It depends a lot on what type of conductor you're trying to reach. Are you writing 2-part songs with piano aimed at elementary school students? Difficult 8-part a cappella motets? Large works with orchestra? Pop-style church anthems? Is your compositional style mainly straightforward melodies and harmonies, or do you use atmospheric or aleatoric effects which might be hard to imagine from the printed page?

 

Conductors in general have to have good imaginations, so they should be able to transcend the mechanical nature of a MIDI file and/or overlook wrong notes in a performance recording in order to imagine what the piece should sound like (I'm assuming by "mistakes" you mean occasional wrong notes; if the performance included consistently bad intonation or bad vocal production, or if the recording quality is terrible, I wouldn't use it). I wouldn't bother to create professional recordings unless your target market is pretty inexperienced conductors (admittedly a big market) or you write in a pop style of some sort.

 

If you're self-marketing, having professional recordings on your website might give you a more professional appearance, but how much that would translate into increased sales is hard to guess.

 

Be aware, though, that many conductors will use your recordings as a rehearsal aid for their singers, so if they contain wrong notes that will be a problem for everyone. Computer-generated files are more useful for that purpose. If the conductor doesn't have the instinct to make the performance musical rather than mechanical, no amount of recordings is really going to help.

Heather:  Last question first:  yes, imperfect is better than nothing.  MIDI has the disadvantage of depending on the sound capabilities of the computer that plays it back.  Recording an mp3 file (or an .aiff file and then converting it to mp3, as you have to do in Sibelius--I don't know about Finale) gives you an actual recording, not just a set of on-and-off signals, using the sounds from YOUR computer, over which you have a lot more control.

 

Either, of course, can be technically perfect but musically unrealistic.  And yes, some conductors will be turned off by that, because they won't be able to conceive it sounding any other way.  And those are probably the same conductors who can't "hear" a piece just by studying the score.  On the other hand, listening to a reading by school or amateur singers is vocally realistic, but as you say, can't possibly be a finished performance, and inaccuracies will turn off ither conductors.

 

But there's a third way that can get you a good demo without having to hire a full choir, and many publishers have been using it for at LEAST the last 40 years to make demos for their own publications.  At one time I did a number of these recording sessions, with only ONE singer on a part.  You have to hire good singers who are superb sigtreaders and not just pretty voices, because in recording, "time is money."  And while anyone can record directly to computer these days, you really need access to professional equipment and a recording engineer who knows what he or she is doing (in other words to a decent recording studio), so this won't get you FREE demos, but it will give you better quality demos at the lowest possible cost if that's your goal.  And by overtracking voices you don't make the "choir" sound bigger, but you can sort of hide the fact that there is only one singer on each part.

 

But if you're just starting out and don't have a ton of money to spend, then make your MIDI or mp3 demos and, as you become better known and can afford it, start replacing them.  As someone recently put it, "you go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had!"  So just plug in "choir" rather than "army."

All the best,

John

Hi Heather,

 

It's a problem we all face. Three suggestions:

 

1. Check out the Virtual Choir community on ChoralNet. Jack Senzig has worked long and hard to set this up. Eventually you should be able to listen to audition MP3s of singers who volunteer for this, pick a set of them, send them your score .pdf and ask them to record their part separately while listening to MIDI scratch tracks that you provide. Then you can mix the individual parts they send you into a "virtual choir" demo.

 

I provided the audition piece at Jack's request; it is one for which I did happen to have a nice, well-rehearsed concert performance recording.

 

2. Check out the Composer's Choir. composerschoir(a)gmail.com . They are not cheap but they do good work; at least one composer has used a recording they made to win a prize in a competition. Dan is very professional and will work with you.

 

3. When you do get recordings you consider good enough to share, join the Composers of Choral Music community here and post them to the Showcase, another Jack Senzig brainstorm.

 

Best of luck,

 

David Avshalomov

I for one find visual score samples more valuable than audio samples, but I am shopping for a church choir with very real limitations in terms of range and divisi.  Do you already provide score samples?  I find midi samples and poorly presented audio samples a turn-off. 

 

Julie

If you are sufficient in music recording and technology, and are good enough at singing, you could try multi-tracking yourself or your frined(s).

Two-people mixed choir (me with a female friend of mine)

One-man mixed choir (me only)

 

Although I rarely do this now, it has a great benefit which is to have an acceptable or OK-level recording pretty fast like a day or two after finishing the piece for very low cost (or almost nothing), if you know what you are doing.

Just a couple more thoughts (from a fellow conductor and buyer of a fair amount of sacred choral music)...

 

* Just my own thinking, but a poor vocal recording is very hard for me to get past unless I already know the piece or someone I respect has recommended it.  I'm sure there have been exceptions, but if I don't know the composer or his/her work I might not dig that deeply - wrong notes and unpleasant sound generate an impression - possibly unfair - that composer might not be that great.

 pros

* Please be very, very careful if you end up hiring singers ... hire **choral pros ** not necessarily the biggest operatic guns you know. An undisciplined voice that might sing a great Tosca will still make your reording unpleasant.

 

* There are some *very* fine composers who have midi demos on their web sites for some of their music - it's nothing to be ashamed of. You'd be in good company. I suspect they refuse to put a demo on that doesn't present the piece at its best - and these are established composers.

 

* Are you in touch with people who have good choirs, offering them some free music, or whatever if they would consider programming your piece (and recording it)

 

* Finale - not sure how old your copy is, or if you know how to set up the excellent digital sounds that are inluded with the software for the past several years. There's a world of diference between "play back through midi" vs. "play back through VST".  Do your note entry with it set to midi, but then set up your sounds with the great samples in VST.  You CAN put in tempo variatiions and nuances and hide them in the score as has been mentioned.  And the playback is really very good and as realistic as, say, a good digital church organ vs. a good pipe organ.

 

Opinion here, but I don't care for the synthesized oohs and aahs even in finale's VST samples. When I make rehearsal CD's for my choirs I set up the file with an instrument assigned to each voice. (I don't think I recommend this with a fully orhestrated piece, but if the accompaniment is keyboard it works great.)  For example, if I were presenting an SATB piece I might set midi up to be Sop-flute, Alto - clarinet, Tenor - Horn, Bass - Bassoon.... I try to contrast the instrumental colors so singers can hear their parts for rehearsal (but I also generate part-predominant versions for each part.) But you could experiment with all one family of instruments and see which you think suits your music better. If you enter articulations and breaths you will be very pleased with how musical it all sounds. (you can hide some of those markings in your sample score if you wish.)

 

And I certainly *don't* do this for anything but more difficult peices!  It takes some time. But if I were in your shoes, (and did not have access to excellent singers) I would do the above or my demo recordings.  

 

Dan Wagner

 

 

Printed scores! I know that theivery exists amongst our profession, but I prefer as complete a score to any sound sample. A complete and theft-proof score does it for me, much more than any sound sample, even professionally produced.