The Canberra Symphony Orchestra and the ANU School of Music are collaborating on an unusual project.
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It's an offshoot from the Side by Side program in which CSO members have mentored and played alongside ANU students.
Since playing together in concert is not permitted during COVID-19 confinement, the CSO and the School of Music will join forces to create a virtual orchestra.
For Side by Side: Byte Size, the CSO's artistic director, Nicholas Milton, will select the music.
Individual musicians will each record their parts separately to a click track while on camera.
Since social distancing is in effect and the School of Music is off limits, some musicians will go into a pop-up studio at the CSO offices.
Others will film and record themselves at home.
The audio will be mixed to create the sound of an orchestra and joined to the edited video and the result will be broadcast online free.
School of Music technical officer and audio engineer Craig Greening is collaborating on the audio-visual aspects with colleague Matt Barnes - the latter will focus on the imagery.
The two men prepared the pop-up studio where many of the musicians will perform their parts.
Head of the School of Music Kim Cunio said that with the use of high-quality reverberation unit, the sound would attain "90 per cent of the acoustic of Llewellyn Hall".
He hoped the result would be ready by the end of June but added, "This is such uncharted water.
"It could take a month longer. Rather than meeting a deadline, we want to make it perfect."
Greening said Brady Bunch-style multiple panels had become ubiquitous online during the coronavirus lockdown.
But, he said, this would be the first time the technical officers at the ANU had made use of the technique or assembled an orchestra instrument by instrument.
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He said one of the challenges was the air conditioning in the pop-up studio, which would probably have to be filtered out later.
Later in the year will be a Virtual Orchestra: Community Special, where members of the public can record and submit parts to be played alongside those of CSO and ANU musicians.
See cso.org.au and music.cass.anu.edu.au.