One of the island’s well known music teachers is aiming to get as many children as possible singing during the lockdown period.

Musician, tutor and children’s choir leader Katie Lawrence is putting together a collaboration video of children singing a special version of ’Ellan Vannin’, and is asking for any children who would like to be part of the project to get in touch and lend their voices to the song.

To take part, the young singers must get in touch with Katie and obtain the link to a recording of Ellan Vannin.

They will then have to video themselves singing along to the version and send the video back to Katie who, with help of a videographer and a professional music producer, will arrange the submissions into a whole video.

The concept of taking individually-filmed tracks of one song and arranging them into one seamless track and video is a complicated process and Katie stressed that, in order to be able to feature in the project, children who want to film themselves must follow a few particular directions.

’What is important is that the children will have to listen to the music through headphones as they sing along, as it wouldn’t work having a loud backing track over the video,’ said Katie.

’We want to be able to have the voices isolated and put against a particular version of the song.

’It also has to be sung to the version I have created, as it wouldn’t work if I was sent a video of kids singing the song in their own time, speed or even a different key to everybody else.’

The music is available to download from a Dropbox folder, which also contains the words to the song and a ’how-to’ guide on how to record yourself.

’How the finished video looks all depends on how many children submit videos of themselves,’ she said. ’I have had a few entries already but I would like to get as many as possible.

’This is open to any child who wants to take part regardless of their experience or background.

They don’t have to be members of a choir or to be trained singers.

’I thought it would be good to give the island’s kids something creative to take part in and get involved with during this time.

The closing date for entries is Thursday, April 30.

Katie explained: ’Once we have all of our entries, music producer David Rowles and I will produce the music and film producer Glenn Whorrall will edit the videos together.’

The finished video will be made available to view on social media platforms.

For more details and to express an interest in your child taking part in the project, contact Katie through her Facebook page, by searching for ’Music Home Learning Isle of Man’, also on Facebook, or email at [email protected]

The Dropbox folder is publicly available on Katie’s Facebook page.