Ten Things I’m Sick Of Seeing In Collegiate A Cappella
Dave Grossman is a member of Ithaca College’s Ithacappella. Please note that the writing below is in no way representative of the views of Ithaca College or Ithacappella.
If you’re reading this article, the following three points are likely true:
-You sing a cappella
-You’ve seen and heard other a cappella besides your own group
-You care enough about your group to do some research for them.
Those things assumed, you’ve probably seen a lot of these a cappella pet peeves of mine, and you may have even been perpetrators of some of them. Regardless, the following is a list of songs and procedures that are done either all too often, or, when done occasionally, still don’t make any sense.
1. Coldplay’s Fix You – Honestly, I don’t understand what has drawn so many groups to performing this song. The really perplexing part is that groups still perform this song after it’s been done a thousand times.
2. Conducting for an entire song – This is completely unnecessary and very distracting for an audience member. As a music director, one of your goals needs to be to make the group independent for themselves to the point where they can feel an internal pulse individually and still work as a group. Also, showing every beat of a piece of music is going to constrict the singers more than help them. Remember, as a conductor or music director, your job is not for you to look like a great musician, it’s for your group to sound like great musicians. It usually seems that music directors conducting throughout entire songs are using unclear conducting gestures, anyways. This is hurting the group more than it’s helping. Flailing your hands around and flicking your wrists doesn’t really help anyone, and you’re likely to end up with some timing problems from it.
3. Conducting for an entire song when you’re the person doing vocal percussion on a song – Just think about this for a second. You’re already keeping the beat with your perc. Take all of the reasons for not conducting an entire song, and then realize that you’re already keeping the tempo.
4. Awkwardness – You sing a cappella. Do you have any idea how geeky this is? Collegiate a cappella is quite possibly the dorkiest thing in the world, next to reading Gizmodo.com up to ten times a day and counting the hours to the next Apple Keynote speech, both of which I do. Embrace the fact that you are a loser! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the tall guy in back with his hands in pockets looking up in space, trying to act a lot cooler than he really is. Sorry buddy, you’re singing ‘Doh dih wah dih no’ while your friend is belting out a Billy Joel song. You’ve already sunk, why don’t you make the best of a bad situation and have fun with it?
5. Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap – I’ve seen and/or heard this done well by two groups, Divisi and Transit. If you’re not going to do it as well as them or better, don’t do it. It’s a beautiful song, but with a song like this, you need to own it in the arrangement, the singing and the emotion. All three of these parameters should be up to par with the original at least, and preferably should have some innovations beyond what Imogen did so well already.
6. The ‘aca-bop.’ If I see one more group with accidentally synchronized alternating knee popping, I’m going to explode. This wouldn’t be so painful if it weren’t for the groups that put all of their energy into their knees. I recently saw a group where every member, including the soloists, had their hands falling lifelessly at their sides for the entire set, expressionless faces, but the bounciest knees the world has ever seen. They sounded great but seemed unbelievably bored to be there. I present a challenge to female groups out there, because this seems to plague your groups the most. Go nuts! As an audience member, if it looks like you’re having fun, we’ll have fun too. If you look bored, then we’ll be bored too.
7. Blowing multiple pitches from the pitch pipe to start a song – Music directors, you need to work to make your singers better musicians. If your singers can’t pick out their starting note from a tonic pitch, then something is wrong. You need to train them to do this. Teach them solfege, give them intervals that popular song melodies start with (Happy birthday, here comes the bride, NBC), but please stop blowing multiple pitches. It SCREAMS ‘We aren’t talented musicians’ and sets you guys up to sound bad.
8. The ‘Kih’ sound for snares where it shouldn’t be – This is another problem that seems to be seen a lot with female a cappella (guys do it too, I just see it more often in female) that doesn’t need to happen. There’s this ridiculous stigma that girls can’t do percussion as well as men do. Go tell that to the girls from Marblehead High School’s Luminescence or Wilmington High School’s Soundscape (co-ed group with a great female percussionist). I recently witnessed two high school girls do some of the best percussion I’ve ever heard. The ‘standard’ for a snare sound lately is a ‘Pff’ sound. It’s not pitched, so it doesn’t matter what your range is, so I don’t understand why I see so many people satisfied with this lame ‘Kih’ sound for a snare drum. It doesn’t carry, it sounds like a rim shot (which in some cases is very appropriate, but don’t give your audience a hard rock song with such a soft snare) and is unnecessary. Anyone can do the ‘pff’ sound, just practice it.
9. Using a slow song to start or end a set (or BOTH) – Take a moment and remove yourself from your group. Put yourself into the seats of your audience. You’re coming to an a cappella concert and you don’t know what to expect. What’s the first thing you want to see? A slow ballad? I highly doubt that. It’s a pretty safe assumption that as an audience is waiting for you to come on stage, they want to get their socks rocked off with energy, not necessarily that beautiful blended ‘oo’ for four minutes that moves your group to tears every time (or better yet, if you can achieve both of these factors… do it). What may be worse is ending a set with a downer. This is the last thing your audience will have to remember you by. Make them remember fun, not that they almost fell asleep half way through the second verse.
10. Skits/Videos/Jokes that aren’t funny and take up a big chunk of the concert and time that could be used for rehearsal – Go to a Cornell Last Call concert. If you’re not that funny, then stop spending more than 10 minutes right before a concert putting together a video with a silly plot or pointless skits and go practice. If you ARE that funny, make sure you can still sound as good as those guys do when they’re doing it.