Photo provided by Tyler Shadle
By Makenna Hall, Managing Editor of Content
Susquehanna’s A Cappella group Harmonic Combustion made it past the first round of this year’s International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella (ICCA) on March 13 and into the semifinals that will be held on April 10.
The competition is entirely virtual this year, meaning that Harmonic Combustion and the 250 other university groups worldwide were responsible for recording and submitting their competition video, as opposed to performing it live on stage.
Two weeks after the video submission deadline for the quarterfinals, Varsity Vocals, the host of ICCA, held a YouTube livestream for each region.
“I am more than happy that Varsity Vocals found a way for the competition to occur in a virtual format, because it is always a great experience getting to see the creativity and talent of groups from other schools,” Harmonic Combustion music director and junior Tyler Shadle said, “One of the unfortunate downsides to having the competition occur virtually is that all performances are pre-recorded, and absolutely nothing can compare to getting to perform live on an ICCA stage.”
The virtual aspect also provided new challenges for the group as they had to learn audio mixing and video editing.
“The audio mixing definitely took up the majority of the video-making process. If I had to guess, I would say I probably had to invest somewhere around 40 hours for that alone,” Shadle said.
The hard work seemed to pay off, however, as Shadle and junior Sophia Rhyins were awarded “Outstanding Arrangement” for the performance. Along with arranging the song, Rhyins was one of the soloists.
Shadle has been the Harmonic Combustion music director for two years, and has been a part of the group since 2018.
“I run rehearsals; however, I have also written a few original arrangements for the group, choreographed our 2020 ICCA set, and did a lot of behind-the-scenes work for our 2021 ICCA video,” Shadle said.
The competition video was recorded at the beginning of this semester, when the majority of the 20-member group was studying remotely.
Each member that participated in the competition video recorded their part(s) individually using voice memo and video apps and submitted two best takes for the final video. Varsity Vocals required that each part be recorded “live” meaning that individuals could not chop their recording together from several takes, but needed a single recording.
“Luckily we had learned the arrangement last semester, and we had some additional videos that our music directors and our arrangers sent so that we could practice our dynamics,” junior Julia Loudenback said.
The performance featured two soloists as well as dancers to liven up the video.
“I think the effects and the sound mixing added a lot to our performance. It was a challenge to find a way to include everyone in the video, as we had a staggered return to campus and some remote students. It’s hard to keep a video interesting with just boxes of singers, which is why we settled on showcasing the soloists,” sophomore and Harmonic Combustion Secretary Calli Lambard said.
After receiving scores and feedback from the judges, the group is now working on refining and making changes to their original video to submit for the semifinal by March 29.
“We were not able to do much in-person filming for the quarter final submission because we only had a single week with the majority of the members on campus, due to the staggered return. Now, however, we are able to try some new things,” Shadle said.
The next round will be livestreamed on Varsity Vocals’ YouTube channel. The group needs to place first in the semifinal in order to move on to the final.
This is the group’s second time taking part in ICCA, placing third in the quarterfinals last year.
“[W]e weren’t expecting much. We really just wanted to get our name out there and see what the judges had to say. We were so shocked and excited to place third, and I’m so proud of the hard work that we put in to get there,” Lambard said of last year’s experience.
Harmonic Combustion’s competition video can be watched on their YouTube channel.
