2012: The Year A Cappella Goes Mainstream?

This is just a sneaking suspicion of mine, but I get this feeling that mainstream musicians will start mixing in a cappella influences in their musical creations in the coming year or years. By influences, I mean vocal bass and vocal percussion (aka beatboxing). Sure, this is not new stuff and I have heard beatboxing done since the 1980s. However, right now I do not think there is a single mainstream album out there that uses beatboxing nor vocal basses.

Thanks to groups like Pentatonix and Urban Method from The Sing-Off, I believe there will be a resurgence in employing vocal basses and percussion as these techniques allow musicians to put emotion into the low end of their sound, something that may not be easily accomplished with musical instruments. This is especially true in live performances and concerts where a human bass and beatboxer (ahem, vocal percussionist) can freestyle and easily adapt to any changes in the music.

Adding to that is Pentatonix. This group has certainly proved that it is possible for an a cappella group to create an authentic hip-hop/club/techno sound. Not only that, their Sing-Off performances have routinely broken into iTunes's top 100 list, and if this blog article is not wrong (no guarantees) they even had a song in the top 10 list on iTunes. So there is a strong possibility that Pentatonix may become the first a cappella group to go mainstream in this century. If this really happens, then 2012 may be the year that a cappella goes mainstream.