CASA - The Contemporary A Capella Society

June marks the one-year anniversary of the A Cappella Originals podcast brought to you by CASA.org mi casa es su casa. The July podcast will feature all sorts of one-year (“the toothpaste anniversary”) features… special notes from former hosts and contributors to the podcast, highlights from the past year, and special music written just for this podcast! Not to mention amazing music from great a cappella songwriters. Also in July’s podcast: The first edition of A cappella Summer Movie Views, details about the new A Cappella Originals songwriting competition, and cool new narration and bumper spots from the talented Diana Priesler! Yay, nice sounding female voice!

Congratulations, it’s summer vacation! You’re staring at three months of free time... Wait, what’s that? You don’t have 3 months of vacation? Well, neither do I. Luckily, although you’re not free to take an extended trip, with the right tunes you can take a world-trip to the sunniest locations, thanks to recordings by some of the best a cappella groups from around the world.

Every composer is a fount of songwriting creativity … until deadlines loom. Then it’s writers’ block after writers’ block stacked into a nice tidy pyramid. Break the curse! Get out of that tomb! When you’re dry as a mummy, from whence springs that river of creativity? Try these ten approaches on for size and see if you can’t give writers’ block the boot!

Recently there was a discussion on the RARB Forum regarding the use of "scratch" tracks (performances used to inspire other performances, but this guide track won't make it to the final cut.) These differ from "cue" tracks in a couple key ways: A cue track is more of a template - a grid to lay out your musical work upon, where a scratch track is supposed to inspire emotion and feel into the equation.

{mosimage}A Personal Memoir on the For Today CD Project The following is a first hand account of the story behind the development, creation, and fruition of the ‘For Today We Are All Hokies’ A Cappella Tribute to Virginia Tech by Matthew Bolling of Magnolia Productions, LLC, a former Virginia Tech Juxtaposition bassist and current director of a CASA Contemporary A Cappella League ensemble in Richmond, VA. The day we all know: April 16th, 2007 started like every other day for me in Richmond, Virginia. I woke up, got prepared for work, and headed off to the office at my computer engineering job. As the events of the morning progressed and steadily worsened, I could tell this was going to be one of the most stressful days of my life.