And now we are one: the DWFO's virtual anniversary

On this day, March 29, one year ago, Stephen Willis posted in the world's main Doctor Who online forum. He suggested a virtual orchestra, with choir, and that it be called the Doctor Who Fan Orchestra. He offered his arrangement of Murray Gold's 'I am the Doctor,' in 16 parts and SATB choir, and then offered to mix together our audiorecordings. So we responded; my own first reply was "What key is it in?" A week later violist Jalen Lee suggested adding video to the audio--I mention that because although it seems obvious in hindsight, the first project and its primary features did not start out as a sure thing!

Next came the generous, gutsy, and passionate work of three dozen musical Doctor Who fans, some patience and nail-biting while waiting for submissions, and finally Stephen's careful mixing. The results went to YouTube in early July 2011, and so began the next stages of this wild and wonderful ride. We made history--but even more so than we realized at the time. For this first anniversary of the DWFO, allow me to show my pride in our now-hundreds of members, and most of all in Stephen's perseverance and hard work--by pointing out our frankly amazing, pioneering accomplishments.

Looking back, it began with the Whitacre Virtual Choir in 2009; its volunteers worldwide submit performances of the composer's vocal works under his direction. There have also been proposals and recruiting for several virtual amateur orchestras (i.e. instrumental groups)--the idea was a thriving internet meme of 2011.

But to my knowledge, the Doctor Who Fan Orchestra is:
- the first virtual orchestra to actually produce and release a work (whether fan or mainstream repertoire, professional or amateur basis!);
- the first to combine orchestral and choral elements in a large virtual collaboration; and
- the first internationally-based fan orchestra.

As others on this blog have pointed out: the membership, the score partitures, and in fact the musicianship, have all expanded tremendously since that first DWFO piece last summer. We are also proud to have inspired the recent creation of the Sherlock Fan Orchestra. Time will tell if other groups--and fandoms--follow suit. In the meantime, Stephen is planning more DWFO projects this (second) year, and we think you'll like them. Stay tuned for... well, just stay tuned!

Robin LaPasha
Assistant Coordinator

Join us for the Dalek Suite!

The Doctor Who Fan Orchestra's next performance will be a "Dalek Suite", featuring a selection of Murray Gold's Dalek music from Series One to Five of Doctor Who.

If you play an instrument or sing, and would like to be involved, here's what to do:

Send an email to stephen.a.willis@gmail.com with the following information:

- Your full name, or psuedonym if preferred
- Your instrument and/or choral part
- Your contact email address (the one you would like me to keep on file for you, and that your sheet music and other resources will be sent to)

You may also provide details such as your age, location, musical background etc. - but this is optional. We're a diverse group, and it's nice for us to build up a picture of the range of our membership.

You should hear back within a week. If (and only if) you do not receive any response within 2 weeks, please try re-emailing, or sending a private message to Socksofbalhoon on YouTube.

In order to take part you will need access to a microphone intended for music recording. We can provide some advice in this aspect if necessary.

Good luck and happy exterminating!

Stephen Willis
Arranger & Co-ordinator

You Are Not Alone… -- by Heather Ackroyd (Clarinet/Soprano)

We’re now three pieces in and the Doctor Who Fan Orchestra keeps getting stronger. So far we’ve more or less doubled our numbers with each new piece, from a mere 36 for “I Am the Doctor” to 78 for “This is Gallifrey/Vale Decem” and now a staggering 154 for “Rose’s Theme/Doomsday”. Some of our members have expressed their mixed emotions at the overwhelming online response to our latest endeavour, but I think Robin (LaPasha, assistant co-ordinator) coined it perfectly when she said the word we were looking for is “humbled”.

I spent my secondary school years in bands and orchestras and choirs, but over the past couple of decades most of my musical adventures have been limited to singing in the shower or along with CDs in the car. My clarinet has barely been dusted off in all that time, although it was one of the few possessions I insisted on taking with me when I moved from Australia to the US. From time to time I thought about joining a local choir or band, but usually I never got further than just thinking about it.

Then I saw a link to “I Am the Doctor”. When I realised what it was, that people had performed their parts individually and Stephen Willis had crafted them into an amazing whole, my first emotion was delight that someone had taken the time and effort to do this, followed quickly by deep regret that I hadn’t learned about the project while it was still being conceived. Imagine my joy when I discovered there were plans to do a second piece. Here was a chance to be part of a group of people brought together by their love for two things that were also dear to my heart – music and Doctor Who.

When we got the music for “This is Gallifrey/Vale Decem” I found that learning and playing a part without a conductor was a new challenge. Stephen provided click tracks of his arrangement for us to use for timing and tuning, but it was a far cry from being surrounded by your fellow musicians as you learned the piece together under the guidance of a conductor. This method of producing a part forces you to listen carefully to what you’re doing and to self-correct as much as possible. This is where the Facebook group comes in especially handy, as we can ask our technical questions and get feedback. Sometimes someone would ask about an aspect of the piece that I hadn’t even considered, and I could incorporate the response into what I was doing. It all goes towards making us sound unified.

But none of that explains the emotion. My first few recordings for “Doomsday” were ruined by me choking up with tears halfway through. Only part of that was due to the piece itself. It’s beautiful and poignant, and is played over a scene full of loss and longing. But more than that, it was the knowledge of what I was part of that made me weep. I knew that all over the world other people were standing before their microphones, listening to Stephen’s click track, and singing or playing their hearts out to create something magical.

It turns out I was surrounded by my fellow musicians after all.

DWFO #3: "Rose's Theme / Doomsday"

The Doctor Who Fan Orchestra are proud to present their third collaboration: "Rose's Theme / Doomsday" by Murray Gold.

An MP3 file of the final mix can be downloaded from here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8058374/DWFO%20%233%20-%20Rose%27s%20Theme%20-%20Doom...

Check out our Facebook page here:
https://www.facebook.com/DoctorWhoFanOrchestra

This final mix includes a total of 177 submissions from 154 individual participants, ranging in age from 11 to 57, and who are located in at least 18 different countries across the world, including: United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Spain, France, Russia, Brazil, Canada, Finland, Hong Kong, Israel, Latvia, Norway, Poland, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland.

Arranged and co-ordinated by Stephen Willis

Assistant Co-ordinator: Robin LaPasha

Piano solo: Natalie Odien

Lead Guitar: Steve Foxon

Vocal Soloists: Heather Ackroyd; Allie Savage; Rachel Adcock; Catherine Geiger

The next piece will be "Dalek Suite" (featuring music from Series One to Five). To take part, look out for instructions in the upcoming promo.

Thanks to all participants!

Confessions of an Über Nerd -- by Lori-Ann (Alto Saxophone)

I live in a place where the men are manly and so are the women.  I jest of course, but it is a place where logging trucks are more numerous than regular cars, people still hunt for their winter’s meat, and hockey is a religion and way of life.  In fact if you are not a hockey fan it is widely speculated that you must have been dropped on your head as a child.  Confession number one: I am not a hockey fan; oh, I do play, but more out of a need for exercise than any great passion.  In fact, I play so poorly that the five year old Timbits hockey players can out-skate me. You will certainly never catch me watching a game for the sheer pleasure of it.  I prefer to spend my time on other endeavours.  Confession number two: I am a card-carrying, fully paid-up, lifelong band geek.  I’ll play in any sort of group, community or otherwise, that will have me, but I have a particular affinity for concert bands and orchestras. There is nothing quite like the wonder of getting dozens of people together to produce one cohesive sound.  It may be tantamount to herding cats at times, but by golly, when it works, it’s magic.  My passion for music is perhaps rivalled by only one thing.  Confession number three: I am a certified Sci Fi nerd.  If it involves spaceships, extra-terrestrials, government conspiracies, mutants, robots, monsters, or awkward maladroits with poor social skills I’m probably a fan of it. 

And so here enters stage left, the Doctor Who Fan Orchestra, the perfect collision of my geek and nerd universes.  Once I was through kicking myself for having missed out on the first performance of “I Am The Doctor,” it was with great anticipation and excitement that I submitted my application for “This Is Gallifrey/Vale Decem.”  The subsequent wait to receive sheet music was agonizing.  I have never checked my e-mail more frequently or at more inappropriate moments.  In fact, at the very second that I received the e-mail notification that the sheet music and midi files were available, I was knee deep in a fetid swamp being eaten alive by ravenous mosquitos and horse flies (I may be of the wild and feral variety but I still carry a smartphone and you’d be surprised where you get service).  It was with great giddiness that I sloshed back to town that day.  My impatience got the better of me, though, and I was unable to wait to get home to look up the sheet music.  With a few furtive glances over my shoulder to where the entrance to the men’s washroom loomed (my desk is located in prime real estate next to the loos) I brought up the music on my work computer.  Needless to say I was so engrossed that I was eventually caught by a colleague who had indulged in too much coffee.  Lucky for me, my nerdy confession won the day and produced bellows of laughter instead of a stern rebuke.  When the laughter ebbed away, it was replaced with a sincere curiosity.  It seems even the most hardened of bush men can be swayed by the charm of Murray Gold’s music.

Which leads me to my final confession: when it comes to film and television I notice the music before the plot and I am fascinated by Murray Gold’s compositions.  I have spent many hours enraptured by the themes, motifs, and anthems he incorporates into his music.  It is clear that I am not alone in this regard if DWFO participation numbers are anything to go by.  So to all my fellow musicians I say greetings and salutations; keep the creative channels open.  And to Stephen Willis and Robin LaPasha I say thank you for the wonderful job you’ve done in putting this whole project together.  May the blue box one day alight on your doorstep.

L-A

Alto Saxophone

 

What’s this? An online Fan Orchestra? For Doctor Who music? That’ll never work...

Hello. Maybe you’re here because you’re a member of the Doctor Who Fan Orchestra, or maybe because you’ve heard and appreciated our work. Or maybe you’re here by accident!

Now that you are here though – welcome. Someone suggested that the project should have a blog, so I decided to give it a try. In the future, you may see posts from me, Stephen Willis (founder and co-ordinator of the DWFO), or from Robin LaPasha (assistant co-ordinator and general friendly face), or even from members of the Orchestra. Incidentally, to keep updated with this blog, you can subscribe by email on the right-hand side – yep, just there... no, no, there... yeah.

So what is the Doctor Who Fan Orchestra? Well, for one thing, it’s exactly what it says on the tin – we are all Doctor Who fans, and we have formed an orchestra. But more than that – we are all passionate about Murray Gold’s music and its role in the revived series. One gloomy evening in early 2011, in Surrey, England, I was tinkering away in Sibelius on an arrangement of “I Am The Doctor”, the Eleventh Doctor’s theme, when a particularly crazy idea struck me. I knew that Murray’s music meant an awful lot to an awful lot of people, and I reasoned that, probably, among those fans, a lot would be musicians themselves. And that they’d give anything to be able to play music from Doctor Who. Wouldn’t it be great, I thought, if we could somehow play the music all together?

I’d heard vaguely of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra. I remember hearing the phrase, and being very excited at the idea of an online orchestra, where people from all over the world could play together through the power of the internet. And then being very disappointed when I found out that the only involvement YouTube and the internet had in the project was for would-be participants to send in audition tapes of themselves playing solo, for selection to then travel to a venue on a specific date and give a concert together.

But the seed of that idea had obviously stayed in the back of my mind, because, when I started pondering the sheer number of dedicated fans Murray Gold has, it didn’t seem that far-fetched that we could somehow band together and express our love of his music through online “performance”. After all, multi-track recording is commonplace, and has been for a good few decades now. Was it really that outlandish to suggest that amateur musicians from different countries could home-record their individual parts, and send them in by email to be mixed?

I made a tentative post on the Gallifrey Base forum, to test the waters... offering the caveat that I was well aware that this was highly ambitious, and was likely to fall flat on its face! Very quickly, though, people started to express their interest. A common theme was, “Awesome! I’ve wanted to do something like this for SO LONG!!! :D”

Eight months later, here we are. The Doctor Who Fan Orchestra has now produced two performances, having grown from 36 performers in “I Am The Doctor” to 78 in “This Is Gallifrey / Vale Decem”. I cannot say how pleased I am with how well this project has turned out, and continues to be turning out. Thanks to all participants for being interested, for recording your parts and having fun while doing it (and persevering on those tricky few bars...!). Thanks to Robin for keeping me sane throughout the whole thing, for being ever-helpful in the Facebook group and for generally banging the drum (and cymbals!) for the project. And thanks so, so much to Mr. Murray Gold, for writing this wonderful, gorgeous music in the first place, and for helping to get us “out there” on Twitter etc. 

So in answer to the question – this is who we are. As The Daily What put it, we are “a collection of musicians who collaborate across time and space”. And it just goes to show that, no matter how ridiculous an idea may seem, nothing is impossible. And yes – we all have a lot of fun recording our parts and meeting the other members... but the Doctor Who Fan Orchestra is almost a metaphor. A metaphor for how grateful we all are for this music, and how far we are willing to go, against the odds, to stand together and show our appreciation. Here's to the next piece - the beautiful "Rose's Theme" and "Doomsday"!