Duwende, Pentatonix and Hookslide team up with Plaid Productions following the Los Angeles A cappella Festival to record a track for future release.

Scholastic Competition – Friday, Jan. 27, 2012

• 1st Place: UCLA Scattertones
• 2nd Place: Calabasas High School Unstrumental

Special Awards

• Best Arrangement: Bill Brown, Calabasas High School Unstrumental – “Samson”
• Best Staging / Choreography: Calabasas High School Unstrumental
• Best Male Solo: DJ Harper, UCLA Scattertones – “C’mon Talk”
• Best Vocal Percussion: Alex Horwitch, University of Oregon On the Rocks
• Best Female Solo: Calabasas High School Unstrumental – “Love on Top”
• Fan Favorite: Calabasas High School Unstrumental

Sarah Rudolph

Daytime Perfomances Coodinator

1. Tell us about your background in a cappella.

I started in a girls’ a cappella group called Concordia during my senior year of high school in Paducah, KY (I had sung in choirs most of my life). When I came to Stanford, I was dragged into auditioning for all of the many groups, as is half the campus, and I somehow landed in the group of my dreams — The Harmonics. In my third year, I’m directing the group, and trying to get my hands on as many other a cappella experiences as possible.

2. How did you first get involved with LAAF?

Harmonics love the event, so I’ve been two years in a row, attending workshops and performances. This year, Julia Hoffman told me there were openings for other team members, and I jumped at the opportunity. More aca-responsibility = more fun.

3. What is your favorite LAAF memory?

Either a) being moved to tears by working with Ben Stevens in a masterclass or b) being picked up by Josh Huslig (Mosaic) after the show at LAAF 2011.

4. What are you most looking forward to at LAAF 2012?

The scholastic competition, undoubtedly. I’ve never seen one live before, and I’m excited to see all of the groups bring it.

Danny Ozment

Owner, Emerald City Productions

How did you get involved with LAAF?

I attended LAAF for the first time last year after attending SoJam for the first time. I was just jumping back into a cappella after a significant time away and I wanted to immerse myself. LAAF offered me the opportunity to meet many new people and also strengthen existing friendships.

What is on Emerald’s LAAF agenda?

I’ll be teaching a limited enrollment session called “DIY Recording” and working with Plaid on the collaborative recording project. I also look forward to enjoying the time I’ll get to spend with so many wonderful people that I tend to only see at festivals.

How do you help singers bring their live passion into the studio?

I tend to have a conversation with singers about what a song means to them and to help them find out why/how they identify with a song. This information, even if they are just singing “bmm, bmm, bmm” opens a whole new world of possibilities for their performance and gives their sound that extra bit of energy or sincerity that is needed to bring it alive for a recording.

What piece of gear could you absolutely not live without?

That’s a tough question. I think I could probably swap out any piece of gear in the basic recording chain for anything else and still find a way to make something work. I’m still learning and trying new things everyday so I don’t really try to get fixated on one go to piece of equipment at the moment. The one thing that would be hard to replace or swap out would be Melodyne. For the massive amount of editing I have to do on songs that often have over 60 tracks of audio, I really couldn’t do without Melodyne.

What’s next for Emerald City Productions after LAAF?

A busy spring recording, editing, and mixing over 10 albums with high school and college groups in addition to the many other CASA activities this spring and summer. In May I’ll be welcoming my second child (a son).

Emerald City Productions is a full service recording studio and vocal arranging service located in Springfield, VA just outside Washington, DC. Owner, Danny Ozment, specializes in contemporary a cappella recording, production, and coaching.

I’m so freaking excited for LAAF. I’m more excited than a soccer mom at a mini-van sale. I’m excited because this is my first aca-fest outisde of the Barbershop Harmony Society. Most of those conventions are great fun, and I like being the youngest person there by 30 years. But I’m ready to move on to the wonders of the contemporary a cappella world! I have high hopes for this event! I want to meet EVERYONE and learn EVERYTHING! I want to stay up exhaustingly late singing tags and improvs with new and amazing people!

As a high school teacher, I want to learn new things and bring back some new tricks for my students. I believe that if you want to be the best, you have to learn from the best. Who better to learn from than a group like Duwende? Every time I listen to their “Collective” album, I cry a little at the pure genius and method pouring out of my speakers. I write all the arrangements for my students, so learning the finer points from Tom Anderson and his cronies will make everything we do less “high school” and more pro. I’m not a bass, but maybe if I go to Johanna Vinson’s masterclass, some of her bass will linger with me and make me a bass-bellowing human subwoofer.

While I have my soapbox, let’s talk about this collaborative recording thingy. Just reading the tweets from the CR at SoJam made me buy my VIP ticket for this event. Getting to watch, in person, the ridiculous talents of Duwende and Pentatonix creating music (AT THE SAME TIME) is enough to make me a better singer simply by osmosis. Do I want to do my own recordings? YES! Watching the wizards at Plaid Productions and Emerald City Productions work their magic should give me some great ideas to get started on my own, or realize there is no way I could ever do that and I should just pay people smarter than me for their services.

If you don’t know this about being a music professional yet, it’s all about who you know. The best thing about the contemporary aca-community is how kind and welcoming they all are. This event is going to be my best opportunity for networking into the bigger aca-world. I’ve already been talking with Robert Deitz, who has been nice enough to agree to meet with me to talk about a project with my students. If I get the chance to have five minutes with Pentatonix, I’m going to convince them to do a clinic with me at the Texas Music Educators conference to bring some aca-awareness to Texas. Selfishly, I also plan to hug Avi and steal some of the excess bass that falls out of his face like torrential rain from a hurricane.

Why wouldn’t you want to be here? Where else will you be? The Saints are out of the playoffs, so there is no reason to stay home making a gumbo. Don’t you want to be the best acapellaist on the planet? Come learn from the people that are already there! And if you find me, I’ll teach you a tag or two, and you can teach me how to inward snare without choking myself.

Matt Woodward is a choir director at MacArthur HS in San Antonio TX. He loves barbershop, cooking, ridiculously expensive high end home audio, and his smoking hot wife, BriAnne. Also, he can tie a real bow tie.
Find him on Twitter: @mwoodward710

Virginia DeMoss

Volunteer Coordinator and Scholastic Competition Coordinator

1. Tell us about your background in a cappella.

I got my start in a cappella in high school. My three best friends and I formed our school’s first all female barbershop quartet and we still sing together from time to time when we all get together. I then went on to sing in both All Night Yahtzee and AcaBelles at FSU, but not at the same time. I currently am in the process of singing with/forming a semi-pro group in Asheville, NC. So far it is all female, but we are open to some gender diversity.

2. How did you first get involved with LAAF?

This will be my first involvement with LAAF. I am working on assigning all of our volunteer duties and helping out in the competition aspect as well.

3. What is your favorite LAAF memory?

I am hoping to make some lasting memories at this, my first LAAF experience!

4. What are you most looking forward to at LAAF 2012?

I am most looking forward to getting to have a bit of respite in California from the cold NC winter. Also, getting to learn about some a cappella stuff would be cool too.

Virginia began her a cappella career singing lead in her high school’s first female barbershop quartet with her three best friends. She then attended Florida State University where she spent two years in All Night Yahtzee followed by two years in the AcaBelles. She served as Public Relations Chair for one year in Yahtzee and arranged music for both groups, even after graduating. More recently, Virginia has served as an Event Producer and Judge for Varsity Vocals as well as their Volunteer Coordinator. She began her involvement with CASA by participating in the SoJam Collegiate Selection Committee in 2010 and serving as a volunteer herself at SoJam in 2010. This year she will be filling the role of Collegiate Competition Coordinator for SoJam 2011. Virginia lives in beautiful Asheville, NC and works as an Intensive In-Home Therapist… and yes, it is exactly what it sounds like.

Alex Green & Alexander Koutzoukis

Owners / Producers / Engineers at Plaid Productions

How did you get involved with LAAF?

Koutz taught a class last year and came back talking about how great it was and how easily accessible the In-N-Out was. After we found out that the Collaborative Recording session we originated was going to be continued at LAAF and that we’d be able to work with Pentatonix and Duwende, there really wasn’t any way you could keep us away.

What is on Plaid’s LAAF agenda?

Well, for starters, we’re going to be eating a lot of In-N-Out (are we sensing a theme yet?). Other than that, though, I’m personally looking forward to finally meeting some of the groups on the west coast that we’ve worked with or done work for in the past, like the USC Trojan Men and most recently the UCSD Tritones. Also, recording and partying with the winners of The Sing-Off won’t suck.

How do you help singers bring their live passion into the studio?

A lot of it, to me, is making sure that they know why they’re singing. Even “zhe den zhe doh” or a big long “ooh” pad can and needs to have some emotion and heft behind it, or else it’s just flat recitation of notes. Leads are the same way – you have to know what you’re singing, otherwise you’re just making sounds come out of your mouth. A lot of what we talk to singers and soloists about isn’t technique or how to sing high notes (though we do talk about that sometimes), it’s what they’re trying to make people feel. Sometimes that means channelling what they feel when they’re performing the song live, sometimes it means completely reinterpreting the song on the spot. No matter how you choose to perform a song, though, you need to sell it – a half-hearted or emotionally lacking performance, no matter how technically perfect, will never be as good as one that the singer really commits to.

What piece of gear could you absolutely not live without?

It sounds kind of silly, but particularly when you’re running around recording people in bedrooms, closets, apartments, and the very occasional treated studio, the most important things we have at our disposal are our ears and our opinions. Sure, we use a pretty nice-sounding microphone and industry-standard software, but if you don’t catch weird syllables or fix lacking emotion, all the gear in the world won’t make your final product sound any better.

What’s next for Plaid after LAAF?

Well, hopefully we’ll get just a little bit of down time to recover from our burger-induced food comas, after which we have a couple of remote recording gigs to travel to in Chicago, and a whole ton of editing and mixing to do during March and April. We’re also working on nailing down the rest of our schedule for the year, and of course working on getting BOSS off the ground since we’re 1/2 of the team of producers.

Plaid Productions is an independent music recording and production company specializing in contemporary a cappella. We cover all parts of the album production process, with in-house or mobile recording, editing, and mixing services available with hourly rates or fixed rates pricing for larger projects. More at http://www.plaidacappella.com

A classically trained pianist and percussionist, Kari began her contemporary a cappella journey with directing the UC San Diego Daughters of Triton and later joined the Tritones and Orange County-based CAL septet Frequency before graduating with a B.A. in Music Theory & Composition. She currently performs with the all-female powerhouse ensemble Musae, has performed in concert with Imogen Heap as part of her “Earth” collaboration project and most recently appeared on season 3 of NBC’s The Sing-Off as the vocal percussionist in the Los Angeles-based group Kinfolk 9. Kari also enjoys barbershop a bit too much, so find her and sing a tag with her. She’ll love you forever.