So I have my charge, and now it’s the challenge of turning dream into reality. In most movies, this would be the time to cue the montage because now is when it gets kind of boring. It’s also quite tricky to make something, period, which is not what movies want to show. They’re all about the sex. But, my dear Reader, this is where magic is made.

I have my pen, my paper, my lyrics, and both tunes memorized. I’ve sat for a while and mused on the meanings of the songs, to see if their themes would meld well. I’ve daydreamed about performing the tune and if I should tie music with performance or it should be art for art’s sake. I researched all the decent YouTube videos and recordings of both songs, in any version but with an eye to the a cappella versions. I was disappointed to find that these two songs- with great melding or splicing potential- don’t get altered that much, so there’s not much to steal.

[aside: Hands down, though, my favorite recording of Hide and Seek was done by Transit.]

I made a list of how I want to characterize the two songs in conflict, hoping that I can pull together a Hegelian dialectic and get them to spar and synthesize before the end. Soloist vs. Ensemble, Compound meter vs. Simple meter, Arpeggios vs. Homophony. Fingers crossed on that one. I didn’t do so well on dialectic in music theory class.

So here I am- all my tools and ideas at my fingertips, waiting for magic. Somehow, I have to trust that my subconscious will start making decisions for me, giving me inspiration of how the pieces fit together. After much headscratching and tea drinking, ideally there will be some plan of action on paper before I start putting note to page (which will be another creative battle on its own).

So now I’ve just got to do it. Thanks, Nike, for the inspiration.

Alas, Acappella U is essentially a relic as the updates have withered in the past few years (as well as my exercise regime). Perhaps it Icarus’d by flying too high to the sun by doing HD video segments. I was very excited to see Acappella U doing video workshops with top groups before the CASA Academy was even born, but it must have been too much for one passionate guy to pull off essentially by himself and essentially out of his own pocket.

I tried to find a surrogate aca-cast so I could get my ears and legs back into shape, but Mouth Off left a bad taste (pun intended) and Aca Originals didn’t have the allure of cover songs (I was a composer, and I had heard enough of “new music”). Not only was I trying to fill the void of clever arrangements and comparative listens, but the podcast personality of Joey C just couldn’t be replicated.

It is with excitement that I start to listen to Chad Bergeron’s Acapodcast, hoping to find a new holy grail and running mate. From the sound of Episode 64 that I just started to listen to, signs are looking good. I’ll be popping over there to see if Chad can fill a Joey-sized hole, and at least hitting the gym a couple more times.

If you’d like to listen to Acappella U, they have things on their website, YouTube Channel, and even on iTunes.

Well, here’s the video of Divisi at the ICCAs singing Yeah, and yes, it was a heinous crime.

I’ve relocated to Simmons College and am working with the Simmons Sirens, the ONLY group here at Simmons (and yes, an all-women’s college means all-female a cappella group).  I was surprised when I hit the campus to find only one group at a college- I’m used to double digits and special niche groups. There were a lot of culture changes for me, going from a 12-group school to a 1-group school, but I thought I’d open the boards and hear what the world has to say:

Do you have a lot of groups in your area (institution or city, depending where you are)? What kinds of challenges do you face by having a big/small community of aca-groups? What’s so awesome about having so many/few?

Click this post’s heading to comment.

Anywho, these guys are more than satirists, but pretty savvy musicians. It takes a creative mind to come up with compositions, then they splice-slice-dice live non-musical footage into the compositions. The rhythms need to be kept to some extent so the speech can still be understood, but there are snips and repetitions so it slides right into the musical groove. It also allows satiric emphasis- you hear what the creators want you to hear again and again. The visual element gets spiced up by having the creators green-screen themselves to provide musical/satiric foils to the actual news bits. The music makes it memorable and catchy, but the real point is the political satire.

While a lot of the messages are liberal in nature, the musical style is pretty standard pop music. The heavy electronics, the ubiquitous auto-tune, and the ostinato and repetitions are very “pop”. I think the music genre lends a topical aura to the source material: that which is literally topical. While it definitely makes a splash today, the musical workmanship in the future will probably only be admired for its innovation, rather than as a work of art. You don’t go listen to old episodes of Auto Tune the News because the news is out of date, therefore the video is out of date. Topical becomes stale, stale becomes history, history becomes retro, and retro churns out hipsters and thrift stores, and who really likes thrift stores? Really? You just want to admire old things for being old. “These dresses are so silly! Let’s go get a bubble tea.”

Out of date isn’t necessarily bad. Some choice phrases (“Very thin ice,” “Hide yo kids, hide yo wife”) make the music a little catchy, but you sing that on the streets and people will give you the crazy eye. [aside: I may have turned the auto-tune remix of the double rainbow clip above into my ringtone. Listen to the end, and you'll see the whole troupe doing a live version. ] But still, there used to be lots of classical compositions that “quoted” other popular composers in their works…and nobody knows who those quoting composers are. They were topical. Now they’re forgotten (mostly).

Old clips of the Daily Show? Entertaining only because of the gags, not the news. There’s a huge difference between John Stewart making an impeachment joke about Clinton when Clinton is in office versus out of office for 8 years. It’s old. Yeah. Get with the times.

A portamento is fluidity of pitch in music.  It’s a slide from one pitch to another, blurring the boundaries between notes.  Portamental is mental fluidity, playing with concepts, eschewing quantization for analogue, or even vice-versa.  Don’t worry, though, the SmarterGuides are still here.

Why the change? A change in the status of the collective.  I’m at Ohio State University, pondering the ins and outs of academia, and busying myself with the literature of music theory.  In particular, I’m immersed in academic literature in music perception and cognition.  But this leads also to mathematical and computational modeling, philosophy of language, evolutionary theory, and social psychology.  Ridiculously exciting, but also ridiculously insulating, if we’re not careful.  Others have transitioned and moved about, and need a broader platform.

So we’ll move about, and be fluid.  Portamental.

The music in it, while not particularly epic or amazing, was perfect for the show and I wouldn’t have asked for anything else. Synth sounds, traditional Asian instruments, and artfully stylized character motifs all arise naturally, without being too stilted. Huge ups for a great TV show!