Adina Weiss

Adina Weiss

Adina Weiss is an Interactive Multimedia major with minors in Music and Music Technology. She is a video editor, animator, and audio engineer with a specialty in creating virtual performances. She has made more than thirty virtual performances since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Virtual Journey

I didn’t realize it at the time, but my thesis journey began in March 2020, shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic reached New Jersey. After TCNJ announced classes would be remote for the remainder of the Spring 2020 semester, Dr. Leonard, Director of Choral Activities, asked me if there was a way to make a virtual performance for some of the repertoire the Chorale had been learning. Then, the Colleg

TCNJ Chorale performs Kenneth Lampl’s Jerusalem

The Process

The first set of virtual performance I made was two movements of Arthur Honnegar’s King David. The Chorale had a performance of the full piece scheduled for late April 2020. Knowing I was an IMM major, Dr. Leonard reached out to me for advice on how to proceed with turning this into a virtual performance. There were two movements that were each about a minute long and all in unison, so they were p

For commencement, the student conductors each took one piece and recorded themselves conducting. Luckily, we had previous recordings of these pieces, so we were able to sing along with the recordings which made the audio slightly easier to sync. Dave Muha’s team had a very specific vision of what they wanted these videos to look like, so it didn’t leave me with much room for creativity. Whereas in

After the semester ended, my focus shifted to creating two virtual performances for Collegium Musicum that I didn’t have enough time for during the semester. I left everyone as static boxes and focused on making the backgrounds as interesting as I could without taking too much away from the performers. While I was and am satisfied with these videos, there was still the thought of how can we make t

The announcement of a fully remote Fall 2020 semester was certainly a disappointment since I figured it would be more of the same boxes on a screen. Fortunately, Dr. Leonard was also fed up with boxes. He was hoping to be able to do a blend of virtual and live music, with a majority of the choir prerecorded and a few soloists. While this didn’t pan out, we were lucky enough to be able to have one

So how does all of this relate to thesis? At first, it didn’t. My original plan was to make an animated kids TV show pilot episode. It wasn’t until the second half of that semester that I realized the scope of that project was way too big for one person. After seeing my previous videos, Warren Buckleitner, my thesis advisor, suggested that I make a virtual performance for my thesis project instead

Jerusalem

I knew I wanted to my piece to have a connection to Judaism. There isn’t a lot of good Jewish choral music, and unless the choir is specifically Jewish, even the good pieces are not often performed. I spent winter break researching music and listening to pieces that were either in Hebrew or written by Jewish composers. I found Jerusalem by Kenneth Lampl, and from the first chord I immediately fell

Dr. Leonard and I sit down to reflect on the crazy journey we’ve been on for the past year

What I’ve Learned

Virtual performances take a lot of work! The King David renders took 5-7 hours, commencement to 12-15, and one part of Jerusalem took over 10!

Last spring, we captured audio and video at the same time. Someone suggested separating it so we could focus on getting a really good audio take. This ended up working really well and it also made the audio easier to sync.

The other big change from spring to fall was singing to a baseline track. For King David we just had piano, and for commencement we had a full ensemble recording. In the fall, we took turns making the baseline tracks. Dr. Leonard would conduct and James would play piano, then a bass would record their part and send it to a tenor and so on until we covered every voice part. This also made it easy t

I also learned that audio editing is no joke. Mark, Dr. Leonard, and I would Zoom for hours at a time to work on the commencement audio, right up until the night before the videos were due. For Jerusalem, I spent about an hour per track just lining up our consonants so it wouldn’t sound messy.

I have also grown as a musician, both as a vocalist and a conductor. My favorite part about audio editing is soloing a few tracks and hearing how those parts work together.

To see all 30+ virtual performances from the past year, click here.

Baba Yetu, Commencement 2020

Credo, Fall 2020