Switched on Pop - A Cappella Dreams

Episode Date: March 16, 2015

A cappella, Italian for in the style of the church, refers to music for unaccompanied voices. Just a decade ago it was nowhere near the radio dial. Now it’s everywhere: college campuses, Hollywood blockbusters, prime time reality television, and the Grammys. A cappella hasn’t been this big since Gregorian chant. Why has a cappella returned with such a vengeance? We try to find out why in this four part episode. [Introduction] The Tallis Scholars – Missa Brevis: Kyrie Middlesex A Cappella – Sound of Silence Pentatonix – Daft Punk [Act 1: Undercover Barbershop, featuring journalist Kevin Roose] Buffalo Bills Barbershop Quartet – The Only Girl In The World Dion & The Belmonts – I Wonder Why Barbershoptags.com – I Love to Sing ‘Em The Barbershop Singers – My Wild Irish Rose Buffalo Bills – As Time Goes By Vocal Spectrum – When I See An Elephant Fly OC Times – Come Fly With Me [Act 2: How To Become A Youtube Star In 3 Easy Steps, featuring musician Matthias Harris] Halestorm – Bad Romance (Lady Gaga cover) Matthias Harris – Somebody That I Used To Know (Gotye a cappella arrangement) The Stiff Dylands – Ultraviolet Gotye – Somebody That I Used To Know (feat. Kimbra) Mike Tompkins – Teenage Dream & Just The Way You Are (Katy Perry a cappella arrangement) Matthias Harris – Boyfriend (Justin Bieber arrangement) Matthias Harris – Home [Act 3: Sing On / Sing Off featuring Manjula Raman from Element] Element – Royals (Lorde a cappella arrangement) Element – Raise Your Glass (Pink a cappella arrangement) [Act 4: A New Golden Era] Pentatonix – Daft Punk  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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app at eater app.com. It's free for iOS users. Acapella is Italian for in the style of the church, and that refers to music for unaccompanied voices. Acapella, a decade ago, was nowhere near the radio dial. Now, Charlie, it is everywhere from

colleges. Hello, darkness, my old friend. To Hollywood. To prime time television. gentlemen, please welcome your host, Nick Lysh. To the 2015 Grammys. One more time. Acapella hasn't been this big since Gregorian Chan.

And we're excited about that. Yeah, so why, though? Why has Acapella returned with such a vengeance? Let's try to find out today on... Welcome to Switched-on Pop. I'm your host, Nate Sloan. Now, I'm your host, Charlie Harding. Nate, did you just hear something?

Moving on. So, Acapella is a big subject. And to do it justice, we've got a bigger show for you today. And we're going to do things a little bit differently. We're going to bring you a show in four acts. Apologies to Ireglass. Act one, undercover barbershop. Act two.

How to become a YouTube star in three easy steps. Act three, sing on, sing off, act four, a new golden era. Before we get into modern acapella, we first have to understand its roots in barbershop. So joining us for the first part of the show is Kevin Ruse. Kevin is the author of New York Times bestseller Young Money and senior editor and co-executive producer of Fusion, the ABC Univision Joint Venture. But his lesser-known expertise lies in an older media, Barbershop Quartet. Kevin, thanks for coming on the show. Thank you for having me.

Kevin, what's your background in Acapella? How did you, of all, people, get into this arcane art form? So I grew up in Northern Ohio, and my father, when he was a college student, was a member of a barbershop quartet. And it was like a very good barbershop quartet. Actually, they ended up winning some competitions. And so he became sort of a lifelong devote. of Barbershop Harmony. He has been a director of Barbershop Choruses.

He's sung in dozens of Barbershop Quartets and won lots of championships. And so he also arranges music for Barbershop Quartet. So he is like the LeBron James of Barbershop quartets. And so I grew up going to his shows and singing in his chorus and just sort of following him. And my brother did too.

And so we sort of had like a little family barbershop barbershop quartet and then I also sang sort of competitively growing up through my teens. And then when I got to college, I sang a cappella there as well. So why is it called barbershop? Well, it used to be sung in the barbershop. Guys would be cutting their hair, you know, getting their haircut and they would, the legend goes, sort of gather around and, and just sing four-part harmony. And it wasn't written down. It was not professionalized. It was just, it was very amateurish. It was people improvising the parts. And basically what makes it barbershoping, and basically what makes it barbershop music as opposed to any other type of sort of a cappella singing is that it's homophonic,

which means that basically everyone is singing more or less the same words at the same time. So it's not the kind of du-op thing where you'd have three people going, you know, du-op and one person's singing the melody. Everyone's sort of singing the same words. And the melody is in the second highest voice. It's not in the highest voice like it would be in a choir. The melody is sung by what's called the lead. which is the second from the top.

What are the parts? So it goes from highest to lowest, it goes tenor. Lead, baritone, barbershop, and bass. And what do you sing, Kevin? Oh, I grew up singing tenor, but that was before my voice changed. And then puberty happened, and then I became sort of a, baritone. I mean, I can sing all four parts, but baritone's probably my most natural part now. What would you typically sing if you were going to teach someone how to sing Barbershop?

Well, there's a group of songs that barbershopers all know. And this is, there's an international umbrella organization called the Barbershop Harmony Society. And it was started, I think, in, you know, the sort of early 1930s. And it has tens of thousands of members across the country. And when you join, you're supposed to learn a group of about. a dozen songs that they call the Polkats. And these are songs that are pretty easy to sing. They're mostly, you know, the ranges aren't all that difficult. And you can learn to sing them all pretty well. So if you go anywhere in the world and you meet someone who sings in the Barbershop Harmony Society, they will know these 12 songs. So one of them is called My Wild Irish Rose. And it sounds like

this. Yeah, that's my wild Irish rose. that's one of the so-called Polkats. And then as Barbershop has evolved from 1930s to today, it has gotten more professionalized and more and harder to sing. And there are all these quartets now who, you know, travel all over the world, singing and competing. And actually, you know, now if you hear it,

it sounds a little bit less like what you might expect Barbershop quartets to sound like. This day in age we're living in gives cause for apprehension with speed and new invention and things like third dimension Yet we get a trifle weary With Mr. Einstein's theory So we must get down to earth At times relax

We live That's a quartet called the Buffalo Bills, and they won the International Barbershop Championship in 1950. And then they sort of became the best-known Barbershop quartet because they sang in the Broadway production of the Music Man for many years. Oh, wow. And so that's what kind of made Barbershop a mainstream or mainstream-ish phenomenon. And it had been around since even before the 30s, but it really didn't hit the mainstream until that Broadway production. Exactly. We've had like, you know, 65 years of barbershop since then, and now it sounds actually quite different.

So this is a quartet that won the championship a few years ago. They're called Vocal Spectrum. And you can hear the arrangement is just much more complex. But da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. I saw a peanut-stand, heard a robber band. I saw a needle that winked. It's high. You don't see about everything when I see an elephant fly in the sky.

Saw a front porch being heard a diamond ring. I saw a polka dot railroad tie. Oh my. But I'd be don't see about everything when I see an elephant fly. You can clearly hear the difference. It almost sounds cartoonish. That's sort of what the top barbershop group sound like now. It's a much brighter sound.

It's a much more. It doesn't sound like a bunch of guys just sitting around. the barbershop singing. And so this has been a really interesting issue for the Barbershop Harmony Society because it's actually been pretty contentious, this modernization. There's sort of been a split in the movement, actually, between the people who want Barbershop to become modern and sound modern and people who want to keep it the old way, keep it sounding amateurish and singing the old songs and not trying to adapt to new

forms of music. You know you have a movement when it fractures in two. Exactly. No matter how small and esoteric, you can always count on people to argue with each other. So that's been really interesting to follow. There's a group of barbers that actually calls themselves the kibers, K-I-B for Keep It Barbershop, and those are like the traditionalists. And so they actually have like very big arguments online and you can see some of those. And I actually wrote about those for an article for Spin Magazine a few years ago. Oh, I'll have to check that out. We'll link to it on our website. I have to ask where the Rousse family barbershop dynasty falls in that schism. Well, my father is actually more or less a traditionalist. I mean, he would say, you know,

we don't need to be singing these newfangled arrangements. It's the old ones where the old ones were planning good. I'm a little bit more, you know, permissive. I don't think, you know, there's anything wrong with adapting. But I think that once you start to, you know, evolve the music to a certain point, you know, I see the point of the old traditionalists. It does start to sound more just like any other kind of acapella and less like its own thing. You describe the newer barbershop as sounding particularly bright. And my understanding is that there's something different in acapella about the tuning. Can you speak to that? I mean, tuning barbershop music is not like tuning a piano. I mean, you're not looking for exact sort of notes on the scale. So depending

on which part you are in the chord, you tune it a little bit differently. So you might be a little sharper. If you're singing that, you generally want to be on the sharper side of that note. The goal in Barbershop is to create what are called overtones, which are when you lock into a chord. Barbers would call that ringing a chord because you actually hear it's sort of like a high-pitched ring. When this works perfectly, you get this sort of high-pitched over. You get this sort of high-pitched overtone. And that is seen as like the goal of Barbershop is to create as many of those overtones as possible. And it sounds like you have more than just four singers. It's like there's a fifth singer in the group. Exactly. And that's like when that happens, that's generally

like the, you know, the groups that are doing the best in competitions are the ones that can pull that off repeatedly. Is there a name for that phenomenon? Some people would call it like the the Angel's Note or something like that. But I've mostly heard it called overtone. Okay, this is, there's no polite way to ask this, but are there barbershop groupies? There are. In fact, when I was writing this, when I was writing this article for Spin, I was focusing on this young quartet called O.C. Times, who are out of Los Angeles and they won the competition, the international competition a few years ago. And they have, like, they're all young guys. They look, you know, they look kind of like a boy band. And they have groupies that, like, follow them around the country. It's actually like it's actually amazing. I mean, we should listen to just, we should just listen to a little clip of these guys because they really, I mean, you can, you can kind of, you know, hear why they're good. And then you can also, you know, sort of imagine them being tailed around by groupies.

With me, let's fly, let's fly away. If you can use sonic booze, there's a bar in far Bombay. Come fly with me, let's fly, let's fly away. All right, so that's them. And yeah, so if you want to get groupies, you have to win the contest, I think. So I feel like Barbershop, as you've been saying, is pretty niche. and yet, Acapella has just totally exploded all over the internet. And you are a frequent commentator on all things millennial and technology-related.

I'm curious, how do you think the medium of the internet has contributed to the explosion of Acapella music and why are we hearing it now, not just in colleges and on YouTube, but all over every single media channel? It's a good question. I'm not exactly sure. I mean, there are a couple things I can think of. one would be that YouTube especially has ushered in a strong culture of covers, like the sort of covers of popular songs that are done by acapella groups generally do pretty

well on YouTube. And I think that's just because it's novel. Like it's, you know, it's like the people who play, you know, hip-hop songs on a banjo or something. Like, there's something novel in the transformation of, you know, one song format to another that's pretty appealing. I also think it's allowed, I mean, it's a pretty democratic art form. Like, you don't need a fancy guitar.

Like, you don't need a whole, you don't need to be able to cite read. You don't need a whole lot of musical knowledge. You can just sing. And you can layer that on top of each other using multi-track software. And you can really create sort of one-man acapella groups or one-woman acopal groups. And I think a lot of people have started doing that. Thank you, Mr. Kevin Ruse, for just giving me my entire transition into my next piece.

You are very welcome. Before we go, though, could we get you to sing us a part of this tag? And we would love to sing over that and do a complete harmony of the three of us. And maybe Nate will double himself. All right. So you guys want to do the My Wilder Shrose one since that's the one we just talked about? For sure. All right.

The boom from love. Beautiful. Yeah. Dude, like melted butter. I'm really, you know, the groupies are going to come after me after this. Kevin, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me, guys. So Kevin mentioned a phenomenon that we want to explore in a lot more detail,

the rise of the one-person Acapella Video on YouTube. For Act 2 of our program, Charlie does just that with a piece we call How to Become a YouTube Star in Three E.E. easy steps. Attention Spotify. It has arrived the new Good Girl Jasmine Absolute of

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coms. Every minute of the day, over 300 hours of video are posted to YouTube.

Most of it gets lost in the noise, and only precious few buzzworthy, upworthy, and catworthy videos will go viral across the web. But one brand of YouTuber has found the first secret of the three-part method to viral success. It's simple, really. Play cover songs. Mere moments after a pop song hits the charts, hundreds of high-quality imitations are posted to YouTube. The goal? Capture Organic Search Traffic intended for the original video because it's guaranteed that fanboys like me can't keep their fingers off the latest Gaga track. So it makes sense to try to game the rankings and end up one video below hers. Most cover videos, they're the fat-free alternative to the real thing.

They market themselves as just as good, but their low audio quality and earnest fame-seeking leave you feeling empty. There is, however, at least one exception, all vocal acapella tracks. These videos usually come in the Brady Bunch variety. You know what I'm talking about? The floating heads, singing in squares, and it works. People have voted with their views and they can't stop watching. If you search for an acapella cover, you're almost certain to stumble upon one of the most popular videos using the three-step success method. Matthias Harris' cover of somebody I used to know by Gros.

Gautier. His video has over six million views, but this wasn't Matthias' first taste of success. The Band the Stiff Dillans had two billboard hits and were even featured in a tween comedy movie. But struggling to produce more pop singles, they disbanded and Mattius went to work as a session player. He didn't know then that he'd once again reach a stadium-sized audience, but this time on the internet. I was in a really quiet period. Like I had at least sort of a month where I just had no work on. And this happened to coincide with sort of around the time that that Gotye song had come out.

And he had a London show. And yeah, I watched the show. It was an incredible live show. But when he played somebody that I used to know, I had this weird kind of, this weird kind of moment. I guess it was just me listening to it with musicians' ears. or something or whatever you want to call it, but I could basically hear this arrangement in my head. Step two to viral success. Creative ignorance. Down on his luck, but creatively inspired, Matthias got to work. I went home and like I said, I had no work on at the time. So initially, I just basically sat down and I

just started playing around and this was my way of killing time, but killing time creatively. And I, like, I don't own a TV and I feel like other people might have, you know, been drawn to just, you know, watching hours of Netflix or something. And yeah, I had, I basically had an entire week off to just indulge myself. And I have to admit that I have since slightly got more into Netflix. So it doesn't necessarily continue. Really, it was, it was kind of, I was sitting down with the recording and listening to it and sort of listening to the parts and just kind of trying to analyze it a bit and then just trying to observe like how I could make, how I could sort of recreate certain sounds using just my voice, but without manipulation to actually take it away from sounding

like a voice. So for example, like, you know, like if there was like a bass note in there, I was sort of trying to analyze the baseline and be like, well, I'm going to, I mean, I need to sing this. But I really, really didn't want to record the bass part with a vocal. And then say, you know, use software to pitch shift it down an octave or so to make it sound really bassy and really like a bass guitar. You know what? I've probably spent the best part of five days or so kind of just working on arranging and recording. I think after a while I thought, you know what, like I know you've got some time off and you're kind of indulging yourself, but maybe enough's enough and, you know, this is good enough. You've had some fun. Let's let's

wrap it up and move on. This is the thing where the video was such an afterthought for me. because I basically, I did the music because it was just something that I kind of did to amuse myself. But when I was done, I realized I'd sort of put so much effort into it. And I'd shown my housemates at the time and they were kind of like, oh, this is really cool. And I just thought, well, I don't expect many people will be interested in this, but I feel like I should put it out into the world somehow so that people can, you know, maybe see it, maybe enjoy it. Yeah, I had this idea to just think, well, I guess I could make a YouTube video for it. Well, yeah, I posted it to YouTube and I think, you know, in the first sort of couple of days, it got a few hundred hits. And I was like,

all right, that's really cool. Like, I'm happy with that. And then that sort of grew to a few thousand. And I had some other videos that I'd done that, you know, got those kind of, that sort of done that well. So I was kind of just happy that I was like it was, it was, it was going along. All right. Well, I might have misled you. But hey, what listicle isn't slightly misleading? You see, viral success isn't so easy. In between steps two and three, it's kind of the ghost and machine, the YouTube algorithm. And unbeknownst to Matthias, the ghost gets to work for him. Placing his creation near the top of the suggested video list and people start clicking.

So of course, the clickbaiters and the bloggers take notice and start reposting the video across the web. For Matthias, this eyeball lottery becomes a game. How high can it really go? Once it started to get up towards like 100,000 hits and I was already just kind of like, It was at like 90 and I was kind of like, whoa, wouldn't it be insane if it got to 100,000? And then it went past it and I was like, oh, wow, like, you know, I was kind of kidding. But, okay, there was definitely a point where I was checking it like every day. Like every single day I was looking to see like, you know, how many more views it had had that day and, you know,

checking out comments and things and like because it was so new, it was kind of like, how could you not? Once it was getting, it got past like half a million and suddenly I was going, oh my God, wouldn't it be insane if this. if this reached a million, that would just be nuts. I think the fastest bit of growth was from that 500,000 to the first million. Like, that happened alarmingly quickly. And suddenly I was just kind of, again, just stuck going, right, I was kidding. Like, I really, I was joking about that. And I think that was when I realized, I was like, you need to stop checking to see how it does.

Because firstly, it's going to drive you mad. But also, you know, where does it end? Step 3. Reuse your newly minted fan base to launch a successful career as a YouTube cover artist, right? Because, well, there's definitely precedent. If you go back to our YouTube search for Acapella covers, there's this one guy who reigns Supreme, Mike Tompkins. Every week, this guy, Mike, record on me, think I'm funny when I tell the punchline wrong. I know you get me, so I'll ever want. Every week this guy, Mike, records a polished acapella cover of the latest pop hit and posts it to YouTube.

And he pulls in millions of views. Surely he can't have a monopoly on this business, can he? Matthias, thinking he could at least grow his YouTube audience, looks to his fans for his next hit. At the time, a lot of people were saying, like, do Justin Bieber's new song? If I was your boy, fry, I'd never let you go. Keep you on my arm, girl Never be alone. And part of me thought, well, if you're going to replicate

like this kind of video, then it needs to do well. And maybe if I do that song, then that's the right way to do it. But instead of five days, his next videos take weeks to produce. And Matthias miscalculates. The higher quality videos in polished vocals don't bring in any more viewers. That stuff doesn't really matter for YouTube. It really does. It mattered to me as the creator, but it didn't make a difference for the viewing figures. And this is where he stumbles. You see, he didn't follow the most important part of the very scientific formula to viral YouTube stardom. Step two, creative ignorance. I think the reason why I never really liked my version of that Justin Bieber song isn't necessarily because of the song, but because the first, the, the, the, the, Gottier cover came about in a really organic way in the sense that, you know, it was going back to

this gig that I was at where he played the song and I could kind of, I could already hear this arrangement in my head and then I was kind of just letting that out. Whereas with the Justin Bieber one, I was really, really forcing it. So Matt Deus tries a few more times to recreate his viral success that he had with the Goetje video. And yeah, some of the other songs they do pretty well. They're not doing as well as, say, that Mike Tompkins guy. And for Matias, he's not sure if it's enough to keep going. I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a moment where I was kind of a bit like, oh,

I wish, you know, I wish this one was kind of, you know, taking off the same as if not more than the first one. Because naturally, you know, you kind of aspire to that.

You think like, you're always hoping that the next thing you do, it will be bigger and better at. Because, you know, like none of this is paying anything. And it's something that I want to do. but I still have to be able to pay those bills

because my landlord doesn't accept Acapella covers as rent payment. Why is it that after all this effort, that it's his first video, the one that came together the fastest that was the most successful? It's a dumb luck? Matthias has a different theory.

The actual arrangement of the Acapella was always the most important thing for YouTube. You know, if you've got a favorite song and then someone does an incredible arrangement of it using just voices, there's just no way that you could not enjoy listening to that sound. You've kind of evolved to enjoy hearing that. So the more kind of vocal and emotive it is, the more you're going to latch on to something. Maybe the formula isn't three steps after all. Maybe

it's just one step. Make a real connection. Like, I've always sort of thought that if you need to be doing it for the right reasons and if you're doing it because you think you'll get loads of hits and therefore make some money off it, don't do it. Because because that's not how it's going to happen and you'll end up feeling frustrated and unrewarded. But if you're doing it because you've got a creative idea and you just want to share that and hopefully people will like it

and reward you for your creativity with just views and shares and comments, then definitely do do it. That is the right reason to put it out there. What's next for Matthias? He just finished a tour supporting all the... original music from a new EP that he put out. He's got that creative spark again.

He'll be posting more Acapella videos in the coming months, but this time it's from the heart with no expectations for viral success. If you wanted love that asked for it, take a chance and drown in it. Act 3, Sing On, Sing Off. Brought to you by my co-host, Nate Sloan. One of the big drivers of the surge in Acapella's popularity has been the NBC. reality show The Sing-Off since 2009. Each season, 10 acapella groups compete against each other. We're really lucky to get to talk to someone from one of those groups, Manjula Raman. She sings Alto and does

arrangements for Element. They made it about halfway through season four of the sing-off. And I was very lucky to get the chance to talk to Manjula about what that experience was like and what it's like to be in an Acapella group in 2015. Everyone, I'm Nick Lachay and welcome to the live finale of The Sing-Off. I guess maybe just begin by introducing yourself. Sure. My name is Majula Raman. I went to college with you, Nate.

That's right. And I'm a member of Element, which is an all-female a group based out of New York. How do you, how does the group select repertoire? It depends. So in general, the stuff that we like singing is, is like funky, upbeat, fun, empowering music. We realize that, like, we're an all-female a group and there's a lot of stigma and also responsibility

that goes along with that. So we keep that in mind as we pick the songs and the messages that we're singing. But other than that, it's just like, what is a fun song to sing that works acapella, that audiences, varied audiences will like and that we would sound good on. I guess this is two parts,

the first is just in general how you arrange your songs and then if there's something you do specifically to take advantage of your group and the specific voices in your group in those arrangements? Well, I've done a little bit of arranging for the group and the way that I kind of approach it is we kind of take like a more choral approach than a lot of other aquapalic groups too because you've got like the camp that like has their air guitars out. And they're like, all that good stuff. And it's great.

But I think we're kind of on the other side of the spectrum where in the backgrounds, we're doing a lot of O's and we're doing a lot of ooze and odds and words and phrases that are English. So I think that's definitely like one of the staples of most of our arrangements. I've never seen a diamond in the flag. I'll cut my... I'm not On weddings In the movies

And I'm not Proud of my address In the torn up town No postcode and I'm curious how you take a song And keep it Familiar to everyone But also add something that makes

That makes people think like, oh, like I'm hearing something new here, I'm hearing something different. That's the ultimate, like, question in Acapulah is that how closely do you hue to the original versus how much do you want to turn it on its head and make it something very exciting and surprising. Element, taking us back to 1966. Very nice, ladies. Let's go ahead and take it to the judges.

Like, was it, did it kind of start to become pretty natural to be competing on, like, singing for your supper on a reality show? Or were there, were there moments when you thought, okay, this is pretty crazy that I'm here right now. Both. So the way that the show was filmed was like we like I picked up. I like left my job for you know five weeks and like transplanted myself to L.A. and was in a hotel living with everybody on the show and just eating, breathing,

sleeping, Acapella. Oh, wow. And so, like, I would have these moments where I would get a text from one of my roommates back in New York and about, like, rent or like the recycling or something. And I'd be like, oh, oh, there's a life, like, outside of this bubble that I'm living in right now. And it would be this kind of, like, rude awakening. So on one hand it became so normal to be doing acapella and to be practicing hours and hours a day and to be like on that stage and getting costumes fitted and learning choreography just nonstop. But then there were moments where, I don't know, for the first episode,

and we were doing the opening like group number and it's this big medley by fun. And Elements, big entrance was like, struck. running down the middle of these giant heels that I couldn't for the life of me navigate, carrying sparklers that were like shooting flames a foot high with like with our, and we had to have our hair like pulled back because of all the hair spray. Like we couldn't, we had to be really careful not to set ourselves on fire. But like the first time that they brought in an audience who were doing this in full costume and like full voice. with the mics and the fire and everything.

I was walking out and looking at all these people and looking at, you know, Ben Folds and Joel and Sean Stockman. I mean, like, how is this my life right now? How is this? How is this not my dream right now? So it was a very, very surreal experience, I think, all the way through. And no one set their hair on fire. Nobody set their hair on fire, which,

I think was one of our greatest triumphs of the entire show. Related to the one before, but it's just more personal. Why do you love acapella? I love acapella for a lot of reasons. The main thing for me, I think, is the community of an acapella group. There's nothing quite like singing in an acapella group, because you're singing with people that you presumably are close with. So you've got this friend.

bond happening, but also the fact that it's just your voices. There's nothing else. There's no band to fall back on. It's just you guys. There's this extra layer of complete trust, which, I don't know, it makes it like a very, a very special experience. And then I just think, I think it's a lot of fun to sing Acapella arrangements, like to know that you are singing a line that probably makes zero sense out of context. But when you stick it in with five other voices singing, it makes this amazing song, this amazing sound that you would never expect. That's beautiful.

Thank you so much. Thanks. We've been listening to Elements cover of Royals. You can hear that and more music from Element at their website, ElementVocals.com. We'll link to that on our own site as well. and also to a video of the performance my Jula was describing where elements struts downstage, sparklers in hand,

it's really something worth seeing. Modern Acapella has grown far from its roots in Barbershop. It's found success on the internet, on TV shows, and even Hollywood films. Finally busting out of its university cage, Acapella is having its heyday, and on our final act, we'll look at the golden era of Acapella. So Nate, I feel like when I was in college, Acapella could take the nerds and turn them into the cool kids.

That's what they call them, right? The cool kids, right? That's what I remember, yeah. And sometime last year, I was walking around UC Berkeley's campus, and I saw two Acapella groups having a sing-off, and I turned to my wife and I said, isn't that nice? This hobby that clearly will not go anywhere beyond college

because the groups go into archways and force their music upon you after college, They don't have such a ready audience. And over this last year, I've been proven so wrong. There is a future for these acapella artists. And I think it really culminates in this moment where the Grammys have actually rewritten their rules to allow for an acopella group to win best instrumental arrangement. Yeah. The 2015 Grammys had its share of controversies.

As it does. Many, yeah. Any time Kanye West is. present at an award show. There's a controversy. I felt like that controversy was a meta-controversy. Whoa. But what got lost in the mix was something very interesting that happened at the 2015 Grammys. The category that used to be best instrumental arrangement quietly became best

instrumental arrangement or acapella arrangement. Ah, that's really different, isn't it? Yeah. So for 60 years, no one thought that the grand. Grammys needed to pay any attention to all the struggling Acapella artists out there in the world. And now all of the sudden, instrumental or Acapella. And we think that this award may have been rewritten specifically for the group Pentatonics.

Yes, these guys are a powerhouse. They are an Acapella juggernaut. They are the Monsanto of Acapella. They are huge. They are five. artists who got their start on the sing-off, and they did well, but soon after the show, they were dropped by their label. And rather than wallowing in their sorrow, they go on YouTube and start just putting out cover after cover after cover, then they become masters of social media,

and they built a huge fan following, to the point where last year in 2014, their Christmas album was the number four album of the year. Dang. That's big time. And it all culminates for them the 2015 Grammys where they win this award. Yeah. So why Panatonics? What are they doing that's able that captures people's imagination so much? Well, I think to answer that question, we should absolutely take a listen to their award-winning arrangement of Daft Punk. Yes, please. I think it, mail, upgraded, charge it, point it, zoom it, press it, snap it, work it, quick you erase it, write it, cut it, paste it, save it, load it, check it, quick rewrite it, plug it, play it, burn it, rip it, drag and drop it, zip, unzip it. I think the first thing that we want to call out is what sounds different than what we heard in the Barbershop. So we've come a long way from the Barbershop quartet at this point.

And this song, pump. me up in a serious way. And I think part of that is exactly what Kevin Roos was talking about in Act 1. Right. How Barbershop is homophonic music. Everyone is singing the same lyrics at the same

time. Right. Penitonics what's so exciting about this is the beatbox layered under the bass layered under a harmony part, layered under a melody with a third harmony on top of it. There's a

lot going on here simultaneously. Right. So as opposed to that homophonic sound we heard before, we are now polyphonic, many different things happening at the same time. Yeah. And what they're trying to do here is imitate the sounds of the instrumentation and the style of the music using just their voices. Yeah. Like Manjula was saying about her group element, they are style themselves more as a choral group. They're going to just they're going to translate a pop song into a choral arrangement. Penitonics is going to turn their voices into synthesizers. Right.

Drum kits. All the sounds of EDM and pop music. Yeah, when I first heard them, I thought that they were actually manipulating their vocals to sound more like the instruments, right? A lot of Acapella groups. groups will do this, where they'll downpitch their vocals, they'll put funny effects and choruses and distortions on. And while Penitonics does have really good mixing and mastering, their mastery comes much more

from the sounds they can actually create with their voice. And Penitonics mastery has changed the game for Acapella. They've set new standards of excellence, and they've created a market for this music that never existed before. Right. I feel like it's become a professionalized industry. Just like with Barbershop, which was at one point something which a bunch of guys got together and sang at the Barbershop. Right. It eventually became a Broadway hit. It had a whole association of singers behind it and it professionalized. Yeah. And a decade ago, you could go to college campuses and hear lots of college kids singing Acapella, and it came in varying levels of quality.

Now you can have a group like Panatonic selling out Madison Square Garden as they did three weeks ago. Acapella has really come full circle from it was the most popular music, you know, half a millennia ago with Gregorian chant. And then the composers became more ambitious and started putting an instrumentation. And now we're right back to where we came from. And it shouldn't come as a surprise. The voice was the first instrument that we ever played, and it'll probably be the last one we ever play, too.

God, if only I knew I would have stuck with my high school Acapella. Everything would have been different. It might not be too late for us, Charlie. Oh, I don't know. Yeah. You, me, Kevin, Matthias, Manjula. Oh, wow. There we go.

We got a group. Switched on Acapella. So if you found Acapella. hell of potentially disarming the first time you heard it, we've got a song for you. Do we ever? Next week on Switched on Pop, we're going to try another new format.

We're going to look at just one song. We're going to call it Switched on Pop singles. And there is this mega hit. The first time I heard it, I was like, I don't know about it. And Nate totally turned me around. And if you want to find out what it is, check us out next time,

switchedonpop.com, where we'll also post links to the work of Kevin Ruse, Matthias Harris, Manjula Raman and Element, and Pentatonics. You can also subscribe to Switchdon Pop on the iTunes podcast app

on Stitcher Radio and all those other places you find your podcasts. I'm your host Charlie Harding. And I'm your host, Nate Sloan. Thanks for listening.