Occasionally we run into a project or musical endeavor which

defies all attempts at pretentiousness; it’s just straight up cool. Even if you’re not a classical music fan (though if you read MysteryTricycle you must enjoy the occasional Bach partita or Chopin waltz), you’re going to enjoy this.

Enter and the virtual choir. Eric started life in Nevada, wanting to be a pop star. “[I wanted to be] the 5th member of Durand Durand” (from his speech at Ted talks). However after going to college he realized that there’s really no degree for that, and he was strong-armed by a friend into joining the university’s choir (with the promise of hot soprano girls and a trip to Mexico).

It was in this choir that Eric had an epiphany of sorts, which would shape the rest of his life. He abandoned the idea of becoming a pop star to instead become a classical music composer and conductor. Since then, he has written many works including pieces for choir, wind symphonies, and even a musical.

But what we here at MysteryTricycle are most impressed by is his idea of a “virtual choir.” A few years ago he got the idea to try to put together a choral rendition of his song Lux Aurumque by requesting that users submit YouTube videos of themselves singing the piece.

To have a shot at making this work, he videotaped himself conducting the piece, and had a background track of piano so that people could listen to something while they sang. This way everyone would sing at approximately the same tempo and approximately the same pitch.

The submissions came in, were edited all together, and Lux Aurumque was released via YouTube in 2009. In the end, there were 185 people singing this song together representing 12 countries around the world.

We not only appreciate the uniqueness of the idea, but the production that went into this. Scrubbing the sound (YouTube videos and home recordings aren’t usually known for their HD quality), splicing 243 tracks and rendering them into the inspirational and deceptively simple concept of the video took some masterful engineering and creativity.

We doff our caps to producer Scott Haines and the visual treat he created for our ocular enjoyment. This entire project could have easily been much less significant had Scott decided to cheese up the buy viagra without prescription post production. Instead, he leaves it as much to the singers as possible, and humanizes the song. We can each pick out someone like us in montage,