A cappella: choir for millennials

A cappella is choral ensemble for millennials, according to my extended family who refer to my cappella group as a “chorus.” They aren’t completely off the mark, but I hesitate to correct gram and gramps to inform them that a cappella is not simply choral music minus the piano. Pedantry has no place at the dinner table with people you see but once a year. It does, however, have a place in an a cappella column.

Choir is bound by a certain rigidness both in mind and body, whereas collegiate a cappella must straddle the line between a unified, controlled sound and the musical freedom of the soloist to ensure that everyone can have fun without devolving into chaos. That’s not to say both types of groups aren’t having fun, but a cappella is under greater pressure to communicate that fun to the audience, emotionally and physically, in order for them to build a connection. To put it another way, the choir is about using a group to present the music, whereas a cappella is about using the music to present the group.

Now that we’ve got our terms squared away, let’s talk about that oft-ignored but integral piece of the a cappella puzzle: the arranger. When a group performs any piece, half of what you hear is vocal ability, and the other half is the arranger’s imagination. What arrangers typically do is a combination of transcription and translation of music to convert something that can’t be sung like a guitar riff or arpeggiated piano into something that the human voice can express.

I build arrangements with two goals in mind: making an engaging, energy-infused background and providing the soloist with a canvas upon which they can show off their voice. While it’s tempting to lift entire sections note for note out of the original and save time, the result tends to be aural agony. A successful and interesting arrangement takes more than ctrl + c and ctrl + v; it means restructuring, rewriting and sometimes composing new sections to ensure that the result is not purely a cover.

The great power the arrangers hold over a group’s sound cuts both ways; they endure the crushing disappointment when a piece ends on cricket chirps and pity claps, and the pride that pumps through their veins during standing ovations. One’s ability to arrange directly translates to overall sound quality, which improves public perception, boosts audition turnout and increases the aggregate talent within the group. With better vocalists, a group is able to extend the range of its repertoire, learn pieces more efficiently and perform more gigs at better venues to larger audiences, further improving public perception. Arrangers are necessary to keep this wheel greased, but at Tufts it’s safe to say demand for this kind of talent exceeds supply. It’s an art form with low barriers to entry and a high skill ceiling; all you need to get started is a rudimentary knowledge of music theory and some experience listening to a cappella, so I encourage anyone with even the slightest musical inclination to learn about how it's done.