-The Shipyard Sings is an a cappella competition based in Hingham, MA. It’s open to all area a cappella groups, with the winners earning a $500 cash prize and the chance to open for the Tufts University Beelzebubs on September 18, 2010.

There will be two rounds of competition, the first of which is underway now, the second of which will start later in the summer. Entrants submit videos here between June 8 and July 16, and the five text-to-vote winners will compete live on July 31 at a show in which the live audience will pick the winner. The second edition runs from July 17 to August 17, with a live show on August 31. Both winning groups will get cash and the chance to perform alongside the ‘Bubs.

You can get more information at the contest’s website here.

-Saint Louis University Bare Naked Statues is trying to raise money to create a new CD in the fall. You can support their cause by purchasing some group merchandise or unique services (telephone serenade, anyone?) here.

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2. Newsline: ACB weekend news and a contest!
3. Newsline: The ACB ICCA Bracket Contest

The Best I’ve Seen highlights the very best in collegiate a cappella, as seen in the admittedly biased and limited view of the author. In this special edition, ACB Content Manager Mike Chin and ACB Production Manager Mike Scalise team up and, on more than one occasion, butt heads about the best they’ve seen in the 2010 ICCA season.

Best Set
Mike Chin: The easy, objective pick here is The SoCal VoCals–after all, the group that wins the international championship should have put forth the best set of the year. I’m veering a little off course on this one, though, to instead offer up my pick for the set I enjoyed most this season, which would have to be the one put forth by The Washington University Stereotypes at the ICCA Midwest Semifinals. The guys started with a spot of high energy musical theatre with “Seize the Day” from Newsies, before taking on some old school Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young “With Carry On.” It was a solid opening to the set, but the guys really were just getting started. In one of the top five solos I saw this year, the guys let loose “Your Song” in the style of Moulin Rouge, to be followed by an impossibly high octane version of “Jai Ho” from Slumdog Millionaire. Sets just don’t get much more fun than that. Although the crew didn’t make it to the finals, it sure as heck wasn’t for lack of effort.

Mike Scalise: The best set that I’ve seen in the 2010 season comes from The SoCal VoCals at the finals in NYC. The group, which is tremendously talented, delivered three solid songs sung with near perfection. They began with “God Bless the Child” by Billie Holiday. The solo was clear and professional-sounding. Couple that with a strong visual performance by remaining group members and you have a hit. They continued with “Crazy Ever After” by The Rescues. I wasn’t very familiar with this song, but after hearing a number of soloists sing their hearts out, I was really moved. It was an amazing performance. The group completed their set with “Living for the City” by Stevie Wonder. What stood out to me about this song was the group’s entertaining and energetic choreography which consisted of free-style dancing, hand gestures, and even a raising of the soloist (who, in case you were wondering, was exceptional). The overall set was hand over fist better than the rest of the competition, and rightfully earned this group the title and bragging rights for the ICCA 2010 season.

Best Song
Mike Chin: The SoCal VoCals put together a set like an a cappella highlight reel, but I think what I’ll remember most was their innovative imagining of The Rescues’ “Crazy Ever After”. With rotating soloists and rotating positions on stage, the group cleverly created a sense of group unity, while at the same time asserting the individual talents of the group members. Better yet, the constant shifting fit the “story” of the song well, illustrating the shift’s in the narrators’ minds, and the conflicted feelings at play. Emotionally heart-wrenching, musically sound, and altogether interesting to watch, this was the best song I saw in the 2010 season.

Mike Scalise: The 2010 ICCA season offered up a number of very good songs, both old and new, performed by the competing groups. I have to say, though, the best song I heard was “American Girls” by Counting Crows, performed by Casual Harmony at the Mid-Atlantic Quarterfinal at Nazareth College. I like this song a lot – it’s by one of my favorite bands and I never thought I’d see it performed a cappella. It’s not that mainstream of a song, but it’s not that obscure either. Casual Harmony gave a very good performance and made it enjoyable to hear in a different context. I could see this turning into a situation where I start listening to the a cappella version much more than the original.

Best Solo
Mike Chin: Northwestern University’s John Park turned in the best solo of the year in my book with John Legend’s “Coming Home.” Park demonstrated a beautiful even tone, while knowing just how to punch his power notes and command the emotion of the audience as the song built toward its climax.

Mike Scalise: Hands down the best solo I’ve heard this season was by a member of the Potsdam Pointercounts at the Mid-Atlantic Semifinals at Rutgers University. The soloist sang “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday” flawlessly. Every note, every inflection was point on (no pun intended) In addition, he had the right type of voice for the song – just a very good fit. I had also seen this performance at the Mid-Atlantic quarterfinal at Cornell University, where he rightfully won best soloist, but he outdid himself at the Semis. Ironically though, he was not awarded the best soloist distinction the second time around. Regardless, it ranked high on my list for the 2010 season.

Best Choreography
Mike Chin: I ordinarily hate choreography on a ballad, but when University of Rochester After Hours set their minds to staging “The Chain by Ingrid Michaelson, they were more than prepared to challenge convention and put together something uncommonly beautiful. From dancing in co-ed pairs at the start, to singing in a round while orchestrating a round of arm movements to match the music late in the song, this was simply a joy to behold.

Mike Scalise: When it comes to choreography, there’s no question that many groups are talented at creating entertaining and appropriate moves for their song selections. As a result, picking the best one out of the bunch has proved to be an extremely difficult task. The best I’ve seen in the 2010 ICCA season was The SoCal VoCals for their performance of “Crazy Ever After,” originally performed by The Rescues. The group starts off with their backs to the audience and soon turns to deliver a number of different solos throughout the song. Those who weren’t singing had a mixture of steps behind and to the side of one another, with certain members re-appearing in the front to deliver more solos or duets. At one point during the song, the group repetitively sang the word “stay” while reaching out towards the audience, which embodied all of the raw emotion they were portraying on stage. It looked like everyone had an integral part in the success of this group’s choreography. All things considered, this was an extremely well-performed and moving performance.

Best Song Selection
Mike Chin: There are a lot of factors that go into picking competition songs. You want to highlight your group’s strengths, show off a range of emotion, and engage your audience—not to mention create a performance that will match up with the interests of the judging panel. The University of Georgia Accidentals put together a really unique compilation of songs that I have come to appreciate more with the passage of time, looking back on it. From the vocal percussion showcase of “Comin’ Home Baby” complete with the VP guy’s back flip, to the power, beauty, and out of this world solo of “I Shall Not Walk Alone” to the biggest moment of the ICCA Finals in the dramatic build to “Come Together,” The Accidentals made the smartest picks for songs this year.

Mike Scalise: When it comes to song selection, it can be difficult to choose a best because you’re not choosing a great group nor a great song. You’re choosing the best combination – what song was the best selection for a particular group. There are numerous close calls on my list, but I think “Halo” by Beyonce, performed by Berklee School of Music’s Pitch Slapped at The Finals in NYC, was a great choice for the group. The soloist was phenomenal and the backing vocals and fluid choreography made for a great presentation overall. If one wanted to dig even deeper, he or she could take note of how there was a lot of meaning in their movements in addition to the song itself – linking arms together, raising hands together to give a sense of empowerment. This was a memorable performance.

Best Outfit
Mike Chin: While I ordinarily prefer a group to be dressed more uniformly, and I very nearly picked one of the mixed groups from The University of Michigan I saw at the Midwest Semifinals, I ultimately have to go with the Northeast champs, Berklee College of Music Pitch Slapped. The group dressed formally with the guys in white collared shirts, black vests, black slacks and black ties, the women in less uniform black and white dressy attire. Add in a couple baseball caps and you have a fun, individual and yet still refined look. Unique, urban, and classy, Pitch Slapped gets my vote here.

Mike Scalise: There was such a range of outfits worn by groups throughout the 2010 ICCA season. I saw groups with ties, dresses, button-up shirts, jeans, and even pastel-colored tee shirts with funky words written on them. However, one group’s attire stood out from the rest, completely blowing away the competition. This is ironic, because it wasn’t even a competing group, but rather a host group – Nazareth College Call4Backup. Naz’s Call4Backup acted as the host group for the fourth Mid-Atlantic Quarterfinal. They sported a modern, yet classic look of sky blue A Cappella Blog tee shirts and jeans. The uniformity was unparalleled and visual presentation untouched. The all-girls group performed as well as their outfit was good. I like to think there was a correlation.

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You can support music in our schools through the VH1 Save The Music Foundation by purchasing a wristband from our site. Go to our Donate to Save the Music page for more information!

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1. Friday Factoid: The winningest region in the ICCAs
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Reason #9: Killer Samples

As an art form that has its roots and its core in live performance, a cappella has the unique opportunity for its performers to sample other songs amidst the ones they are performing.

We’ve all seen it. Sometimes it just sounds right melodically—the bevy of groups performed Sean Kingston’s “Beautiful Girls” a couple years ago, and threw back a sample to “Stand By Me,” or Rochester’s Midnight Ramblers sampling “Ode to Joy” toward the end of “Mr. Brightside.” Sometimes there’s a thematic connection—there’s a time I saw group sample Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” in the middle of Ben Folds’s “Annie Waits,” making it a song of empowerment for Annie.

Sampling is a fantastic way of individualizing a song—while a cappella arrangements are, by their nature different, this ups the stakes, creating a mini-medley of sorts, giving the audience the sense its seeing something genuinely unique and special. Furthermore, it keeps the audience on its toes—taking it out of the safe realm of a familiar song, and experimenting with something new. Not every sample works, but when the do, they can really elevate a performance.

I love it!

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Trying to find a group? Search or sort The ACB Group Directory–the most comprehensive and up to date directory of collegiate a cappella groups anywhere on the Internet!

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This week, we look at the importance of… organizational leadership

The nature of an ensemble performance is that each and every piece of the ensemble is important. The soloist might get the most attention, but can’t succeed without the vocal percussionist keeping the tempo straight. Even if the song’s on the beat, it won’t matter if the tuning in the background sounds like crap. The visual presentation is the responsibility of the entire group. When it comes to performance, the argument can therefore be made that no individual member is more important than another. That’s what happens on stage. There is, however, another side to a cappella, which is what happens before and after shows, behind the scenes. Herein lies the importance of organizational leadership.

An a cappella group needs leaders to plan for, motivate and prepare a group. Groups need to make their way through rehearsals in such a way that gets them prepared to perform their repertoires well, besides organizing practices such that they make good use of busy college students’ time. These are no easy tasks. And it is up to an organization’s leadership to balance between the many roles involved in a group’s success. They serve as player-coaches, drill-sergeants, motivational speakers, counselors and more. Leadership holds a group together, and synergizes a number of individuals into a unit.

Beyond serving as interpersonal leaders, a group’s leadership needs to take care of the pieces that are less directly related to performance. Someone needs to select and arrange songs. In so doing, it means picking songs that will not only appeal to an audience, but will fit the talents and style of the group, and then translating them into a cappella. Such responsibilities typically fall to a musical director, or a handful of other members, skilled in arrangement.

In addition to arranging music, there are a number of logistical concerns for a group to keep in mind. Someone needs to book shows so groups have a place to perform. Similarly, someone needs to work through the registration process in order to participate in the ICCAs and other competitions or major events. Furthermore, there’s the element of coordinating recordings—managing the legal end of obtaining the rights to record music, figuring out the finances, the where and the when of actually laying down tracks, and then organizing marketing and sales. These are all challenging and time consuming tasks, which often fall under the auspices of a business manager.

On top of the many other leadership responsibilities of a musical ensemble, it’s also important to keep in mind that collegiate a cappella groups need to function within a college atmosphere. For many groups, this means operating under a Student Association or comparable governing body, in order to obtain funding or the rights to use performance spaces around campus. Similarly, many groups need to work with a music department, in order to get the rights to rehearsal rooms, or in order to recruit new members from music programs. Each campus has its own nuances, regarding how to foster connections with other student organizations and the general campus community. Beyond the home college, groups also need leaders to coordinate with groups from other schools to work out joint performances. For all of these tasks, many groups turn to a president or public relations manager.

All in all, there are many opportunities for leadership in a collegiate a cappella group, and these leaders are absolutely essential to the long-term success of a group. Every member of a group has his or her own important role, but one can never overlook the importance of a group’s leaders.

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You can support music in our schools through the VH1 Save The Music Foundation by purchasing a wristband from our site. Go to our Donate to Save the Music page for more information!

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Reason #8: Body Percussion

When most of us think of a cappella, we think of human voices carrying the melody, harmonizing with one another, synthesizing the sounds of instruments. Carrying that a step further, there’s vocal percussion–multi-piece drum kits, delivered through the human mouth and its interaction with a microphone. Taking things one step further, you have the clap of hands, the snap of fingers, other traditional pieces of a cappella.

There’s a way to take this all a step further, though. There’s a stomp of the feet. A slap of your chest, or your thigh. All of this, without the benefit of instruments, or synthesizing sounds, can create an organic, raw and powerful sound that rouses audiences, with a truly different technique. Carried out at just the right time, with perfect synchronization, this is the kind of performance techniques that draws goosebumps.

I love it!

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Want to write for The A Cappella Blog? Want to have your photos posted on the site? Want to join The ACB team in another capacity? You’re in luck because we are looking for new staff! Go to our contact page and write to us about what you would like to do.

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3. 200 Reasons to Love A Cappella: Hot Dudes

We welcome clip suggestions from anyone who would like to submit them.

This week, we present the 2010 ICCA champions, The Univeristy of Southern California SoCal VoCals, performing The Rescues’ ”Crazy Ever After.”

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Trying to find a group? Search or sort The ACB Group Directory–the most comprehensive and up to date directory of collegiate a cappella groups anywhere on the Internet!

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The A Cappella Blog (ACB): Where did the group name Midnight Echo come from?

Peter Tu (PT): So I went back and asked a lot of members from before and I guess I found a lot of different conflicting stories as to how it came about. I’m tempted to just guess at what happened though: turns out we’re all college students and so we’re extremely busy all the time, and we do almost all our work at night. Our rehearsal times are also generally really close to midnight, as well as our arch concerts and other events. Since the space just outside the room we rehearse inl is a really echo-y hallway, we felt that it was both interesting and appropriate that our group would be called Midnight Echo.

ACB: What is the audition process like for Midnight Echo?

PT: Here at the Claremont Colleges, all the groups have a unified audition schedule, so we all have the same audition day. The funny thing is, the club fair that lets students about clubs and on-campus groups actually happens after the auditions, so we can’t pass out flyers then. We then rely on emailing student email lists and Facebook announcements to get news out.

For the actual audition process we do some pretty standard things–have the auditionees do some warm-ups, figure out their range, and also have them do a short sight-reading exercise. After that, we see how well they can do a vocal swell, and see how well they can repeat for us a sequence of notes played on the piano with increasing difficulty. Finally, they sing a roughly 40 second solo that they’ve prepared to show us what they can do.

For those auditionees that pass this first round, we call them back to figure out some other things. We have them learn two pieces of our repertoire from the previous semester, a long piece (~3 min) and a short piece (~1 min) to evaluate how quickly they can pick up the music. By singing with the group we can also see how they balance and blend.

We then ask them each to sing another prepared solo piece to finish the auditions. Usually we try to make the callbacks enjoyable by coming up with quirky questions that we all try to answer and also to see how the auditionees’ personalities fit into the group.

ACB: How does your group go about deciding which songs to add to its repertoire? Who is responsible for arrangements?

PT: Usually we look at our existing repertoire as well as the repertoire of other groups at the Claremont colleges to start looking for what kinds of songs we need to be doing. We strive to look for a balanced repertoire in terms of moods, and so we bounce ideas around usually for a couple of months even during break. At the beginning of each semester, we sit down and listen to a whole bunch of songs that people bring in and then figure out what we want to by two rounds of public vote, so we’re usually quite pleased by what we’ll be singing.

Of course, any repertoire is going to limited by the amount and quality of the arrangements, so we work as hard as we can to find people to arrange the songs. We have a number of theory students in the group that have lots of ear training so arrangements are usually done in a week or two. That said, poor arrangements still happen from time to time, and in that case we don’t shy away from purchasing them for about $75 to $150. It costs, but it means that we’ll have more time to rehearse songs that we always wanted to do but never arranged.

ACB: If you were to describe Midnight Echo in just three words, what words would you use?

PT: Crazy. Pants. Boombox.

ACB: What drew you, personally, to collegiate a cappella in the first place?

PT: I guess I did a bunch of singing in high school in Taiwan and I wanted to continue doing so in college, but I’d actually not heard of collegiate a cappella before I came here for college. I was drawn in by the concept and the challenge of doing a cappella singing, and I also wanted to be a better singer by practice. Plus it’s fun just hanging out with the group in crazy pants.

ACB: Is there anything else you would like to share with the readers of The A Cappella Blog?

PT: One thing that Midnight Echo does is that we always perform in what we call “crazy pants”, which are pants that are so outrageously different that you would probably never spot anyone wearing them. Each member finds their own pants, and we always get a great reaction from the audience when we show up on stage in this ridiculous outfit. In a way, it gives our group a fairly distinct personality from the other button-down-shirt-and-dress-wearing groups and allows the audience to relax quickly as well. However, we do still take our music seriously!

If you would like to learn more about Midnight Echo, you can visit them online here.

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You can support music in our schools through the VH1 Save The Music Foundation by purchasing a wristband from our site. Go to our Donate to Save the Music page for more information!

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The second runner-up is Ben Haist, from Tulane University’s THEM, who will receive five ACB VH1 Save the Music wristbands, for which five dollars will be donated to the Save the Music Foundation.

The first runner-up is Susan LaBarr who will receive a copy of the 2010 Best of Collegiate A Cappella CD.

And, our grand prize winner is Jacob Schwartz who will receive a Best of Collegiate A Cappella prize pack with every CD from 1999 through 2009. Jacob is the now-former director of Lehigh University’s A Whole Step Up, who will be singing with Celebrity Cruise Lines on their boat The Infinity from July through mid-January with his vocal quartet On Tap.

Congratulations to the winners, and thank you to everyone who entered!

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You can support music in our schools through the VH1 Save The Music Foundation by purchasing a wristband from our site. Go to our Donate to Save the Music page for more information!

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DO: Record Your A Cappella Music
DON’T: Only Perform Live Shows

Whether your group has been around for years or you have a recently formed ensemble, you should record your music and let it be known to the world. There are myriad reasons recording is a good idea, but here are some key ones:

1. With today’s technology, it’s relatively inexpensive. If you keep your track list modest and split the bill amongst the members of the group, or pull from a central fund, it won’t cost you a lot, and you can get a very good return on your investment, both in terms of money and recognition.
2. You can reach audiences you would normally never reach. Why is Facebook so popular? Because it connects people across the world. While recording and selling CDs won’t connect you to quite the same extent, it can certainly be a great start. Many of the a cappella groups I’ve grown to like have had their start (for me) in my car’s CD player.
3. It leaves a footprint of memories which your group and fans can be look back on or share. Whether you’re recording an album for mass-consumption, or creating more of a “yearbook” compilation (give every member a solo and record everything you did for the year) a CD creates a unique memento for a unique group of people.

We at ACB are always looking for new recordings to listen to and review. Consider emailing us about your next recording, and we’ll try to include a review of them on the site!

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Want to write for The A Cappella Blog? Want to have your photos posted on the site? Want to join The ACB team in another capacity? You’re in luck because we are looking for new staff! Go to our contact page and write to us about what you would like to do.

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Whatever the case may be, in The Run Off, The A Cappella Blog brings together three to five different renderings of the same song, and, in the name of sharing different visions, and for the sake of friendly competition, puts them side by side for readers to vote for their favorites. Please feel free to post your rationale in the comments section. Winners will be announced three weeks after the polling begins.

In the most recent edition of The Run Off, we took a look at “Faith.”

For this edition of The Run Off, The Treblemakers came out on top with 46 percent of the votes as of midnight the morning of Wednesday, May 19, EST. Congratulations to Casual Harmony, and thank you to those who voted!

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Trying to find a group? Search or sort The ACB Group Directory–the most comprehensive and up to date directory of collegiate a cappella groups anywhere on the Internet!

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2. The Run-Off Reminder: “Faith”