ICCA Prep!

The Mixtapes are hard at work preparing for the ICCAs coming up this weekend. T-6 days! Today we had a clinician come in to help us clean and work on our routine. Her name is Mel Daneke and she's part of an a capella group called Musae, and she also works at The Vocal Company, which produces solely a capella music. PLUS she's a judge for the ICCAs on the 21st so she knows what judges are looking for.

It was so much fun working with her, she was really nice and not intimidating at all. We did our set for her (as far as we had choreographed), and then we sat and talked and broke down the set song by song. She's really into talking about the emotion behind songs and what they mean to us, which was a great way of looking at it. I feel like we spend a lot of time perfecting our sound but we don't spend as much time thinking about the performance side of things, or the "acting" side, so Mel taking the time to sit with us and discuss the emotion and drive behind our songs and kind of the general story arch of the set was really cool. Then we started from the beginning of the set and started and stopped so she could give us notes and fix formation issues and whatnot.

One cool part of the clinic was when we were singing through "Pusher Love Girl" at the end of our set. There's a moment when the girls have a crazy four part harmony that's super cool and very much our style, and Mel asked who was on the highest soprano line. Everyone pointed at me (awkward) and she was like "Okay cool! Don't be afraid to have more fun with it, you can totally belt it more than mix it" and I was like "Yeah okay I'll try that" and then we sang it through with that in mind and it was sooooo thrilling! We sang the harmony part and then stopped and everyone was hooting and hollering because it sounded amazing. It was a really cool breakthrough moment. I also felt really happy and excited personally because I got to let go a bit more and have fun with the line and belt my face off a bit, and everyone seemed really impressed. Erica, one of the sopranos who just came back from being abroad in Prague, came up to me after rehearsal and said that she was standing next to me during that bit and she was blown away by my voice. Yay!