An Online Orchestra

I watched a pretty cool video on YouTube today. I'd embed it here, but either YT or my computer wouldn't let me copy and paste the whole link. Anyway. It's called the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, and it's basically a "mash-up" video of amateur and professional musicians from around the world coming together to create one whole orchestra. Thousands of people submitted videos of themselves playing whatever instrument it is they play. In February, viewers had the opportunity to vote for their favorite musicians while a panel of judges picked who got to be in the orchestra.

The winners were picked in March, and are performing together as one tonight at Carnegie Hall. But the video above includes many submissions, all put together to create one sound. I'm sure some expert editing, not only of the videos themselves but also of the pitches/tempos etc., was much needed to create such a uniform sound, but that doesn't make it any less cool.

The piece is by famous Chinese composer, Tan Dun, and is called "Internet Symphony, Eroica." Surely this is all some kind of PR ploy for YouTube, but we'll leave ulterior motives for another post. Too bad I didn't take out and dust off my crappy Jupiter clarinet, but I only just found out about this today. And probably wouldn't have actually done it. Yeah, no.

You can check out the YTSO here.



Currently Listening To: "I'm Too Sexy" - Right Said Fred