How Many New Songs Do A Cappella Groups Learn in a Year?

In the fall of 2010, The A Cappella Blog invited every collegiate a cappella group we could find to participate in a survey. Our objective was to develop a better understanding of current trends in a cappella—what groups are or are not doing and to what degree.

Over 300 groups from across the US and abroad responded to the survey. Throughout our 2010 publication season, we will review results from this survey and talk about what our findings mean. We welcome and encourage groups to look over the information to learn, to benchmark and to satisfy their own curiosity.

This edition’s question: How many songs did your group learn over the last year?

The groups surveyed reported a fairly wide range when it came to the number of songs they had learned in the past year. The highest percentage, 33, had learned six-to-10 songs, while next highest number of groups came in at 11-to-15 songs per year.

It makes sense that different groups would learn different numbers of songs. Two of the leading factors would include scheduling and quality. As we’ve documented earlier, some groups perform as frequently as multiple times in a given week, while others still focus on semesterly shows. Some groups tour, others compete. Some groups are trying to record new CDs, other just want to rack up a viral video on YouTube. Each of these choices warrants different breadths of song catalogs—as a general rule, the more frequently a group is performing, the more new material it will need to keep the act fresh. By the same token, if a group is zoning in on perfecting solely its three song competition set, it’s not likely to learn much beyond those three songs, and maybe a fourth song to serve as an encore.

The number of new songs a group learns also depends on where the arrangements are coming from. Those groups that pay professionals for a significant portion of their arrangements probably just can’t afford to pick many new pieces. Groups dependent on alumni arrangers may find that their source doesn’t have the time to really focus on the group; or, conversely, that an alumnus is hung up on the group and can’t think of anything else, which results in a plethora of new material with which to work.

Nonetheless, over 89 percent of groups ultimately report that their learning six or more songs in a given year, which indicates that groups are generally staying busy, and busy and working hard to assimilate new material into their repertoires.