Vocal Blog | The Vocal, A Cappella & Choral Music Online-Mag

Hearing yourself and others in the best way possible is a must for an a cappella band. But what can you do to garantuee that? One of the solutions is: In-ear monitoring (IEM).

Tjidde Luhrs is one of 4 singers with the Dutch a cappella band iNtrmzzo and one of the owners of InEar Systems, a company specialized in in- ear monitoring. Those guys serve a wide range of artists with custom- made in-ear systems as well as transmitters and receivers.

Tjidde is also very active in social networks and in one of our Twitter dialogues I learned about his IEM expertise. Three years ago, writing a corporate event concept for a bank’s anniversary, I realized that using IEM can really make a difference: After 44 years of traditional stage monitoring the Swingle Singers did their first gig using IEM – and were able to appear at several different and surprising places in the concert hall. Thanks to the complete flexibility of the artists – we were able to present an exceptional show.

So much for the anecdotes – enter Tjidde Luhrs:

Nowadays we have extremely complicated in-ear systems; custom-molded earpieces with two, three or even five speakers in each Mehr…

Elin Valvatne, singer with Apes&Babes (NOR) and one of the initiators of Vokalarm (Trondheim, October 7 – 10, 2010) gives her thoughts about the process of creating an a cappella festival in Norway.

I of course know that there has been a cappella activities and festivals going on for decades. However, for quite some time this had “nothing to do with me”… It was the college groups in the States, and I had heard some rumors about a festival in Germany. But the tendency had clearly been to keep a cappella music within country borders, unless you where The Real Group, The Swingle Singers or The Manhattan Transfer.

Now, there seems to be an a cappella awakening (and exchange) in Scandinavia, too! The first major step was made by Aarhus Vocal Festival (Denmark) in 2006. The Danes are a bit closer to Europe than we are, and do not have so many mountains. So they just did it, just like that! This festival made me realize that my vocal group wasn’t the “only one in the world” – a feeling that you easily get when you come from Norway, where everybody lives on their own mountain top, so to speak.. ;) All of a sudden I had made friends with a bunch of excellent singers and vocal groups from around Scandinavia, yes, even with some from around the world…and I got to hear groups like Rajaton and Cosmos for the first time. Now this was an awakening to me indeed. Here was a cappella music taken to the next level. Long awaited!

Then The Real Festival (Sweden) came along. The Real Group will always impress me. They could easily have spent the rest of their career “resting on their laurels” and relying on old fame. But here they go and make a festival (a neck-breaking initiative in itself!), and hereby making a very important contribution towards uniting the Scandinavian (as well as European) a cappella environment even more.

The idea of a Norwegian vocal festival had existed for some years already. But how to make it possible, was a mystery for quite a long time. It seemed to be an exclusive group of enthusiasts that was eager to make it happen, but without the means to do so. Also, we had very little information about Norwegian vocal groups other than our own ones. Where was the common ground to build a festival upon? We crossed our fingers that there was. Fortunately, Norway has got a strong and powerful choir organisation, only problem being that its members are scattered all over Norway, as many things are in this vast country. The “Mid-Norway departement” decided to go for it, and a Nowegian a cappella festival could finally be realized. In Trondheim – in the middle of Norway!

Having experienced the a cappella magic twice in Aarhus and once in Västerås, we are now eager Mehr…

by Florian Städtler

I could hardly believe it when I realized it a few days ago: Vocal Blog just turned ONE. One year ago we launched this blog, the Facebook group and our Twitter account.

Not in my wildest dreams did I imagine what a few blog posts, the occasional Facebook chat, a list of links and small but steadily growing number of fans, followers, readers and (best of all!) people joining the a cappella conversation can do to your life.

I want to thank my team, Fabian Fehrenbach (he.da.techie), Andrea Kühn (greatest communicator ever) and Deniz Dönmez (bazaar in her veins + subcontralto phone voice) for supporting a boss seemingly gone mad 2.0. All these girls and guys are (way) younger than I am and quite often when I turned up with another “amazingly innovative concept of marketing” they rolled their eyes, looked at each other and finally surrendered to my desire to not only dip a foot into the water of the social a cappella web, but jump right into it.

Not all the things we planned worked out as planned. But Vocal Blog is a rewarding experiment and hopefully the whole community of singers, agents, managers, arrangers, promoters, choir conductors and fans will have lots of fun and the occasional learning when checking out the blog, the Facebook group or what we contribute to the Twitterverse.

And to all of you out there, doing the good thing = the a cappella/vocal/ choir thing: Thank you so much for joining us and keep following what lies ahead. You made time fly.

If you could make a wish – what would you like to read, listen, watch or learn about in year #2 of Vocal Blog?

Do you have something to contribute yourself, something that the community could be interested in? Feel free to send us your ideas, or post a comment – this is a multi-author blog which longs for your contribution.

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