Virtual Rehearsing

As an unconventional string quartet living in three different states, we rehearse remotely even in the best of times. We rehearse in person for about one week every month and the rest of the time we send each other recordings, layering voices one on top of the other. A typical routine goes as follows: one player records a section of a piece, then another layers his/her part on top, then the third and fourth members follow suit. Once we’re done, we comment on the playing, re-record, perhaps in a different order, and the cycle continues.

Here is a clip from Haydn String Quartet Op. 20, No. 2, 2nd movement that we rehearsed about 75% virtually.

View on YouTube here.

In some ways, we have found that rehearsing virtually is better than rehearsing in person (!).

• We can hear and play along with one person’s part as much as we like. This helps us understand the interpretation of the person without bugging them to play it again and again.
• We parse out individual parts, which inevitably helps us understand the score better.
• We rehearse in our own time, whenever we have a moment.
• We can see the dynamics through the sound wave depictions.
• We take ownership of our parts; we need to sound good enough to post!
• We listen to even more detail.

The following screenshot is from Haydn String Quartet Op 20, No. 2, 1st movement. Nurit, our first violinist, recorded herself playing the melody to show the rest of us exactly how she hears it. Then our cellist, 2nd violinist, and violist all added themselves until we had a complete version of this section. In this particular passage, it’s the three lower voices job to create the atmosphere for the melody, so we decided to re-record starting with cello, viola, and violin 2, to see if we could play as if we were listening to Nurit’s live interpretation.

We have also used BandLab for details like rhythm and intonation. In the following example, our cellist Laura recorded herself playing a passage slowly for intonation, then Steffani and Gabe added themselves.

For groups who might be interested in trying it themselves, here are some specifics about our process. We are still experimenting and developing how we approach rehearsing remotely, but we’d be happy to help if anyone has questions.

• We use a free app called Bandlab. We have tried other apps (e.g. Acapella is great for video layering), but we have found that Bandlab works the best for us. A downfall is that it’s hard to keep our tracks organized, but we’ve made some work-arounds for that problem.
• Sometimes we use a metronome, though we’ve found that we can play together pretty well without one.
• We record as little as one measure or as much as an entire movement.
• We make our recordings using the recording devices that come with our computers/phones/tablets, but we have talked about exploring better equipment in the future.

We’ve used Bandlab to rehearse most major aspects of quartet playing, but let’s face it, nothing beats being together in person. Because of coronavirus, our engagements this week were canceled so we are currently in our three separate states, Bandlabing and hoping to be together soon!