A group of 19 men huddle around Yamaha Clavinova piano on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) campus. They plink out notes and follow along in their three-hole-punch binders donning the bold lettering, “The Bathtub Dogs.”
In Verona, New York, three groups wait for the lights to dim and the microphones to heat as they warm up their voices for a sold-out crowd. They are about perform the first of 56 gigs in a span of two months for The Sing-Off Live Tour.
In both groups there is no bass intro, no guitar solo and no synth riff backing up the voices. Instead, these sounds are created purely through vocal techniques that, to the untrained, seem like gibberish.
“Jen jen je-den”s and “dway ahhh”s do not look seem foreign to these performers. Rather, the a cappella community recognizes these vocal techniques as a way to substitute vocal chords for instruments.
Groups like the Bathtub Dogs are not uncommon on college campuses, partly because of the surge of a cappella-related pop culture, such as the hit movie Pitch Perfect (and it’s upcoming sequel, Pitch Perfect 2) and shows like The Sing Off.
Deke Sharon, the musical director for both the Pitch Perfect franchise and The Sing Off, is now traveling with the three a cappella groups performing in The Sing-Off Live Tour. The groups began their national trek on February 17.
Some refer to Sharon as the “man that made a cappella music popular” or “the father of contemporary a cappella.” Sharon says when he was in college and singing in the Beelzebubs, the a cappella group was more popular than the football team.
“A cappella has become popular because of movies and things like Pitch Perfect,” Sharon said. “But the fact of the matter is that a cappella is this powerful connection that happens between audiences and performers. There are no computers or complicated videos to hide behind. There’s a real purity that happens in a cappella.”
Sharon says this passion for a cappella music and the emotion it evokes is what drove him to join The Sing-Off Tour.
“You can have all of the computers, guitars, and synthesizers on a stage,” Sharon said. “But the bottom line is that only the human voice is able to make you laugh and cry and feel and hurt and empathize in a way that none of those instruments can with such immediacy and such power.”
He says a cappella has vocal techniques that allow the human voice to mimic the sounds of many of the omitted instruments you typically find in a full band.
Tony Wakim of VoicePlay, one of the three groups on the tour, agrees that the purity of a cappella music makes it an emotional experience for both performer and spectator.
“There’s this moment at the end of our encore, and I’m not going to tell you what (song) it is because it’s a secret, but the show is so energetic and we end with something very quiet, and stripped and bare-boned,” Wakim said. “I think people really appreciate the rawness and the humanity in singing a cappella.”
Wakim says the lack of bells and whistles that is typical in mainstream entertainment is an attraction to many a cappella lovers. Sharon agrees saying that people gravitate toward a cappella because of its simplicity.
Throughout two- month tour, the groups will also be accompanied by local a cappella groups from each town they’re singing in, many of which are collegiate groups similar to the one Sharon joined in college. Vanderbilt University’s the Melodores were recently added to 12 dates on the tour, hot on the heels of their Season 5 Sing Off win, which made them the first collegiate group to claim a victory.
Collegiate groups will be among those supporting the tour including Princeton Footnotes, Yale’s a.squared, Howard University’s Traces of Blue, and Western Michigan University’s Gold Company.
“The fun thing about college is people are trying to find themselves and trying to decide, ‘what do I want to do with my life’ by getting involved in things,” Sharon said. “Some of them want to play sports, some of them want to be cheerleaders, some of them want to be journalists, and some of them maybe sang when they were younger and join these singing groups that are basically like fraternities and sororities, but better.”
One great example is The Bathtub Dogs. They were the first a cappella group to arrive on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus in 2002. The all-male group sings all genres of music and is comprised of men studying for a myriad of different degrees.
“We’re from all majors and it’s just nice to have this outlet of singing more popular music (than in normal choral groups) because it’s kind of our vernacular in a realm that people can pick up on. It’s who we are as a culture and as Millennials,” said the Bathtub Dogs President, Brady Foreman.
University of Nebraska-Lincoln broadcast professor, Rick Alloway, has hosted a radio show on 90.3 KRNU for 20 years and watched first hand as a cappella slowly trickled into the campus setting. Though collegiate a cappella had been around for years, it wasn’t until 2002 that it came to UNL.
Groups like the all-male group Rocktavo, and the first all-female a cappella group, Boots and Cats, and most recently, a co-ed a cappella group, Pitch Please, have followed in the footsteps of the Bathtub Dogs.
Alloway says the Internet drives pop culture today and is one of the main reasons a cappella has gained both collegiate and international popularity.
“I think the Internet has been a major player in what’s happening here because people are finding each other and connect,” said Alloway. “And Deke I think gets a lot of the credit for the movement of a cappella into the mainstream by catching the attention of some network executives who though ‘wow maybe this could go somewhere.”
“The (Sing-Off Live) concerts are going to reach so many people and as great as it is to have a movie that grosses over 250 million world wide and as great as it is to have a TV show that has five seasons and two million viewers, it’s reaching more people that is most satisfying.”
Wakim says music is a powerful thing that connects the world.
“It’s magic (and) that’s the only way to describe it,” he said.