Mouth Off 08.02.09
Listen to the show right here:
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Around the Horn Hyannis turns 15, Mosaic’s Got Talent, a cappella groups are like magicians, A Cappellastock, Ben Folds acadocumentary, rehearse live across the miles, ACAFEED.Spit Loud Keith Terry and SLAMMIN the body band are the essence of a cappella. Imitate at your own risk.
Arrangement Spotlight Simply put, “Kivinen Tie” by Rajaton is simple. And simply good.
Listener Mailbag Recap In a follow-up to the July 12 show, Dave and Christopher continue the ongoing conversation about adding “unnatural” effects to an a cappella recording. Bill Hare’s article, once again, proves insightful.
Sexypella Christopher gets aroused by WashU After Dark’s cover of “Mama’s Room.”
Album Review Take It to the Bridge by U.Va. Sil’hooettes is not bad, but Dave and Christopher use the album to make broader points about common mistakes and the state of a cappella innovation in general.
Final Thought Pop music is fairly vacuous. Ode to Beyonce.
Perhaps the production argument is missing the point a bit – after all, nobody cracks the sads at Madonna when her record comes out with a zillion dollars spent on it and sounds she could never get out of her own voicebox or a guitar.
But here’s an interesting tidbit: until a few months back I’d never heard the current sound of ‘vocal band’ a cappella, being way out of the loop – and I was floored by the cleverness of it all when I bought the Bubs’ new CD Play the Game. So I threw it on the CD player for some buddies when they came around and said “holy shit, check out this Nine Inch Nails cover, it sounds more NIN than the original does!”
One of my mates made a funny face and came out with a very succinct and interesting comment: “What sort of artform is a cappella if its highest achievement and ambition is not sounding like a cappella anymore? Why would you try to sound like a rock band? The best you can do is not fall short by much. It’s all very clever but what’s the point? Why not just use a band?”
Maybe that’s what people are complaining about when they rail against “production.” I dunno what my opinion on this one is yet, my group has always recorded in a totally bare bones style – not because we chose to go rootsy so much as because we’re pretty isolated from the scene and we haven’t been exposed to this stuff until recently. But I do know that I agree with you guys in this week’s album review: some groups lose the heart, soul and honest connection of the songs under a barrage of cleverness and technical skill. And that’s… Kinda dorky.
I’m listening to the whole discussion about a cappella, and I think that Loz and I have different opinions. I think that the brilliant things done on albums that do not normally happen live are amazing, and as long as the heart is there, do nothing but make the performance better!
of course, if a group loses it’s heart, soul and connection, no matter how much glitz is layered on top of it, people will walk out feeling slightly miffed. Take Tarzan the musical on Broadway, or Shrek, also on Broadway. Both of these shows were well-known, recognizable properties, with TONS of money behind them, but both were panned by the critical community as a whole. You can then look at Spring Awakening, or RENT, who had tons of heart but not much flash, and people LOVED the shows.
Then you come to the third group of shows, which is where i think a cappella has the opportunity to go: the shows with MASSIVE amounts of heart, soul and honest connection to the work, as well as GOBS of special effects, neat tricks, and awesome spectacle. Examples: Phantom of the Opera, Lion King, Aida, In the Heights.
With today’s technology, I can take the effects that were formerly only available in the studio and bring them into the live performance arena. Filters, pitch variation, auto-tune, all the things that you can use to make things sound even cooler as well as just for a lot of fun show offs can be yours, WITH the brilliant heart and soul you have always brought, taking your performance to an ENTIRELY NEW LEVEL!
This is what I’d love to see. I’d love to see us use the technology available, such as Apple’s Logic Studio, specifically SoundStage to do things like KT Tunstall, and bring technology into the live arena without losing the beauty of live performance.
Chris, if we formed a supergroup, I would only arrange sexy things for you to sing.
Another good show guys! I’ve got a question though! From the clips played on the show, I understand Christopher’s review of the Sils’ new album, esspecially when comparing the level of emotion and energy in Say (All I Need) to the S2N’s cover. What I’m curious to ask though, is what could fix this problem? In my experience, some soloists are very comfortable stepping up to a microphone and belting out what seems to be their inner most emotions (Alex Green is one of them, I was there when he layed down that track, and immediatly we were all like WOAH!, but I digress..). Who’s to blame when the soloist doesn’t bring their A-Game on a track? I know Bill Hare has said that the job of the engineer tracking a recording is not just a technical one, but that they have to be a cheerleader too. I’m not saying anything against James Gannon, he is clearly an extremely talented guy who does great work, and that I could only hope to be like one day. What I am saying though, is often teasing the best performance out of your singers is a challenge. I know as an ameture engineer, I devote a lot of time to working solos, and getting someone to sing better than they might think they can is tricky. Many soloists are able, but intimidated, and it’s a luxary when you can not worry about only having the time and money for 3 takes (Yet another reason to track your own CD!).
This might not be anywhere close to what went “wrong” on this album, but I figured it was worth trying to guess how to help the problems, rather than just call them out.
Oh, and Jazzy and Chris should so get together and make some sexy a casomethingorother.
Thanks Chris and Dave for the Mama’s Room shout out – what a sexy arrangement from a sexy a cappella group!
-Proud After Dark alum and lip-smacking bass
“Would non a cappella people like this?” — “Absolutely.”
Why is that? Because the non a cappella people do not necessarily have a ‘musical ear’ therefore would like subpar work?
PS – now that the 50 minutes is over, I want more. I regret all complaints on length of podcast but FEEL FREE TO KEEP MENTION ME. kthx
Bryan,
I won’t wax on and on about this, partly because you’ve already heard me do it on the show, but also because I agree so much with what you’ve said here. I personally believe in the healthy and progressive mixture of the tools and technologies available to us to move our music into a new realm. If filtering voices live or on a record is “cheating”, then singing in a huge vacuous cathedral is also cheating, methinks. I’m really excited about this discussion, thanks for your addition!!
-C
Whitney,
I didn’t meant to imply that a non-musical ear means that you would dig subpar music. What I meant was that if one isn’t just focusing on the musical, chordal and textural structure of the song (which many musicians do…often to the detriment of their general listening experience), it is perhaps easier to listen just to enjoy. And in general, our “for non-acas” metric at the end of album reviews implies a person who is hearing a cappella music for the first time, and has nothing to compare it to in the genre.
Hope that clears it up!
-C
psyouremybestfriendsoillprobablybereferringtoyoualotinthefutureandmightusethisonanupcomingshow.
Ted, stoppit, you’re making me blush. It’s true; you need to have someone really “producing” the song that you’re recording, as well as just having an engineer around – all the better if the producer and recording engineer are the same person. Yeah, sure, I can sing notes, but without Deke, Bill, Ross, Ted, Chris, Sooz, and Matt there coaching and producing my performance, I’d have done just that – sing notes. That said, I see people tossing the words “produced” and “production” around all the time, but they’re almost as misused as “auto-tune,” the syllable “JODO,” and “impact” (did you know “impact” is not a verb? this lesson brought to you by the letter H and the color purple). Can we finally clear up what everyone means by “production” and not just use it as a blanket term for “smothered in plugins?”
Anyway, on a TOTALLY different note, I wonder if you guys might talk about the Harmonic’s AMPED show that’s been all over YouTube. I obviously have my own opinions about it (ok, I think it’s really effing cool), but I wonder how that fits into all y’all’s (two apostrophes in one word? is that ok?) ideas of a live show. For the most part, the Mates don’t use mics, and most of our shows are in very live spaces that are acoustically advantageous to us. Live and recorded are VERY different animals to us, while the Harms tried to make their live show into an almost direct reproduction of their album, complete with freaky transitions and everything. Cool, but totally different in its intent.
Long time listener, first time commenter.
A few thought-nuggets:
- Tuning in the studio used to be taboo for acappella back in the 90′s. If you can’t sing in tune, why are you even making a recording in the first place? IMH(snobby)O.
- Re: recording along with the original song. While it can create something enjoyable, organic, and possibly sexy, it’s still paint-by-numbers and it’s not real, to me. You’re copying someone else’s creativity instead of using your own. Even when you jam on the bridge or add a cool descant, all you’re doing is changing the colors or going outside the lines now and then. But it’s still paint-by-numbers.
The vast majority of collegiate acappella arranging is simply vocal imitations of someone else’s creativity. More a transcription than an arrangement. An arranger myself, I know all too well. The only arrangements I enjoy doing nowadays are ones that have no soloist and force me to use my creativity rather than listening to the original song over and over just to jot down what bass riff the original song writer (or more likely, producer) selected. Besides, a guitar sounds better than a voice imitating a guitar, so what’s the point?
- All that brings me to a final point on the future of collegiate acappella, that I’d like to hear discussed. To me, as long as it stays mired in the realm of cover songs and “transanging”, collegiate acappella is stifling the musicality and creativity of its participants. To me, original music has to be the next wave in acappella, and it needs to be soon, less we drown in a pool of imitation and paint-by-numbers music. Thoughts?
In reply to Brad S. (in roundabout reply to me as mentioned on the podcast)…
To your second point:
First of all, as an ICCA judge, it’s remarkable how often I hear college a-cap groups performing songs whose arrangements are obviously lifts of popular recordings… and they _still_ don’t complete the chords. Some groups are happy just being able to sing three notes in tune together, so we can’t fault people for just having fun with what they’re capable of.
That said, if recording transcriptions aren’t worth the effort… why record _anything_? Why perform _any_ music that’s previously existed– rock, classical or jazz? An orchestra playing a oft-performed published work is basing their performance on a transcription of sorts, no? The answer, of course, is that there’s a skill involved in reproducing an orchestral work skillfully. You could argue that reproducing a rock or pop song with rock instruments requires less skill or is at least less interesting, but you can’t deny at least the novelty of transferring a popular recording into all-vocal form. And even if you transcribe a recording note-for-note, there’s no guarantee that it’ll sound good with the voices you have, or that certain passages will even work for vocalists, so there’s a skill in adapting it as well.
To your third point:
Some college groups (mine back in ’91, for example) are in it specifically for the fun of recreating (or improving upon) popular recordings. Saying that staying mired in covers is stifling the musicality of college pop a-cap groups is like saying that staying mired in Highland bagpipe music is stifling Highland bagpipers. Um, it’s what they do.
I too think paint-by-numbers pop a-cap covers are inferior _on average_– not because I’m standing on principle, but because it’s simply doesn’t sound as good (again, on average) as arrangements that are tailored to the specific voices (or common configurations) involved. Singing that flat-out sucks doesn’t help, of course. Even the best arrangement can be sung awfully, and it’s actually a bit impressive when a super-busy transcription is pulled off well live by 14 singers and doesn’t sound like a hornet’s nest… but that’s rare. In that studio, on the other hand, I think it can be glorious, as long as the energy is there.
I don’t have anything to constructive to add; I just wanted to say “thanks” for the mention on your show!
I agree with Alex in his comment about AMPED. If you guys haven’t taken a look at that show, go do it now, because it’s unreal. I’d love to see some conversation about this going on – is this where live a cappella is headed? Or is this just the Harmonics being the Harmonics? I know it’s not for everyone, but for so many groups who try to do rock songs, and fall flat live… this is something they should be looking at for possible inspiration.
Great to see lots of chatter here. Thanks to all for your comments.
As for Stanford Harmonics’ AMPED show, it’s definitely something we’d like to discuss on the show. Bill Hare has been suggesting we review their album Escape Velocity, and the idea of using effects as tools vs. crutch vs. “real a cappella” would probably fit well into the same show. We’ll make a note of it!
-DB