedel. This is Tink Tech. This is Community Matters on Tink Tech. And we have Mihau Novitski. And he is the leader of Carol's Carolers. And we have had some, what do you want to say, contact with Carol's Carolers over the past, what, three years now? And so we're getting to know them pretty well, only at Christmas though. And they've been very kind to us. They've come to our Christmas gatherings. And they've sung in groups. And this year, because it's been virtual, they gave us their product as three separate videos. One was Silent Night, one was Come All You Faithful. And the third was Joy to the World. And we are so, we are so joyous to have them. Welcome, Mihau. Thank you for having me. Yeah, great to see you. So we're going to play Come All You Faithful first. I'm sorry. We're going to play Joy to the World first. And we'll play the others downline in the show here. But can you give us a little background on how you put this together? Because this is an extraordinary video. Right. So actually, we had to interrupt our spring season when COVID struck. And that was really sad for us. We were just getting our post Christmas wind in the sail, so to speak. And ready to go with our program. We were thinking even on starting on some repertoire that we might want to present this coming summer, we were hoping to do a little carolers trip outside of Hawaii. And so we're really excited about it. And then, of course, we decided to stop rehearsing and stop meeting. And soon after, of course, there was a whole buzz about making music virtually and doing it together via Zoom. And a lot of enthusiasm behind it. And of course, really quickly, everyone found out that, wait a second, it's not quite this easy. No, not easy at all. Yeah. And there's a whole tech side to it that most musicians did not train. And everyone has a little bit of know-how how to do things. I think technology has advanced and made it more accessible for a lot of people. But it still took quite a bit of thinkering to figure it out. But actually in that spring, my brother, Katal, who is the musical director of the group, I'm in the shadows running the logistics most of the time. But he really is called the namesake of the group and the person who put it all together. He laid down some tracks for a couple of secular non-Christmas songs for our spring season. And we just wanted to do an experiment and see how we could adapt and do it. And there were just too many challenges for us that time. And I don't know if you remember, but I think at that time, we all kind of thought that, oh, maybe this was just going to come and go in a couple of weeks. And of course, it didn't. So as week after week and month after month past, you know, I think everyone in the group was getting more and more starved for music. So kind of the motivation to do something increases. And with that, I think the willingness to take some risks, to try something new. And actually with your email, Jay, that I sneakily use as leverage for our group, you know, say, well, our friends at ThinkTech are having a virtual holiday party. And they would like us to sing for them. So what do you say? We do it. And at that point, everyone, this was, I am not kidding. This was the fastest response we've received from everyone. I think at that time, we had 13 members. The members have changed this a little bit every year. And within 24 hours, we've got 13 ESS. It's never happened before. And then, of course, okay, well, I guess we'll have to figure out how to do it exactly. And I hope that we managed to put something together. Oh, you did. It's beautiful. In the past, we've done similar, called it COVID corrals with Chamber Music Hawaii and with the music school at UH. And the difference I might add, and I'm going to ask you about this, the difference is Chamber Music Hawaii recorded it separately and then edited the pieces one on top the other. The music school played at the same time. And they managed to play over the web using Zoom, which was really very hard to do. I'm sure you went through that. But which method did you use? Did you record it separately, one by one, one person by one person, or did you record it all together on Zoom? Right. So with Zoom, the issue of the delay and the network speed and latency and all that stuff was too much. And because of, I think, the varying levels of tech savvy between the members, as you would expect, we decided to try to facilitate the process by actually creating a little studio in a separated section of our house and bringing people one by one on a schedule. And you would have one person or two people come maybe in a day. We'd have half an hour in between to sanitize everything and stuff like that. And that seemed to help quite a bit. Because then what we're really asking from the singer is to focus on the music. And then they get the track in advance. The carols that we picked for this specific season were ones that we sang, of course, in the past. So they were a little easier to manage. Of course, the big challenge with choral singing is that you are constantly tuning to the other people that you're singing with. So unlike the piano where you press the key and the note comes out, there's an intricate connection between the ear and the voice and kind of trying to create a blend. So you're not really just singing with your own voice. You're trying to produce a ethereal sound in front of everyone. And that's extremely difficult to do by yourself. So it took a little bit of time. We did send the practice tracks for everyone to familiarize themselves with singing just their part, their harmony part, unless you're a soprano, they get to sing the melody. That's why everyone always rags in sopranos a little bit. And once they came in, having practiced that, we had a little setup with a microphone and light so they would not be encumbered by it. They listened to the track for the rhythm to keep making a steady rhythm, which of course is critical in this production. And we recorded a few takes. And then when the singer was like, okay, I feel like I finally shook off my cold feet. I feel pretty good about this. We take a break and do another Christmas carol in the same way and another one. We roughly scheduled a two hour window for a singer. And it's a quite involved process. And it's very fatiguing. And it's very uncomfortable to do it. I had to do it too. And I have to admit I do not have as much musical training and background as a lot of the singers in the group. So for me, it was absolutely nerve-racking to be there in front of the camera, in front of the mic, and now sing your part by yourself and cross your fingers and hope for the best. And what helped tremendously too is that Kadol is a music director at St. Clement's. And he's been doing a virtual choir services in a similar way. He's working every week to produce musical tracks ahead of time for the church choir. He sends them out and the choir members at home practice and record without video. There are parts and they're put together. And so he had a little bit of that experience. I've doubled a little bit in theater myself. So we kind of put what we had together. And I think we were all pleasantly surprised with what came out. Oh, we were delighted. Let me ask you one more question before we actually watch the first one, Joy to the World. But when a given singer was singing, could that singer hear the others who have already sung? How did you get him on pitch? He was, I guess, wearing or she wearing headphones and he was or she was listening to something. What was he or she listening to at the time he was singing? Right. So we actually, within our small bubble in our house, we do have five singers and we had five parts, you know, or five voices. So we were able to create the four part track together. And it was, you know, it was imperfect and it was not a track that we would want to, you know, naturally produce. But in the time frame that we had to work, we decided to use that as the baseline so that singers, as they sing, they're aware where they are, what the rhythm is and everyone then has this one common track to which, you know, they align their I see. So you don't use it in the end, but you use it as a way to stimulate the one singer that you are recording at that time. Right, right. So that was kind of a guide for them. And we and we kept that we use the same same track for everyone without adding or laying our additional voices till we actually had all of them recorded and the ones we put those voices together. That's the that's the final product that that you can hear. Brilliant. Okay, we're going to we're going to listen now to Joy to the World one of your various carols and then when we get done, you and I will examine it retrospectively and see what we can learn because this is a new technology that's being developed and I I suggest you're going to see more and more of this not only by carols carolers but other other groups as well. Okay, let's hear it now. Interesting joy to the world. Yeah, Miho, anytime you want to make a movie for Think Tech, you let me know. Because that you know there was that was so sophisticated the way you handled all that those windows those are not necessarily zoom windows you had to edit them together those in that particular organization. The sound was really really good and the way you set it up for the bumpers at the beginning in the end. So that was you right Miho? Um, so yes, most of most of the video editing, you know, I've I've tried to experiment with different, you know, programs and and I know they're they're new web based, you know, apps that can help you with that and there's, you know, of course a plethora of apps on the on the iPhone but in the end I end up downloading a free trial of Final Cut Pro and had to do a little crash course on that and it was the only, you know, once you end up adding one video another video third of the fourth finally has to have 13 videos of you know decent resolution on the screen and you know Final Cut for me was the only one that did not so to speak poop out under this the under the pressure all of that even though my computer shut down several times, unfortunately everything was saved every time so I have to say you know I was very I was very happy with with how that turned out even though it was quite frustrating you know when when everything is turtle speed and as you're jogging so many videos of course that's something that I think nobody imagined that it would be you know so so so heavy I think yeah yeah well welcome to the world of video editing it's always like that I'm telling you you know these products come out and say oh yeah it's easy there's always issues always no matter what because the resources don't necessarily work together so how did you you did color correction because all the all the singers look really terrific and they all had the same kind of color in them and and of course you you you got the levels of the sound just right and you synchronize this sound so that it was really perfect that must have been a you must be a past master at Final Cut Pro now hey not not even close I I wish but I have to say that each editing each carol we started with joy to the world and when you know Kamali faithful and and silent night and working on each carol was so much easier than working in the previous one because the process is is is quite long and arduous and I think you pick up so many things and you know having said that I don't think it would have been possible for just one person to to do it and and actually the the lining up of the of the music was done with you know by carol himself and bulk of it actually was done by our soprano Brittany Alexander you know who attentively listened to every single track and made sure that you know it lines up what I didn't realize is is how how much the you know the the synchronizing how sensitive it is and when when we speak to each other we speak over the phone we don't realize that these delays are there and we're perfectly fine with that when you're putting sounds together you know one one tenth of a second is is audible and and and throws off the harmony so getting things to you know one one twentieth of a second or point zero five and and and those kind of precision and of course we couldn't catch all of it and it was impossible but Brittany did an absolutely outstanding job you know carol did a bunch of work and and polishing we also got some consultations from from one of our tenors Bo Sousa who who had some experience working with garage band he's teaching choir at saying his priory so he also was experimenting with different with different ways to do it and and yeah it was it was really a carol or village effort to put it all together and of course it wouldn't be possible without all the singers being willing to you know despite the times and these difficulties and how you know nerve racking this process is uh you know to to give it their best and and and uh and make it happen yeah and they had to record more than once to get it to a point where you wanted it am i right yeah absolutely you know it's it's funny because you when you see the private like oh well they just lined up right there and you press the record button and it came out just the way it did and and and you know you know there was a force of course there's always a one take when you realize oh the microphone was not on sorry about it let's do it one more time or you know when you hear and it's a little too loud we where we recall you know we're we're an intersection of of of at least one loud street so every single time you know there if there's an ambulance or or fire strike coming by even um even the postman you know it's it makes it makes a big difference you know right now it's it's it's it's not so much when you have a zoom call or talk to talk to someone over the phone but when you're recording with a with a microphone that you know is is going to catch the sound uh you know it's going to catch everything so yeah so some questions then you know from the editing point of view um did you I assume you you work the levels the sound levels so that they be consistent it's so it's almost like conducting the thing um in in a in a classical format because you can control everything or almost everything so question did you did you have to lengthen or shorten the duration of a given singer and to match the others you know you can do that on on video editing um just by a few frames kid you know to in order to synchronize it make sure that they were perfectly aligned do you ever have to do that um so I I I didn't I I I worked with a video I know that uh Britney and cattle um sometimes there would be you know an adjustment that you want to make because the virtue of aligning 13 voices together and there always will be some imperfection in in in just the alignment process itself so you know maybe you know everyone can be still unbridled but because the there are no visual cues for singers to initially you know all of them cut off it can be you know you get you know at the end of uh end of a word and and and so you can in post-production as you said you can minimize that so you can you can fade out a little bit of that and and so you have you end up with a slightly cleaner sound um but uh for the most part you know those are just very small things that you can fix and you really have to have uh you know proper tracks to to to have that and you know maybe we could do more magic if we had 30 or 60 singers but with 13 singers on on on four parts you're you know it's pretty tight yeah sure there's no room for error so what about the waveforms you know on the on the final cut um graphical screen with the waveforms you can tell you know when the levels are up down and so forth um and as I recall final cut also comes with a concomitant program on on sound so you can take the waveform put it in the sound program fix it up use various effects on it put it back you know return trip back to uh final cut did you go through that kind of editing process so again thankfully I did not handle that so again it was Brittany uh and Katal and they used a different program called audacity um in which you it's very similar you know we work with the waveforms as well and that helped to figure out okay well we captured that singer you know at this level and this singer and that level and of course um because of the frequencies which they're saying you know you will have sopranos again you know sing out a little more and and different parts have you know are a little less so in in in this setting when you record you really have no way to adjust the volumes you know live so you have to do it in both production you know so to make sure that the harmonies are balanced and so they use that um we we experimented with the placement of the microphone in you know in our little studio uh to see what we can we can get we did want to uh you know get a sound that is a little more resonant that that uses the ambience of of the room um doesn't just sound like somebody's singing over the phone to you you know that's not like a you're just greeting you know if you're the fox over so um so so we tried to make that what what ended up happening is that the volume levels were were were were low as we move the mic you know away from the singers which in retrospect they think we should play around with that a little bit more and because of that the gain on the microphone had to be higher which in turn you know would pick up you know um external sounds sure external sounds all the time so and of course we we we don't have the means to sound proof you know the the room so it would be a perfect studio um so of course to the levels well we're adjusted after that and um i think that might have been um uh uh one of the the sound effects or or or settings change to to have um to make it seem like there's a medium side or a larger room so there's right of that of that of that sound that of course you know that's that's produced i'm not sure if synthetically is the right word but but in both production and and does not reflect the room in which the singers are singing but produces the kind of sound that i think if we had 13 singers and you were uh in the audience in a live audience this should be closer to what you would have been experiencing so what size of room did you pick um i think the room that i'm in right now actually is about oh i forget we measure that some point i think it's about 20 feet by by maybe 15 feet or so so it's a a decent sized room and it has slightly higher ceilings than you know your your your normal apartment and has a wooden floor um and so when you do sing in this space as a singer you you you get a little bit of of so to speak you know feedback of about how you sound and you can make some adjustment to it but it doesn't it didn't translate to you know the sound uh to the microphone the way we we anticipated it would so it turns out um more research is needed on our end with with that and maybe maybe use of the you know the the the tools that there are to to make to make the sound um you know more authentic yeah did you did you uh one last technical question did you did you have to or want to or think about changing the pitch of a given you know because the technology can do that just by a little half step you know quarter step something um did you have to do that or were they all on pitch anyway and there was no need no i think for um for all the tracks that we end up using um the singers were on pitch with that so of course you know it's it's very difficult again in an isolated setting to to do it so when i was singing i know for a fact i was staring at my brother who was by the camera with the mic and he's just like you're you're going flat up a little bit and then in the end we end up not using that take you know it's like you guys listen to it like yeah well that's that's that's that's not okay you know it doesn't it doesn't you know of course you're making as a group you want um you want something that's going to once once you put it out in the interwebs you know it's gonna stay there so you want it to be representative of what the group is is is capable of you know we have we have a number of outtakes and so many carolers are watching it's coming your way it's going to be a little little inside circle for us to to to remind us of i think very appropriate of what our 2020 season looked like and you know and all the trials and tribulations that we went through before being able to put out you know a virtual mini concert so to speak i don't i don't think you're over with this i think this is uh you invented something not only for yourselves you know the carolers but also for other groups who see and emulate you mentioned um you know that we're going to do carols outside the the christmas season what what is that like you have to you have to pick your work to sound like a christmas carol or what is the carol in that context no so you know it will it was a of course the long-standing joke within the group that we do caroling outside the christmas season we uh you know for a number of years we've only done concerts around christmas time and that was the original uh you know i thought behind the group uh both cattle and i when we are we moved from uh poland to new york 20 years ago in august you know 2000 and we in within a year or two you know we we both joined uh we joined choir in high school uh we were inspired by the story of our parents actually in their 20s at the university of war so they were studying mathematics but met you know uh through choir mostly our father was a tenor and of course as you know jolly tenors tend to do they flirt with the sopranos which our mama was a soprano so he was standing right behind her and blowing at the back of her neck you know until she married him or a wonderful story so you know so in our teens of course you know the boys from poland like we're joining choir that's right there and and you know and we we um uh i think we all to to our voice teachers you know edwin and susan lubin from new york um who organized christmas caroling and we still use a lot of their arrangements that we used with them we call them you know affectionately picture carols because they have beautiful pictures and and are the you know uh are the simple settings of of popular carols that uh really resonate with us and and i think our singers outside of the christmas season you know we we decided um i think first maybe in 2014 or 15 to do you know to us do a screen concert and we introduced some you know italian you know magicals and some renaissance music and some some medieval uh you know type that means to early music essentially um and and as time progressed we we introduced some um uh some some more recent arrangements of of popular classical songs and and played around with that so so to have a and then essentially it came because there was um you know so much energy around the holidays the christmas time and the ones we uh kind of the bubble verse around new years of course when when when we stopped when we stopped singing everyone's like wait what are we doing now right we everyone in the group you know wants wants really wants to sing a year along and i think that's but so special about about this group yeah oh that's wonderful i'm i'm learning so much about you and the group and i'm so impressed and i'm so happy that you're here in hawaii you're you're a resource fantastic resource going forward i know we're going to see a lot more of you but i i have one more question before we get back to the music as such um and that is you know you think it's possible from the experience you've had in putting these videos together to do them remotely i mean you're going to have the best sound possible going to have the best broadband connection possible but do you think it's possible from what you have learned here to to create a group in various places uh in the country in the world that could achieve the same kind of music what do you think yeah i i think it is possible i think it's you know it's it's difficult on many levels because of course when you have uh you know when you set it up the way we did i think that there is uh quite a bit of support that we're able to to give each other you know even even though one person is singing at a time we're still gonna in it together and and you know we're taking care of the or the physical recording of the setup of the lights and stuff like that and if you do it purely remotely then um you know each person kind of has to set that up together it is by themselves rather um which which is a challenge it's a little more work i think for everyone to do and and so you have to uh i think you have to have you know special people and and very special music enthusiasts and choral enthusiasts who are who are willing to to to to kind of screen their surroundings and and experiment a little bit and decide you know what i really want to do this project i can record this at home and um and of course you know there's there's there's there's a duality here one part is the is the sound which you could if you have a mic you know you could you could record without the video if you want to have a visual uh you know to accompany the music then there's you know a slew of very different questions you go for a uniform look you do uh kind of the raw zoom look together i think right now the technology is not there yet for for people to come simultaneously and and produce that you know let's do one take together let's do three takes together and pick the best one uh i think i think we're not there yet as far as i i can tell it's coming i know it's coming and you you'll be a leader what you've done is really remarkable and i'm so happy to be the beneficiary of that so uh we we're kind of out of time me how um and what i like to do in view of the the discussion we've had is to um play joy to the world one more time on the way out okay and then what i want to do is put silent night and come all you faithful and put that in our overnight stream and we'll play that again and again if it's okay with you we'll make it our our christmas statement in our overnight stream but before we go i just want to ask you what should we be looking for as we see joy to the world for the second time in this show what should we be particularly conscious of well let me just say i think you you should close your eyes open your ears and enjoy and enjoy the music i think um you know unless you're a you're a techie enthusiast and you kind of want to really listen and see what you know a little nuggets you can find in there you know go for it but i think for most of us at this time and i think especially this year um i think that christmas carols and this season you know put us in a help us find the serenity that i think that we need and i think all of them deserve after a very long and and um exhausting year to speak yeah gee i i couldn't have said it better you're absolutely right on thank you so much mihao novitski it's great to have you on the show and thank you again for the music you have provided it is extraordinary and it has a great future here in hawaii and elsewhere uh aloha aloha newie loa okay and now we're gonna we're gonna go out on on um uh joy to the world being joyous about your music songs and repeat the sounding joy repeat the sounding joy repeat the sounding joy or far as the curse is found He rolls the world with truth and grace, and makes the nations grow. And wonders of His love, and wonders of His love, and wonders of His love.