First, some old business. Let me review my to-do checklist…
-Prematurely announce the death of a cappella and piss everyone off? Check.
-Post a political blog and piss everyone off? Check.
-Bite the hand that feeds me by attacking the very Facebook group where I advertise my blog posts, thereby pissing everyone off? Check. Mate.
Okay. On to new business.
I learned about the 6-7 phenomenon while I was teaching a theatre class last summer. I asked the kids what it meant and none of them could give me a straight answer:
“It just means cool.”
“It’s just something we do.”
“It means you’re in the know.”
“It’s a way to annoy adults.”
Regardless of what 6-7 means (which I still don’t truly know), we can all agree that 6-7, along with terms such as “Rizz” and “Ohio” belong to Gen-Alpha. I imagine the two types of people that are having the hardest time dealing with this are math teachers and music teachers. But I digress…
In my opinion, I say if you’ve ever uttered any of the following phrases, you don’t really have a right to get upset about it:
“Did I do that?”
“Cowabunga!”
“Aaaaaaaaaall righty then”
“Aca-excuse me?”
“That song slaps”
“You got it dude”
“Talk to the hand”
“As if!”
“Da bomb”
“What’s the 411?”
“Not!”
“Oh snap!”
“Fo shizzle”
“Take a chill pill”
“You got served”
“Amazeballs”
“W00T!”
“Jabroni”
“Bae”
“On fleek”
“YOLO”
“You slayed”
“Netflix and chill”
“That’s lit.”
“That’s fire.”
“Yeet”
“Humblebrag”
“Cut. It. Out.”
“That’s fly”
“Going postal”
“I’m outtie”
“Schwing!”
“That’s my name don’t wear it out!”
“Fetch”
“That’s sick”
“Chillax”
“Biatch”
“Dawg”
“Peeps”
“Yo mamma”
“Like”
“Totally Tubular”
“Gag me with a spoon”
“Fer sure”
“Radical”
“No duh”
“Bodacious”
“Gnarly”
“Don’t have a cow”
“Psych!”
“That’s bogus”
“What’s your damage?”
“Like a boss”
“Party on!”
“Like, oh my god”
“Eat my shorts”
“I’ll be back”
“Hasta la vista baby”
“Show me the money”
“Hello Newman”
“Y’ello?”
“All that and a bag of chips”
“My bad”
“Whatever”
“I’m the captain now”
“Bazinga!”
“Wubba lubba dub dub!”
“Pop pop!”
“Treat yo’ self”
“Winter is coming”
“Winning!”
“Double rainbow!”
6-7 doesn’t really bother me all that much, but to be fair, I’m not working full time in a school right now, so I don’t get bombarded with it 6 to 7 times a day (oh God damn it!). Gen Alpha, the current group of kids/teens, are a community; One that shares and spreads the latest fad based off of the most recent Tik Tok video or popular song.
It’s kind of like they have their own language, they understand the same things, they grab influence from a specific number of sources and create their own content, they have a set of unspoken rules that everyone follows.
Oh. Whoops. I just described the a cappella community.
This post is about the social aspect of a cappella. Never mind the technical arranging jargon or the never-ending plight of the soloist. Let’s all sit down and really look at what’s going on.
When I had an adult a cappella group in the 2010s, I was the director, so I had to be the bad guy. I had to keep everyone focused, keep everyone on task, deal with any fallout, etc. That left little time to socialize. While my soprano, alto, and bass were all sharing cat memes, I was busy plunking out notes and correcting mistakes.
Even though I could comfortably call each member my friend, I always felt like there was this me-against-them dynamic that prevented me from having fun.
Now before I go any further, I do have disclose the following:
1) I’m a workaholic with a tendency to micromanage.
2) At the time, I was obsessed with winning.
3) I did this to myself.
My soprano said it best when she compared me to Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh: Always there, always part of the group, too focused on what wasn’t important, and down all the time. (Although, to be fair to Eeyore…his tail was attached via hammer and nail. That’s rough)
Ever since the pandemic broke us apart and we all became baby factories, I’ve thought about those years. I wish I could travel back in time and slap my younger self in the face over and over again. Because these are the memories you’re creating. You don’t get a second chance to fix your mistakes.
I guess this is a roundabout way of saying I. HATE. SAUERKRAUT! that I can speak from experience. Focus on the here and now. Focus on the socializing, not the competition. When you do eventually go to competition, focus on the travel, not the destination. Take it from the 43-year-old who has been there and not done that.
Because I’ll tell ya…The moment you stop thinking about winning and just craft a set that makes everyone happy, you-eventually-get-second-place-in-a-competition-where-you-thought-there’s-no-possible-way-on-Earth-you’d-even-register-with-a-single-judge.
But look, I get it. Socializing takes time and time is not a commodity you can spend while you’re designing your next competition set. To properly have your cake and eat it too, you need extra time. And adding extra time is next-to-impossible with everyone’s busy schedules.
Instead of fretting over when the whole group is going to socialize, maybe start smaller. Host some kind of party/game night/blood sacrifice ritual and whoever shows up, shows up. If socializing was a priority for these people, they’d find the time.
Here are some suggestions for adding more social time into your a cappella rehearsal without minimizing your rehearsal time.
1) Sectionals. Hear me out, because I know you probably break into voice parts to rehearse already. I’m talking about using sectionals in a different way.
The next time you have a rehearsal, have every member of the group take out a stopwatch (or the stopwatch on your phone). Every moment they are NOT singing, they start the stopwatch, and every time they sing they pause the stopwatch.
I’ll bet that each member of your group is spending a minimum of 15-20 minutes of your rehearsal not singing. They’re probably not doing anything but waiting around for their turn to rehearse. Is there some other way to better spend that amount of time?
Plan your rehearsal accordingly: Know which sections are going to need rehearsal time. While those sections rehearse, let the remaining members of your group go somewhere else and socialize. Maybe even give them a social assignment. This idea will eliminate boredom, fidgeting, and obsessively sharing cat memes while everyone else is trying to sing.
2) Icebreakers. Let me guess...you don’t start rehearsal on time. Do you? The first 20 minutes or so are spent waiting around for the remainder of the group, or chugging through repetitive warm-ups that everyone can do in their sleep.
One activity we did in Satellite Lane (my group) that I really enjoyed was the “fun break.” Each week, a different member of the group would prepare a fun 5-10 minute activity that we could all do together. This eliminated some of our “waiting around” time; time that we would have wasted doing nothing.
I know the term “Icebreakers” makes you (and me) want to vomit. I always saw Icebreakers as a way to “get to know everyone” in a setting where you were only going to spend maybe an hour with these people and then never see them again. Look, if I’m 99% positive that we will never meet again, I genuinely don’t care that you’re a Scorpio or that your dog just learned how to shake.
But Icebreakers are more than just annoying exercises designed to make you feel uncomfortable and waste your time. The right ones can actually be fun and help you socialize.
I recommend these books, which have some very creative Icebreakers that I don’t completely hate.
3) Outside projects/Recordings. If you didn’t already know, most a cappella albums are recorded one-person-at-a-time, and usually over the span of several weeks. It is rare to get all of your group members in the same room at the same time to record, unless you’re a jazz group, a choir, or a barbershop quartet.
Outside projects force specific people to work together, and maybe something can become of that relationship. Maybe the two people in your group who absolutely HATE each other (you know who they are…) just need some one-on-one time to clear the air or find common ground.
Just because you’re not rehearsing doesn’t mean you have to stop thinking about a cappella. God, I can’t even imagine a world where someone would actually have to stop thinking about a cappella, even for a moment. Torture.
Bottom line, you never know when your a cappella experience will come to an end, because nothing lasts forever. Treasure the moments you have now so you don’t regret later. You may only have 6 or 7 years left. (Oh, God damn it!)
Marc Silverberg
TikTok.com/Docacappella
BONUS SECTION!!!!
And now, to capitalize on the 6-7 craze, I present my attempts at creating an a cappella catchphrase:
Dry bones: A vocal percussion who is out of water.
Tune me up: What you say right before someone blows a pitch pipe.
That’s doo-doo: An a cappella way to say “that sucks.”
Tok’d it!: What you say when you grab something helpful off Tik Tok.
You’re a dm dm: A way to insult the bass in your group.
Don’t be a Keith: What you say when someone in your group is acting suspicious or weird.
Collier-izing: A way to defend writing complicated chords in your arrangement.
Okay let’s try it again but you know…Good: What you say to your group when you want them to sing the song again.
No no no no no no no no doh doh doh doh doh doh doh doh: An a cappella way to say “We’re out of money.”
In my defense…I like sex: What your tenor should say when he’s/she’s/they’re caught sleeping with the alto.
Marc your score: A way to simultaneously say “you should write notes in your score” and “Marc’s blog always scores a home run.”
“I’ll murder your family” Quadruple p yourself: What to say to someone who won’t listen to your directions.
Everything everywhere is terrible: What to say when Sibelius/Dorico/MuseScore/Pro Tools/Logic Pro X crashes.
Hey guys! Let’s improvise! What a music director should say if they want to be fired.
If even ONE of these catches on with the a cappella community, I will have fulfilled my purpose in life.
