Busy weekend.

That’s what I had.

So yeah, it involved a lot of acapella and so acapella is on my mind and will be at least one of the topics on today’s edition of Your Daily Lex.

Sierra had an acapella filled weekend on Saturday.

She was in a high school competition of acapella groups.

So we were watching, I believe it was eight different acapella groups compete and then a ninth from Rutgers perform without being judged because they’re not a high school team.

And so, you know, I missed a show that Sierra had on Thursday night because I had a rehearsal.

So I was like, you know, I’m gonna go to this competition.

When I committed to go into the competition, I hadn’t quite realized just how far away it was, which was 90 minutes.

But so I went to this high school to watch this acapella competition and it was funny for me as a collegiate acapella person myself.

I was in not one but two college acapella groups, including what at the time deemed itself at least the preeminent co-ed acapella group at Brandeis, which was called Spur of the Moment.

I say it was called that because several years after I left, that group slowly faded away, although it had been around for years and years when I joined.

And it was a pretty good acapella group and we joined the competitive acapella circuit.

We would submit our albums to the Recorded Acapella Review Board, R.A.R.B.

is what it was known as.

And we competed in the ICCA, the International Collegiate Competition of Acapella, something like that.

I don’t know what it stands for.

But the thing that the movie Pitch Perfect is about, I actually did.

And our competitive year, I guess was my sophomore year, we went into the local competition, whatever that was, and we came in either first or second, which were the two levels to move on.

And we went to the next level and moved on.

Went to the next level, moved on, and that meant we were nationals at Lincoln Center, New York City.

And then at nationals, we were one of six groups competing in the nationals.

And boy, oh boy, they didn’t rank the top six, they only ranked the top three.

But I’m here to tell you, we were the worst of those top six.

By which I mean, we sang just fine, but I thought we were a little low energy compared to some of them.

And they all had much more intense choreography than we did.

You know, we moved our heads in and out.

They dominated the entire stages.

They were moving constantly.

So I was excited to see this anyway, this high school acapella competition, which was the same thing.

It was the Pitch Perfect life.

It was that thing.

And some of these groups were really good.

Some weren’t, but some of them were really good, including Sierras.

What’s really interesting is, and I bet this happens in college now too, just as audio equipment has gotten more accessible and easier to use, every kid held a microphone.

So when we were doing competitive acapella and we were performing at Brandeis, we would have somewhere between two and five mics amping the group.

Amping?

Microphoning?

Miking the groups?

And at any point, the group had probably 14 to 18 people, probably never had 18.

Let’s call it 14 to 17 people.

Not 18, but 70 is possible.

But anyway, you know, we had, you know, not one mic per person.

We miked the group itself in various ways, typically sometimes with just two mics and sometimes with a couple more.

But here, every single person had a mic.

And each group got two octavized microphones, so their bass could be an octave lower than they could actually sing.

And the vocal percussionist, which is what acapella people call beatboxers, the vocal percussionist, could also have an octavized mic, which can make their bass drum kick sound a lot cooler.

Here’s my non-octavized vocal percussion.

Yeah, I’m very talented.

I have a lot of skills.

But it was, you know, fascinating to watch a couple different things with these acapella competitions.

Each group had its own uniform, but the kids were able to express their own style within the confines of that uniform.

It’s like one group, everybody had to have a certain blue handkerchief, and some had it tied in their hair, and some had it just like shoved in a pocket, poking out, and some had made it like a fashion accessory in other ways.

And Sierra’s group, you know, you had to wear a certain pink color with black, and Sierra used very bright pink pants as part of her outfit.

And it was, I really appreciated these kids expressing themselves in these different ways while still adhering to their specific styles.

It was a lot.

It was good.

And you know, it’s also a competition.

Some teams are going to win.

And Sierra knew that the team that she was on, because her school had said three teams, and one team is the varsity team with upperclassmen, and the other two teams are junior varsity teams, and she’s on one of those as an underclassman.

So she knew that, you know, her group wasn’t going to crush this competition.

And, you know, you could see the disappointment on some kids’ faces though, when their teams didn’t win.

You also got to see individual kids be delighted and cheer and jump into their teammates’ arms when they won individual awards, or of course, when their teams won.

So it was fun.

It brought back a lot of college memories.

And I don’t know, coincidentally enough, I would say acapella was instrumental in my college experience.

See what I did there?

You saw.

See you tomorrow.

Lex!