“My favorite college a cappella group is On the Rocks {Oregon University],” Goldberger said. “I wanted to be able to bring college a cappella to the high school.”
Both of the high school groups held tryouts to ensure all group members were qualified.
“For the girls group, no freshmen were allowed to tryout,” sophomore Gwen Elwood said. “That kept the size of our group small. We had to sing a prepared song and run through some scales, and sing in groups of three.”
Generally, a cappella groups have a couple of “percussionists,” or beatboxers.
“Patrick Toohey, Dorrall Price, and a couple of other guys are our main beatboxers,” Goldberger said. In an a cappella performance, groups take current hits and remaster the scores to sound as similar as possible without including any instruments. The beatboxer’s purpose is to mimic any percussion instruments in the original song.
The girls a cappella group has met only once since its inception.
“[The] women have only had one practice because we’re all doing different things,” senior Jessica Rutledge said. “It’s hard to get everyone together all at once because we are just starting off.”
At the Soup Night performance, both a cappella groups will be collaborating in at least one song.
“We are singing ‘I Gotta Feeling’,” junior Lindsey Cockburn said. “I’m not sure how it is going to turn out because we have not practiced, but it should be fun.”
Rutledge is not worried about the lack of practice so far.
YAY!