finally... some quality a cappella... (thread also known as "please support us")
Sep 13, 2002 at 7:54 AM Thread Starter Post #1 of 12

taipeileviathan

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okay, first off, i'm not sure i'm allowed to do this, so moderator moderator, if u find this thread at all inappropriate, i greatly apologize, and pls remove it asap and tell me?
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okay, i dunno if u guys know, but i'm assistant music director of my college a cappella group. we're the counterparts, our website is www.upenncounterparts.com. we try to put out a cd every year, but since we're not sponsored and studio time is so expensive, sometimes projects get delayed. however, this past year we've been able to produce, much thanks to the ppl at indre and crash studios in philly, an AWESOME CD!! seriously guys... convinced that this cd will soon win awards upon reviews, i am amazed that i'm actually on this cd, and that my group can sound like this.

however, since we spent almost all of our money on recording/mixing the cd, we don't have much money left to make copies, buy cases, print covers, etc. so, without further ado, i will make my pitch: i'm asking any of you who're interested in college a cappella to help us out. please review the track list below, and if u're interested in any of these tracks, please pm me and i'll try to send u a wav file of that track as a preview. if you like the track, like our sound, please preorder a cd for 15$. we're only a coupla hundred bucks short now, so u should be able to receive your cds by thanksgiving.

track list:
1) All I Want- Toad the Wet Sprocket
2) 1000 Miles- Vanessa Carlton
3) More Than Words- Extreme
4) Night and Day- Jazz Standard
5) I Hope You Dance- Lee Ann Womack
6) Under The Bridge- Red Hot Chili Peppers
7) Ten Minutes Till the Savages Come- Jazz Standard
8) Side- Travis
9) Yesterday- a medley of the Boyz II Men and the En Vogue versions
10) Heavy Cloud No Rain- Sting
11) Sweet Child of Mine- Guns n' Roses/Sheryl Crow
12) Father Figure- George Michael
13) We Belong- Pat Benetar
14) Paper Moon- Jazz Standard
15) America- Medley of American songs commemorating 9/11

we arrange all our tunes, and of course, do all vocals and vocal percussion. many people like our sound because all of our arrangements tend to have a jazzy influence from our roots as a jazz a cappella group, and we like to add twists to familiar songs such as our version of the Beatles' Yesterday.

thanks guys... and sorry for this shameless post...
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Sep 13, 2002 at 7:59 AM Post #2 of 12
okay, i shall sleep now. i hope nobody finds all of this too offensive... it's just that i've been listening to this cd for 4 hrs straight on my headphones
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and i really cannot believe my ears... heh...
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again, i apologize for my shamelessness...
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Sep 19, 2002 at 4:30 AM Post #3 of 12
heh, sorry for the shamelessness of this bump, but i do in fact have something to say...

my goal here isn't just to sell cd's. it'd be great if u guys wanted to support us financially, but as we all know, in the world of kazaa and winmx, well, cd's are rarely bought without much pomp and circumstance.

it'd be great just to get some of u guys interested about college a cappella. i'm here also just to share some music that i think is simply good music. it's okay if u dun wanna buy a cd, but i'll be more than happy to send a .wav or .mp3 if anybody wants to hear what we sound like...
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okay, that's it for now...
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rock on...
 
Sep 22, 2002 at 2:21 PM Post #4 of 12
Hey man! I personally see nothing wrong with you doing this
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. Heck, its for a good cause and a head-fi board member right? I do personally find 15$US (24$CDN) for a CD a little steep
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. I don't mean to be stingy or to haggle, but I have a feeling there may be alot more people interested were it ~10$.

For auditioning purposes I think it would be a fantastic idea to have some low quality mp3 rips of all the tracks available somewhere online... say in the 64kbps ranage. Crappy sound but good enough to let ppl know whether they like enough of the tracks to want the CD.

One more idea here... perhaps alternatively to the CD, for say 5$, you could offer to send anyone the album in the form of HIGH-quality mp3 rips (something like LAME 3.91 "alt-preset standard" or "extreme"). This would also be rid of shippings costs
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.

Lemme know what you think of all these suggestions... if I'm wrong, lemme know
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Oh, and I'd LOVE to hear a couple of tracks if you're willing to send them to me!
 
Sep 22, 2002 at 5:22 PM Post #5 of 12
hey ob3ron, thanks for the feedback!
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the reason why we sell our cd's at 15$ a piece is because we only print about 300 copies for each album, and that gives us very little bargaining power with the people who make cds (300 is very close to the minimum amount they'd accept for an order). i'm not the business manager, so i can't tell you for sure how much of a profit margin we have, but i know that whatever profit we make is used pretty much to fund for our concerts and for the production of our next cd. again, since penn doesn't sponsor its a cappella groups (booo penn!), it's pretty tough for us; some groups at other universities get like, $20~40,000 a year to play with!! a year with $7~8k scrapped up would be considered a great year for us...
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hehe, i know that 15$ is pretty expensive (even my own friends aren't too enthusiastic about buy

anyway, ob3ron, i think ur idea of hosting low qualities on the web is great! we do in fact have selected mp3's on our website, u just have to click on the "albums" link, then click on an album, then click on a track. we don't have cuts from our latest album yet, but now that u've reminded me i'll be harassing our webmaster to put something up.

as for selling albums in mp3 format... that is an awesome idea. i will definitely be bringing this suggestion to our next board meeting, so we'll see how that goes...
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and as a final note, my aim sn is taipeileviathan, so please feel free to add me to ur contact list and msg me for a track or two!

cheers!
~elliott...
 
Sep 23, 2002 at 12:05 AM Post #6 of 12
I really think the mp3 thing might work... sales at literally no cost are always good
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. And who knows, if you get enough of those, you may have the cash to lower the CD price if you see you're not selling enough at full price.

And hey no prob Elliot! You're actually a bit in the same boat as some friends of mine who are in a local A Capella/choral ensemble with their new CD (thankfully though, they seem to have pulled it off with some gov funding here in Newfoundland Canada). They're called the Quintessential Vocal Ensemble... perhaps you've heard of em? Not too likely I would think though, despite having placed first in the International Youth and Music Festival (chambre choir category) in Vienna '98. I really think that in a few years they'll really have a great shot at an actual record deal
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. But perhaps I'm a little biased... maybe I could send you some mp3s and you could tell me what you think?
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You wouldn't happen to also have ICQ would you? I'm afraid I dont have AIM and have never used it
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Oh and I almost forgot... you're webpage seems to be down at the moment. That URL is bringing me to the "This Site is Planned for Developpment" page at namezero.
 
Sep 23, 2002 at 1:08 AM Post #7 of 12
i used to use icq, but it became really buggy on my comp...
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so now i use only aim and msn... my msn thingie should be in my profile.
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about the website... this is really weird, but i got the same page as u did when i clicked on the link at the top of this page, but when i typed the address in manually, our website came up.
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so i guess u guys will have to type it in manually?
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okay, that's it for now...
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edit: the mystery of the missing homepage has been solved. what happened was that originally, the period at the end of the sentence was included in with the url. the problem has now been fixed, so the link above should work!
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Sep 23, 2002 at 6:56 PM Post #8 of 12
i used to go to suny albany and i loved the earth tones. really cool guys and always put on the greatest show. you guys ever play around them? they're usually quite award-winning and all that.
 
Sep 24, 2002 at 4:50 AM Post #9 of 12
grinch, i checked out their website, and wow! they sound really good for a group only 4 years old! kudos to them! some acquaintances of mine tried to start a chinese a cappella group here and wanted to steal me from counterparts to help them out, and tho i was torn at first, having been to a few of their rehearsals it became clear that this group wasn't gonna go anywhere for at least the next 4~5 years... so i gotta give it to the earth tones for getting their stuff together so quickly! i'll be looking forward to hearing more about them, and hopefully we mite even have an exchange some day (a group they performed with before, APC Rhythm, has been asking us to make another trip to nyc sometime, so mebbe we mite meet up there someday
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)...

in the meantime, rock on!
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Sep 25, 2002 at 9:05 PM Post #10 of 12
Taipei:

I have very fond memories of singing in my acapella group during my undergraduate days - the Humtones from Haverford College. We actually did a concert at UPenn with another group - the Penny Loafers my final semster at Haverford in the spring of 1992. Are they still around?

Acapella recordings are great - but there is no substitute for checking out college acapella groups live IMO.
 
Sep 26, 2002 at 12:44 AM Post #11 of 12
Apologies for my absence of late, Elliot! I've had to put in some quality time with my E/C Eng books for the past few days! I'm sure you know the drill (whatever your major)
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.

Quote:

the mystery of the missing homepage has been solved


I checked out the availble tracks from the new album on the web-site. You guys sound great (despite the aquarium mp3 sound
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). I really liked the "I Hope You Dance" track. I'd take it over the original any day of the week! I think my GF would totally love your rendition of "1000 Miles" - she loves that song and is crazy about the A Capella thing.

Quote:

i used to use icq, but it became really buggy on my comp... so now i use only aim and msn... my msn thingie should be in my profile


MSN is another I don't have
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. Perhaps we could do this per e-mail? I'd still very much love to hear a high-quality mp3 or two!
 

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