As the school year comes to an end so does the season for the Acabellas. To take a break for finals and the summer. Some are graduating so it will be a hard goodbye to the group but not a goodbye for the friendships that have been made. When school starts back in the fall so will we and with a new season will come new members. So its goodbye for the blog for a while. But here is a slide show of all of the Acabellas.
For the Love of Music
One great thing about music is that it has the power to bring joy to peoples lives and bring people together, whether they are just listening to it or playing it. Kristina Akins is a brand new member of the Acabellas that joined this semester. She has been involved with music since she was in 5th grade, but is wasn’t with singing in choirs. Kristina has been playing Violin in her schools orchestra and has loved every minute of it.
But when Kristina wasn’t playing the violin, she was singing. She has sung her whole life, just not in a group. There has always been a love for music. When Kristina’s roommate decided that she was going to tryout for the Acabellas it did not take much to convince to get her to tryout too. Since starting college Kristina has been wanting to push herself out of her comfort zone to meet new people and she thought that this would be a great opportunity for it.
Kristina has loved her decision to try out for the Acabella. With her courage to go out of her comfort zone she has found her group. She found friends that love music just as much as she does and want to share it with others.
The Acabellas was formed to be a safe place for these girls to grow. A place that friendships can be made. The love of music is what they all have in common, it is what brought them all together.
Spring Fest 2019
This week the Acabellas decided to give their singing voices a well deserved break and have some fun with FastTrack News at Spring Fest. FastTrack News did a live 6 hour show on Saturday broadcasting all that Spring Fest had to offer. Host and reporter teams would rotate every hour with new footage from the day’s events.
There was 32 different tents spread out across campus. Each tent had something different and fun to do for all ages. Many of the tents also had fun foods, sales on bug jewelry and sales on plans. But the most talked about event was the Cricket spitting. It happens every year on both days of Spring Fest with the qualifying rounds in the morning. But if you spit far enough then you will be invited back for the finals in the afternoon. Who can spit a cricket the farthest.
At our tent we had fun new guests every hour to talk to and learn about what they were doing this year at Spring Fest. The guest ranged from students and faculty running a tent to someone from outside of Purdue brought to the event to help teach people about bugs. In one of the hour blocks we got to interview Joseph Yoon, he is the chef from Brooklyn Bugs. Yoon came to Spring Fest to make dishes made out of bug, but they are so good you would not even notice.
Spring Fest was a lot of fun for all of us at the FastTrack tent with many laughs throughout the day. Next week The Acabellas will be back at practice to get ready for our Spring Showcase.
In Class Audio
Video for class
People of West Lafayette
“I couldn’t imagine not preforming in college.” “I love how much joy choir brings to me and how much joy I can bring to other people when we preform for them.” ~Maci Tetrick
International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella
The international Championship of Collegiate A Cappella or ICCA is in full swing for 2019. There are already 3 finalist for this season and more to come. There are still 6 more semifinals to be preformed all round the country on March 30. All of those semifinals are competing to be number 1 and move forward to preform at the PlayStation Theater on April 29th in New York City for the Finals.
RockCapella in the 50’s
The Purdue Acabellas will be preforming at the 1950’s Gala that is being hosted by the Tippecanoe Historic Association. This event is on April 27th at 6pm and tickets cost between $35 and $45 to attend. There will be food, cash bar and a silent auction with many different items to win. Come dress in your best 1950’s outfits and get ready to go to the best Rock N’ Roll Sock Hop in town.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1950s-rock-n-roll-spring-gala-tickets-57408447211
Acapella 101
The 5 must haves to being a good Acapella group.
1. Voice parts
Within a group there are two female vocal parts that both split into two sections. Soprano 1, Soprano 2, Alto 1 and Alto 2. Soprano is the higher vocal part, Alto the lower and the 1 is the higher of the two. Then there are 3 male that also split into two sections. Tenor, Bass and Baritone. There is also the Beat boxer. The beat boxer uses their vocals to create beat tones. Instead of having a drumming playing to keep beat or tempo you have a beat boxer there.
2. Practice makes perfect
Practice as if you are preforming. You want your practices to be as near to perfection as possible because this is the only place that outside factors wont affect your performance. The better you are in practice and more prepared then the less likely for outside factors will distract you. You don’t want your nerves to affect your performance and practice like its a performance will help make it easier for the real one.
3. If you can’t control it, don’t worry about it
If there is something that happens out of your control then you should not worry about it. You can’t control what the audience is like. If there is technical malfunctions you can’t control that. Things that are out of your control you can’t let it affect your performance. Don’t worry, just know that your group can handle anything that is thrown your way.
4. Pitch is important
This one may seem obvious but still very important. If one section is sharp the rest of the group will be pulled sharp.
5. Group harmony makes for better Harmonies
The more the group works together the better you will sound. Have group activity or silly ice breakers to get everyone together. You need to get everyone to be comfortable with each other. The more comfortable you all are the more will be able to let go and sing you best.
Corporate A Capella
It’s sometimes easy to forget there’s a world outside of Purdue A Capella, that’s why I went to The Contemporary A Cappella Society blog to learn more. The Contemporary A Cappella blog has been posting for many years. From the beginning through 2016 the blog was very active. There were posts everyday to every other day. When there was an event they would have multiple posts in one day as well.
After 2016 The Contemporary A Cappella blog started to slow down on their postings. It went from one every other day to one every other week. Now they are posting every so many months with very few multi posts a month.
The post that have been going up more recently are about award nominees and the winners of those awards. There is a quick summary of what the event is and then the blog goes into listing the category of awards with the nominees right underneath it. The blog is only how long it needs to be to get in all of the category. Once the last one is listed the blog stops.
The other posts are a mix of events, Q&A’s and small posts about A Capella. The event posts are a few short paragraphs on what and where it is and has a picture for the event. The Q&A’s are all called Ask Deke. Deke is one of the bloggers that the viewers can write into to get feed back on their questions. The small posts about A Capella vary between post, some are asking viewers to send in their A Capella music while others were about purchasing CDs.
I thought that this blog was informative for events, awards, and some questions and answers. If I was not looking for something specific to one of those I wouldn’t come back to this blog. It didn’t offer any other incite to the A Capella world. It benefited to the corporate side by showing the events to get people to go to them and putting up information about purchasing a CD. The one thing that I didn’t like about the blog is that each writer has a different Icon that is posted big over their story on the home screen. I think it would be better to not have those Icons and just have their names. With the Icons it makes the page look less organized and more jumbled.
Acabellas 