Our final feature of the year spotlights a few of the innovative and creative adaptations made by Jacobs faculty, staff, and students in response to this new and crazy world of 2020. This is a three-part series, just a glimpse of the many ways that members of our community have channeled inspiration, resilience, and determination to find new ways to keep their art alive and connecting people, even while physically apart.
Part 3: Future Directions
Jacob Belser and Michael Stucker | Duncan Holzhall | Joey Comella
Jacob Belser and Michael Stucker: Making Virtual Collaboration More Accessible
Jacob Belser (Lecturer, Audio Engineering and Sound Production) and Michael Stucker (Associate Professor of Music, Audio Engineering and Sound Production) have been working with Dean Jeremy Allen and the Office of the Vice President for Research at IU to develop a one-package app to make virtual collaboration accessible for everyone, not just the tech-savvy. Jacob Belser explains the process that brought them to this point:
JB: Going back to March, we looked at a lot of advanced and complicated audio-over-Internet systems, including stuff that’s used in the professional world that’s very expensive and very complicated. There were very few things out there that would actually work well. I began to realize, along with Michael Stucker, that there has to be a better way of doing some of the things that we’re trying to do. We worked with the dean’s office, with Dean Allen, and the Office of Vice President for Research to get a grant to try to develop a better application for collaboration online with lower latency and higher-quality sound. We were able to get some money for that, and we enlisted the help of a company out of South Bend called CodeWorks, owned by a former alumnus of our degree, to help with writing the software.
Building off of the open source JackTrip protocol, the coding company has now developed a single-installer package that is now in beta testing. So basically, you should be able to download this software, hit one button just like you’re installing any piece of software, and it controls all of the JackTrip settings for you. It should be much easier to connect from one person to the other with imperceptible latency if you’re on a stable, wired, quality Internet connection on or possibly near campus.
The current version of this system is going to be one person to one person, which is going to be great. However, we know that ensembles are the holy grail of high-speed collaboration. So our next step, with any luck—we have some obstacles to overcome with permissions, funding, and so on—we would like to be able to have a server-based system, the server that would reside on the IU campus, and have what I would call rooms. So we could have two rooms, four rooms, and a number of people could log into those rooms—whether it’s 10, or 20, or 30, we’re not sure exactly how many yet—from their own system or ideally from campus and have imperceptible-latency collaboration with large ensembles. Again, 15 is probably the number that we’re hoping for, but it could be a little bit higher or a little bit lower. It’s possible that that room system could integrate with Canvas and other learning management systems, and we would also hope that if this is a quality product and a good, successful implementation, we would look at possibly commercializing this product.
At this point, the product is audio only, because as soon as you add video in, the amount of data drastically increases. However, we do believe that we’re going to be able to add a video component to it. The video component may not be perfectly synchronized with the audio, but it should be good enough for good collaboration and really good for lessons.
PJ: Was the initial inspiration just seeing a need and realizing you had the resources to fill that need? Had you done any app development before?
JB: No, neither Professor Stucker or I had done much in the way of app development. We’re definitely technical people. He teaches audio electronics and of course, I teach audio engineering—we all teach audio engineering. So, we have a strong technical background but not a lot in the way of coding. That’s why we really needed to get an outside company involved that understood audio as well as the need. And it seems like a lot of people understood this need early on. JackTrip has been improving their product as well, but it’s still very complicated to use, so we’re hoping to just basically make that a lot easier for an average student or an average professor to open up a program and basically go.
Collaborative piano has been using JackTrip very successfully, but it does take them quite a bit of troubleshooting to make that work. So we believe we’ll be avoiding all of that [with our app]. Some important things to mention are, a quality microphone and good headphones as well as a wired Internet connection are always going to make a substantial improvement. So if you’re on Wi-Fi, using a computer’s built-in mic, you’re probably not going to get a great result, no matter what software’s out there. So I would also encourage anyone who might be reading this, that even a $100 or less USB microphone will give you a much better result than the built-in computer mic. And very important that it be a wired Internet connection whenever possible.
PJ: How have you stayed inspired during a pandemic?
JB: I think that what I’m really happy about with this particular product is, we have this massive problem, and keeping a music school running, keeping students in a position that they can function is really important for all of us in the university and especially in the music school. I also think it’s great how the school stepped right up and funded this quickly. We proposed this in late May, and Dean Allen was on board very quickly, the Vice President’s office was on board very quickly, we didn’t have to jump through a bunch of hurdles and the normal 8 months or yearlong process it would take to get the kind of funding that we needed. They just said, “Great, here’s money. See what you can do.” And I think that speaks to how aggressive IU in general has been about trying to find ways around the problems that we’re encountering. Now, we also hope that this product will serve in the post-pandemic world, particularly in rural outreach programs, so graduate students and professors can do lessons for students in rural areas, and we see a lot of potential possibilities for a lot of options with this. So yeah, I’ve had no particular difficulty staying active and inspired through all this, because there’s no chance to stop. No chance at all. I’m very much looking forward to December when I hope to take a few days off!
Duncan Holzhall: Voices of Tomorrows Songs
When the opera industry all but shut down in March and April, Duncan Holzhall (BME, Choral Music Education with a minor in Arts Management, and Artistic Director of New Voices Opera), took time to reflect and ask questions about the direction of opera and the changes that he thinks the art form should take in the future. He collected those thoughts, and those of the colleagues, mentors, and friends he interviewed, into a newly published book called Voices of Tomorrows Songs. Duncan shares more about how this project came about:
DH: In April of this year, everything was up in the air. The world premiere of New Voices Opera’s The Jungle was postponed for an entire year along with a switch in artistic direction. The two summer academies that I was planning on helping administer were hoping that the situation would improve before ultimately being cancelled for the year. And with Jacobs’ switch to online-only instruction, all in-person ensemble and musical activities were shut down for the rest of the academic year. In the span of two weeks, we had our occupation and training stripped from us. We felt disoriented and helpless.
But the experiences that were divested from us were replaced with time: time for reflection, and time for observation. It is not difficult to see that the opera industry began undergoing a seismic shift during the pandemic. From playing decades of catch-up in the technology realm to reckoning with structural inequalities in the field, the opera industry’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was on full display for all to see. Wanting to understand how this situation would shape our future, I spent the summer interviewing friends, colleagues, and mentors, trying to gauge their attitudes toward the opera industry. The project culminated in a book, Voices of Tomorrows Songs, a vision statement for the future of American opera. The young people interviewed for this project (many of whom are Jacobs students) have highlighted many of the qualities that make opera an inspiring and engaging art form. Equally as present, though, are areas for the field to improve upon. Ultimately, the hope is that this book will provide recommendations for a more exciting and equitable opera industry in the future.
For more:
- Follow Duncan’s biweekly IG Live/vodcast series (based off the themes in his book) on Instagram: @voicesoftomorrowssongs
- OperaWire: New Voices Opera Artistic Director Duncan Holzhall Releases ‘Voices of Tomorrows Songs’
Joey Comella: HighNote Streaming
Joey Comella (BM, Violin Performance) started HighNote Streaming LLC, an online concert platform that uses a proprietary process called Sequential Streaming to make it easy for multiple live streams from multiple locations to be strung together in a single performance. It also offers a high per-viewer per-minute monetization rate that makes it a financially promising option for professional musicians, even with small audiences!
PJ: What was your inspiration for this project?
JC: I have always thought that classical music needs to move online. I also believed that most mainstream platforms did a poor job of hosting musicians if they ventured into an online setting. My inspiration for HighNote came more from necessity than any one source. HighNote provides a higher level of audio quality and more competitive monetization than other mainstream platforms.
PJ: How have your first concerts gone?
JC: After some extensive private beta testing, the first two concerts have gone very well. We have had a mix of both live and prerecorded performers all playing in the same concerts. Every concert requires a third party, in this case, me, to remotely switch the feeds from one performer to the next. This also allows me to EQ the concerts and fix any potential technical issues before they happen. It’s good to have someone watching over the streams making sure everything works the way it should. That way the performers can simply focus on performing.
PJ: How have you stayed innovative and inspired during the pandemic?
JC: While I originally came up with the concept behind HighNote before the pandemic started, the inability to perform in person has created a very real need to move the industry online. I think, especially during the pandemic, HighNote Streaming could help a lot of musicians who are now bereft of performing opportunities. This has been my main inspiration for working on the project, and what has kept me working on it through the pandemic.
For more:
If you missed them, don’t forget to check out Part One and Part Two of this series! A big thank you again to everyone who spoke to us for these interviews, and for the inspirational work you’ve been doing! We wish you all a wonderful, safe, and happy winter break!
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