Ron's Ramblings...
For five decades I absolutely loved travelling back and forth and up and down to nearly every corner of Canada, this amazing huge piece of earth’s dirt, rock and water we call home. My favourite part of touring was offering workshops. That’s certainly not meant to suggest that I didn’t thoroughly enjoy the concerts, conferences and worship services. There was just something profoundly satisfying about gathering together informally with musicians, music directors, clergy and choir singers as we dove deeper into the words and music why’s and how to’s. The give and take was almost always a learning experience — for me. I miss all the highly personal connections which were part of those coast-to-coast tours.
Covid-19 and a lot of other considerations have forced me to acknowledge that live, in-person workshops can no longer happen — at least not the way I used to offer them. That being said, the longing is so great that I’ve made a significant decision. For the balance of 2021, Christina and I are devoting time and energy to creating a video studio production space in a room adjacent to my current audio studio space.
We’ll be producing song-by-song video workshops which will be made available on our Vimeo channel. All of the components of a live workshop will be part of the video sessions which will feature how-to’s and song samples. Then, in the new year, we plan to add once or twice monthly live town hall meetings with agendas driven by what others want to talk about.
In the meantime, we're spending time preparing the space. The floor is in. Professional quality studio lighting has been installed. The backdrop has been completed and an adjacent green screen has been mounted. Christina’s post-production area has been outfitted. Camera positions have been assigned and we’re currently working on setting up the audio system.
We want to form a small recording choir with members from provinces and territories across Canada and are seeking a limited number of singers willing to volunteer to sing hymn, song and anthem versions of my music to be included on the Musiklus website as well as to be used on the workshop videos. Each singer will be provided with an accompaniment track to sing to as well as detailed music charts. Recordings will take place individually at each singer’s home and sent to us for mixing into a virtual choir. Please note that these will be audio-only recordings which will be enhanced by complimentary images and videos with song words embedded. If you have any interest in volunteering your voice (and time) to be part of this project, please drop a note to Christina at
staff@musiklus.com.
We’re not done yet!
Ron
