Powerful Voices: The Musical and Social World of Collegiate A Cappella

8. Technology in Collegiate A Cappella Performance and Recording

chapter 8 Technology in Collegiate A Cappella Performance and Recording In collegiate a cappella, technology, especially the digital kind, is ubiquitous. When considering music and technology, much scholarship focuses on the recording studio.1 Recording is indeed a key musical technology in a cappella and popular music more generally, but before turning to the studio this chapter explores the role of technology in other areas of a cappella music making. Songs are encountered in digital format online; arranged on, shared with, recorded to, and modi‹ed by computers; distributed on digital compact discs or as MP3 ‹les; and dissected and discussed in publicly accessible Internet forums , producing a discourse that in turn affects others as they select, arrange, record, and distribute music digitally. Taken as a whole, this process traces a “digital circle,” a concept that helps to elaborate the impact of digital technology on musicking, which Timothy Taylor describes as “the most fundamental change in the history of Western music since the invention of music notation in the ninth century.”2 In the recording process, examined in the chapter’s second half, technology is also an important tool—and one with both social and musical effects. Finding Songs, Arranging by Computer Aside from singers, a collegiate a cappella group’s most basic need is music for its repertory. Group members ‹nd songs through recorded media such as radio , CDs, MP3s on iPods and other digital music players; the iTunes Music 133 Store and similar music distribution sites on the Internet; direct communication through e-mail and “instant messaging”; and websites from which lyrics and guitar tablature notation can be downloaded. These technologies enable a cappella musicians to access the“raw materials”of musical practice—commercially produced recordings of popular songs—in order to assess and select pieces to arrange for their group. During my ‹eldwork, the most common method for accessing music was through MP3s. As compressed ‹les, MP3s are easy to share and, given the near ubiquity of computers on campuses and support for the MP3 format across computing platforms, the format is nearly universal. Moreover, as a “nonrivalrous resource,” one person’s use of an MP3 ‹le does not preclude another’s, as would be the case with physical media such as CDs.3 A cappella singers and arrangers typically get MP3s by creating them from their own CD collections, purchasing them from online vendors, or acquiring them from other people in their group, friends outside their group, or ‹le-sharing websites, the most famous —and perhaps notorious—of which is Napster.4 After getting an MP3 ‹le, the song it contains can be arranged. When learning their repertories, most groups read from arrangements printed in standard Western music notation. But for an amateur practice like a cappella, notation is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it is an ef‹cient means of communicating information about what and how people should sing (it is, as Taylor suggests, a technology in and of itself). On the other, the ability to encode and decode musical ideas in notation requires certain training and skills, which sometimes even the best singers do not possess. Amazin’ Blue, from the University of Michigan, held several debates regarding such skills when candidates auditioned for the group with great vocal but poor musicreading abilities. The question became, should the candidate be admitted for his or her excellent voice even if it means slower-paced rehearsals (since he or she would have to be taught by rote, a slower method) and possibly a smaller repertory as a result? Some groups, like Brandeis University VoiceMale, avoided the question— whether purposefully or not—by using notated arrangements sparingly. Lianna, from Company B at Brandeis, sometimes taught her group’s arrangements orally too. She found that the process produced not only musical results but also a deeper connection between singers and the sounds they were being asked to make: “The nice thing about teaching it orally, I’ve found, is that you have a lot more connection to it, because it’s not this thing on a piece of paper. 134 powerful voices It’s like this thing that somebody’s teaching you mouth to mouth, you know? It’s [a] very . . . personal thing.” Lianna’s comments reveal that the “personal” aspect of a cappella music may begin quite early in the rehearsal process, when the singers are literally learning note by note. They also suggest...