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Topic: YOUTUBE Symphony Orchestra searching for Musicians  (Read 2323 times)

Online lostinidlewonder

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YOUTUBE Symphony Orchestra searching for Musicians
on: December 09, 2008, 03:56:35 AM
https://www.youtube.com/symphony

What do you all think? One of us should represent the piano :)!


FROM
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/arts/music/02orch.html?_r=6&hp

The project, called the YouTube Symphony Orchestra (www.youtube.com/symphony), was announced on Monday (1st Dec 2008) in London and New York.

Boiled down, it has two essential parts. The composer Tan Dun has written a four-minute piece for orchestra. YouTube users are invited to download the individual parts for their instruments from the score, record themselves performing the music, then upload their renditions. After the entrants are judged, a mash-up of all the winning parts will be created for a final YouTube version of the piece.

In the project’s other prong, musicians will upload auditions from a prescribed list — for trumpeters, for example, an excerpt from the Haydn Concerto — for judging by a jury that Google says will include musicians from major orchestras like the Berlin Philharmonic and the London Symphony. Entrants have until Jan. 28 to upload their videos.The panel picks a short list of finalists, and YouTube users, “American Idol”-style, choose the winners, who are flown to Carnegie Hall in April for a concert conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, the music director of the San Francisco Symphony. Google will arrange for visas and pay costs.

Officials of the project refused to discuss any aspect of the overall cost, but the Carnegie Hall concert alone is likely to be well into six figures. Mr. Thomas and Mr. Tan said their fees were not beyond the ordinary.

Users will be encouraged to comment on one another’s videos in the hope that communities will grow. In other aspects, London Symphony musicians will provide online instruction on how to play the Tan parts, in the spirit of master classes. YouTubers can play along with music-minus-one videos of his piece. Mr. Tan has prepared video clips of himself silently conducting each section of the orchestra, staring into the camera as if it were a viewer playing an instrument, to help prepare auditioners.

“The idea is to put together the world’s first collaborative online orchestra” and encourage musicians of all types and abilities around the world, said Ed Sanders, YouTube’s project marketing director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa and the person in charge of the effort. “It’s collaboration in a way and a medium never seen, both with sound and video.”

Another aim is the “serendipity of discovery,” Mr. Sanders said. “It would be a dream come true to find a trombone player in Hong Kong who had a rare talent, but nobody knew.”

Beyond helping the world’s brass players, the YouTube Symphony project fits in with Google’s business interests.

“They want to make their properties even more relevant to all types of people in all types of places doing all types of things,” said Scott H. Kessler, an equities analyst at Standard & Poor’s who follows Google. It also potentially “takes the edge off” recent perceptions that Google is not living up to its credo of “do no evil,” he said.

More specifically, the foray into music is in keeping with Google’s strategy to gussy up YouTube content and thus make the site more attractive to advertisers. Google has been disappointed by revenues from YouTube, which it bought in 2006.

So it sponsored a presidential debate and made a recent deal to put MGM films and television on YouTube, to move it past associations with lowest-common-denominator material like pranks, pratfalls and cats drinking out of toilet bowls.

“They are migrating from that to becoming a repository of serious content,” said Youssef Squali, an Internet analyst at Jefferies & Company in New York. The classical music project brings buzz as well as traffic, he added. “They’re able to monetize traffic through advertising, at no cost.”

The effort has Mr. Thomas, who is serving as artistic adviser, as its most prominent figure from the classical music world. He has long been involved in using media to spread classical music, from his days on live television conducting the New York Philharmonic Young People’s Concerts to his DVD, television and online didactic programs under the title “Keeping Score” with the San Francisco Symphony.

He said he hoped that the citizen musicians on YouTube would make connections, that nonmusicians would discover the breadth and joys of classical music, and that professional musicians would have a new way of expressing themselves.

“I know this is going to lead toward people discovering more what the music really is,” Mr. Thomas said. YouTube already is a vast repository of performances by musicians and orchestras famous and unknown, historical and contemporary.

Mr. Tan called the project a “revolutionary idea” that could bridge music’s past and the present. He said his piece had mechanical percussive sounds that are relevant to young people today and motifs from classical music, like a reference to the first theme of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, “Eroica.”

Google lists a number of orchestras as partners, including those judging entries or potentially contributing material to the Web site. Conservatories are also listed, although the extent of their role beyond advertising the site is unclear.

The London Symphony, which sees its involvement as an extension of its educational programs, said it was not being paid for participating. And New York Philharmonic players will volunteer their time in judging entries, as well as in possibly devising material for the YouTube Symphony Web site, said the orchestra spokesman, Eric Latzky.

“We see a great symbiotic relationship with this project,” Mr. Latzky said, “and we see great potential to inspire a kind of new worldwide interest and enthusiasm for classical music.” Exposing the Philharmonic musicians to people in countries where the orchestra tours was another plus, he said.

“I really do applaud Google for trying this, and I’m sure there’s benefit for them,” Mr. Latzky said. “If they’re successful, then maybe it can help make classical music more successful.”
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Offline db05

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Re: YOUTUBE Symphony Orchestra searching for Musicians
Reply #1 on: December 09, 2008, 04:21:52 AM
I checked the site. What a bummer. The score for piano still not uploaded and there is no link for guitar although it is listed as the basis for some alternate instruments. What a mess. Guess I'll have to join an orchestra the hard way.
I'm sinking like a stone in the sea,
I'm burning like a bridge for your body

Offline communist

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Re: YOUTUBE Symphony Orchestra searching for Musicians
Reply #2 on: December 09, 2008, 06:15:36 PM
i bet it wont work
"The stock markets go up and down, Bach only goes up"

-Vladimir Feltsman

Offline richard black

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Re: YOUTUBE Symphony Orchestra searching for Musicians
Reply #3 on: December 09, 2008, 09:01:48 PM
I think the basic idea is brilliant. As with all things computer- and internet-related, it will probably be our grandchildren who will have to judge whether it was really a success, but I bet it will be a load of fun for everyone.
Instrumentalists are all wannabe singers. Discuss.

Offline mad_max2024

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Re: YOUTUBE Symphony Orchestra searching for Musicians
Reply #4 on: December 09, 2008, 09:18:44 PM
Nice project
I'm just doubtful about the "Youtube users choose the winners" part, have you seen the moronic comments they leave on videos?

But hey, it should be fun and it may help users to broaden their musical horizons.
I am perfectly normal, it is everyone else who is strange.

Offline kard

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Re: YOUTUBE Symphony Orchestra searching for Musicians
Reply #5 on: December 18, 2008, 03:18:26 PM
This is looking really good so far. Piano scores are up. I was expecting this to be a big hit here...I wonder why not. I'm thinking I might try ;D but I have my music minor auditions coming up so I don't think it would pan out well. It would be great to see someone from here working with them! Think of the publicity for PS :P 
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