By now, you know I'm a hard core fan of the up and coming a capella group, Pentatonix. Up till now, I thought their cover of Dog Days Are Over by Florence and the Machines was their best work. Not anymore. Early this month the group went to the Los Angeles Acapella Festival (LAAF) and met up with Ben Brams. Ben is an arranger for The Sing-Off and he has helped many Sing-Off groups polish up their competition pieces. Anyway in just a few days Ben Brams and Pentatonix came up with a cover of Gotye's Somebody That I Used To Know.

This has quickly became my new favorite song from Pentatonix.

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.

This video features The Sing-Off 2nd Runner-up Urban Method, The Sing-Off Champion Pentatonix and Flo Rida. Not a single musical instrument is used. That's right, other than microphones, there are no drums, no guitars, no electronic synth. It is done purely using human voices.



Just compare it with the original.



I'm really looking forward to a Pentatonix album.

A month ago, I rated the Sing-Off group Pentatonix as a black horse after hearing them sing three songs on the show. It has been a month and the group has skyrocketed to front runner by a mile. The group is so talented, creative and versatile that they have been able to deliver top notch performances despite having every genre of music being thrown at all the groups. Rock and Roll, Country, R&B, Pop, you name it, Pentatonix has nailed them all. Heck, in the recent week some of the groups have taken to blatantly imitating Pentatonix's signature style in a bid to stay in the competition. That is probably the ultimate compliment any competitor can give to Pentatonix.

If you don't follow The Sing-Off, here's what you have been missing out.

The Sing-Off is an acapella contest/tv show that has been airing in the states over the past two christmas. This year, the show has returned bigger than ever and features a much more varied teams. Out of this season's contestants the teams that are most likely to win this season's competition are Delilah, Vocal Point and Urban Method. Pentatonix also deserves a mention as they're a black horse that could easily rock the boat by being totally unique and talented.

Similar to last season's Backbeats, Delilah took some of the best female singers from past seasons of The Sing-Off to form this all female acapella group. Even though this performance comes from the very first episode of the season, many are already hailing Delilah's performance as the best one of the season.

The boys from Vocal Point are not the first acapella group from Brigham Young University to participate in The Sing-Off. Noteworthy from season one was also from BYU and like Noteworthy, Youtube have a collection of their past performances. And from their performance of this Frank Sinatra song, it is clear that these boys are strong at singing oldies.


Urban Method's call themselves a rappapella group who incorporate rap in their performance. Thus far, Urban Method have mostly been featuring two or three of their members with the rest mainly singing backup so it is hard to judge if they have the versatility or talent to win the competition. So far, they are ahead in the competition because they are seasoned musicians who are good at arranging their performance to showcase their strengths.


Finally, we come to Pentatonix. They come off as a young and possibly one of the least experienced groups remaining in the competition, but each of the five members that make up Pentatonix compensates with having insane talent for making club and techno style acapella. It is impressive that they are able to reproduce the music of the genre with no musical instruments or electronic equipment.