From Atlanta, to R.J. Reynolds High School in Winston-Salem, to Meredith College, Pitch Please has traveled many places to perform various a cappella songs. Saturday Dec. 3, the group visited North Carolina State University (N.C. State) to sing as part of a concert for a group called Grains of Time.
Senior Emerson Batsche, who has been a part of Pitch Please for three years, explained how Pitch Please became associated with the Grains of Time.
“The Grains of Time are the premiere men’s a cappella group at N.C. State,” Batsche said. “We met at Meredith College my first year of a capella; I think it was some kind of workshop, and we hit it off really well and started playing a game called pelt, and ever since then we’ve just been good a capella ‘friend groups.’”
Junior Sydney McGee, who joined Pitch Please this year, expressed why she enjoyed performing for Grains of Time.
“Grains of Time invited us to be a part of their fall concert,” McGee said. “They are a really amazing all male group at N.C. State and it was amazing to get the opportunity to not only see them, but to sing at their concert. We didn’t spend the day there, but it was really fun to be able to perform. “
Senior Olivia Somers, who has been a member of Pitch Please since her freshman year, described why she admires Grains of Time.
“Grains of Time is such a fun music-loving group of college guys; they want to see other singers succeed and have fun,” Somers said. “Just working with other people who know where they’re coming from is a great experience. To me at least, they’re like the older brothers of a capella. They know what they’re doing, they care about the music, they care about us and it’s just really great to have another group care about a small-town group from Pittsboro.”
Batsche mentioned how Pitch Please looks up to the Grains of Time, and how the a capella skills differ from high school to college level.
“They are an accomplished college group; the chemistry is really good, and something that we lack that they’re really good at is staying focused from the very beginning in rehearsals to the very end,” Batsche said. “They can start right away; they don’t have to make time to adjust—they just jump into it. It’s really respectable how they do it.”
Somers admires the way that the group sings.
“One thing that stands out when they sing is their blend,” Somers said. “Their blend is so exquisitely perfect; sometimes in practices Hanson will be like, ‘Think of the college groups, think of Grains of Time and how they would do this, blend like they would blend and sing how they would sing, enunciate like they would enunciate,’ and stuff like that.”
Although Pitch Please has become involved in many new opportunities, there are some that they have been involved in for several years. They have entered in the MIX 101.5 Christmas Choir Competition for four consecutive years. The group won first place their second year submitting and second place their third year. The results of the 2016 competition were announced Friday, Dec. 9. Pitch Please came in third place, with Apex Friendship High School coming in second and Fuquay-Varina High School claiming victory. For the competition this year, they entered with the song “That’s Christmas To Me” by Pentatonix.
Somers explained how the recording process works.
“Hanson has this high tech microphone that he plugs into his laptop, and so we went into the costume closet because the sound waves are absorbed into the clothes; they don’t bounce off walls and come back into the mic, ” Somers said. “We did it section by section: we started with basses, then tenor twos, tenor ones, alto twos, alto ones, soprano twos, soprano ones, until he gets all the parts in one, and then he puts it together and tweaks it on GarageBand.”
Junior Christopher Keesor, who joined Pitch Please this year, explained how the recording process was less time-consuming than the process leading up to it.
“We practiced a lot, but we pretty much recorded the final product on the first take, maybe two or three for each part, but there is more practice leading up to it,” Keesor said. “All of the schools in the competition, especially the ones that made it to the finals, are great. I just think that we are special and we want support in our local area.”
Somers mentioned how other schools seem to be following the example of Pitch Please.
“All of the songs in the finals were a capella, which is funny because normally we are the only a capella group,” Somers said. “I guess the schools were like, ‘Oh, the a capella group has won two times in a row, let’s do something a capella,’ so I feel like other schools are following in our footsteps.”
– By Briana Stone
