You are cordially invited to participate in Benjamin Nacar's Independence Day Internet Chorus! The goal is to gather as many people as possible for a video recording of "God Bless America" by Irving Berlin. Participation is open to anyone who can carry a tune. Please share this post with anyone you know who might be interested!
Here's how to do it:
You can use an iPhone or Android to do the recording. If using other equipment, the video/audio quality should be on par with smartphone quality. If you want to use fancier equipment, by all means do, but keep in mind that in the final mix the quality difference may not be appreciable.
Video should be landscape orientation, not portrait.
You can record two people singing together in the same video, sharing a pair of earbuds. More than two is also fine if you can play the sing-along file through enough earpieces simultaneously. Alternately, if you can rig it up where one person sings with the earbuds and several others follow the first, go for it (I don't know how well that will work, so play around with different setups and see what works best). Otherwise if you have more than two people who want to do this, it'll probably be easiest to record them one or two at a time and send the files separately.
If multiple people appear in your recording, I will need a signed consent form from each of them (multiple scans/images can be uploaded together with the video file).
Only people who are actually singing should be in the video.
If you are under 18 years old, or you have kids under 18 who wish to participate, contact me first at ben [at] bennacar [dot] com so we can discuss parental consent.
Recording can be done in either an indoor or an outdoor setting. If outdoors, make sure that your voice is captured clearly and not obscured by wind or other ambient noise.
Dress as formally or as casually as you want, but keep it family friendly.
Partisan political messaging is not permitted.
AI generated or AI enhanced videos are not permitted.
Participation in this music video is at my sole discretion as director/producer and I reserve the right to exclude any submitted recording from the finished video.
The completed Internet Chorus video will be posted to my YouTube channel on Saturday, July 4th, 2026, at 7:30 AM US Eastern Time, and linked from my home page. A backup will also be posted to my Vimeo page.
The finished recording will use a different, more complex piano accompaniment (but the harmonization will be the same).
Depending on how many people participate, it's possible that not everyone will be on screen all the time, and I will likely have to do some minimal video cropping to make people fit neatly. However, I will aim to give all participants equal screen time.
I will not be monetizing this video, but be aware that YouTube has been sticking advertisements into even non-monetized videos for a few years.
Be ready to share the finished video with all your family and friends!
Cheers,
~~ Ben
Posted June 11 2026