I was frantic and nervous. Questions raced through my head. Where is Mitch? Is my bow-tie on, right? Did she just have a fainting spell or am I just imaging it? So many questions to answer yet I had no time to process it any longer. Finally in a last attempt to gather our nerves, my group formed a circle. We held each other's hands and began squeezing around the formation like a pulse being sent through our bodies. The other group, Ladies’ Choice, started filing off stage, then a quick and hectic passing around of microphones . OK, we were ready. With our name being announced, we all took a breath and walked out towards center stage. Immediately lights flooded the stage, an uproar of applause, and finally hundreds of waiting eyes staring at us. This is it. 1…2…3...OK, hold on! Let me take you back to the beginning.
About 4 months ago I got an email through my group Flash Harmony’s inbox. The sender came from The Association of Collegiate A Cappella. I was ecstatic to see that! I opened up the email and my thrill continued. Flash Harmony was invited to participate in the 2nd Annual MACapella Meltdown, hosted at Ball State University. Immediately I let my group know what just happened. We had gone to this event the year before when it was hosted at Ohio University and had a blast, so obviously the amount of support my group gave for this event was overwhelming. With that, we accepted the invite and began working on our set list.
Fast forward to Thursday, April 14. It was finally becoming very real that MACappella was almost here. This night was our last rehearsal before we took the drive to Indiana the next day, but this rehearsal was even more important because we were finally going to perform our set in front of Kent State University’s premier a cappella group, The Kent Clarks. Around 9:00 the panel of the Clarks came to our door. We were just finishing up practicing another song when they began to file in. As soon as we ended our practice, the Clarks gave us an applause. We were excited to have them come and watch us. After our greetings, the Clarks took their seats and we got into positions. We hit our set list right of the box with as much energy as we could muster. Our fast paced song “Closer” by Ne-yo gave us a good start to really start getting into our performance. We slowed it down a bit with “Brother” by Needtobreathe and finally finished it off with a sexy arrangement of “Say My Name” by Destiny’s Child.
After we finished our set list the Clarks took a second to really absorb what had happened. Finally, they busted out in cheers and claps. It felt really good to get that from them. The first thing that was said by any of them was that in comparison to where we were exactly a year ago, we have come such a long way and have made massive improvements. They gave their critiques on a few performance things but overall we received mainly good comments. With the Clarks approval, we were finally ready to perform at Ball State.
Unfortunately, I was unable to leave with the rest of my group due to work, but on Saturday, the day of MACappella, I, along with fellow member Josh, set out for Muncie early in the morning. Upon arrival I met our hosts, Jared and John, both of Unexpected Resolution at Ball State, and got acquainted with them before unloading my car and placing our stuff inside. Soon the group finally came back together and we headed off to Emens Auditorium for our soundcheck.
We were lead into the campus’s music building around three o’clock, and so with about half an hour to prepare, we went into our holding room. The room was a fairly large choir room which was very exciting as we don’t really get the opportunity to practice in a place with great acoustics. We went through our warm ups quickly and shuffled out to the loading dock to wait to go onto stage.
The backstage of Emens was massive. The walls were nearly 50 feet tall, and the curtains were as equally intimidating. I felt very small. The sound mixer began passing out microphones calling out “lead,” “bass,” “VP” and “harmonies”. After a slight confusion as to who gets what microphone we set out on stage. If I felt small backstage, then I was absolutely dwarfed as soon as saw the sheer enormity that was Emens Auditorium. There were hundreds of seats in a section, with four sections being on the ground floor. That’s right, Emens had balcony seating as well with what seemed like just as many seats. It was kind of eye-opening for the entire group to see just how many people we could have possibly been performing in front of later that day.
Sound check was an absolute mess. We weren’t used to this type of set up so we tried our best to be heard from the back of the auditorium which was nearly impossible. I directed the first song Closer from the middle of the seats. I waved my hands in weird signals to try and indicate different messages to different people like “be louder” or “pull back” but my attempts were lost on the group. Again the same thing happened with the other two songs as Nick tried to get me to hold my microphone up higher which for some reason I was not understanding. We all gathered on stage again to talk about the situation we had just faced but we were quickly ushered off as other groups needed to do a soundcheck.
At this point, we all begin to start feeling very nervous. Jared, our host, saw that we were all very confused and scared so he took us to a place he claimed had the best acoustics of all of campus. When we arrived, he left us in a breezeway of sorts to practice our dynamics. After a few run through, we believed we had done the best we could to prepare. We walked back to our house to get dressed and wait.
Around 6:40 p.m., our third host, Zach, lead us back to the music building. Again we were put into another holding room to go through some more warm-ups. We shared a room with Western Michigan University’s Mane Attraction, an all female a capella group. After some introductions, we began warm-ups together. After the warm ups we performed Closer one more time and the Mane Attractions performed their version of Rolling in the Deep. Half way through Say My Name a girl ran into our room to tell us that we needed to get to our seats immediately. The show was about to begin.
Walking into the auditorium we finally saw just how many people came to watch the a capella groups do their thing. Nearly all of the ground floor was taken up by people -- roughly 400. We took our seats off of right stage and then the lights began flickering on and off to indicate that the MC’s were about to begin the evening’s event.
The first group to perform was Ball State’s Note to Self, an all male a cappella group. From what the MC’s had mentioned, they had won first place at their region’s quarterfinals. We were in for a treat. Their set list was very well arranged and their harmonies were amazing. It was understandable how they did so well. A quarterfinal winner opened the show so we knew that we, Flash Harmony, were going to have to end the show strong!
A few more groups went including The Parallels, Central Harmony and New Chords on the Block, a group that helped put together the first MACapella event! Mane Attraction, the group we shared our room with, performed their set list right before intermission. As soon as intermission hit we jumped out of our seats to go back to the practice rooms to congratulate Mane Attraction on a job well done. They thanked us and packed up their things and left. We were all alone in the room. We gave a few words of encouragement and a final “AHH” before heading back to our seats for the second half of the show.
After intermission the MC’s introduced another Ball State group, Sedoctave. They performed their ICCA set list that won them 3rd place overall. The introduced us with a great medley of Michael Jackson hit songs, which was funky and cool! Then they performed a beautiful mash-up of "Gravity" and "Run to You," which was arranged as mainly just vocal harmonies and not much else which gave it ethereal vibe. Finally, they finished strong with their cover of "Bohemian Rhapsody" which was stellar, to say the least.
Next the Picardy Thirds, a first year a cappella group at Ohio University, gave a very good performance overall. It was fun and lively with arrangements of "Mr. Brightside," "Tightrope" and "That’s How You Know." Next were the Unexpected Resolutions, the group that our hosts were in. They gave an amazing performance and I was super excited to even be able to watch it. Once they left the stage our group finally got up to go get ready for our time to perform, which was right after Ladies’ Choice.
Quickly we ran back into the rehearsal room to go over the beginning of all of our songs. About five minutes passed by when we decided to get backstage and prepare for our performance. Our nerves were really hitting now, or at least mine were. We went through that little group pulse routine before finally being called onto stage. The lights were blinding but we could still see the massive crowd that was sitting out in front of us. We got ready to begin our set. Kirk counted 1 2 3 and we shot up, part by part.
And as quickly as we had started it felt like our performance was over. Honestly, the whole time we performed I blacked out slightly, not really remembering the details of what we did. I just mainly remember how dry my mouth was and how worried I was that I might be too loud for my solo on "Brother." All my worries subsided, though, as we ended our set and the crowd erupted in applause. We all took our bows, washed over with relief and walked off stage where all of Ball State’s acapella groups were there to congratulate us and tell us we did an amazing job. The whole thing was sort of surreal.
Our group walked back to our choir room and we all congratulated ourselves on being able to pull this off with all the setbacks that we had had to face. The lesson that I learned from this experience was that in some challenging times, people can really come together to do something really amazing. And as I reflect on our year’s work, I just can not help but think that even though this group has had it’s ups and downs, and some days even has frustrated me to no end, I am extremely proud of what they had to come together for and achieved. And like the Clarks had said, Flash Harmony really has come a long way in its three-year life, and for that I am thankful!
