Listen to Scott Gilliam talk about his life as a singer and senior member of Northwood’s award-winning acapella group, Pitch Please in the fourth episode of the Northwood Artist Series.
Script
[Intro]
1 Revy: Hi there! I’m Revy Godehn
2 Gianna: And I’m Gianna Cacciato.
3 Revy: And we’re staff writers for the Northwood Omniscient.
4 Gianna: In this podcast, we will be interviewing Scott Gilliam, singer and senior member of Northwood’s award-winning acapella group, Pitch Please.
5 Revy: He is our fourth and final student featured in the Omnsicient’s new Northwood Artist series. Northwood offers 26 arts classes, including theatre, dance, instrumental and vocal music and the visual arts. The series will highlight some of the most talented and artistic students here at Northwood.
[Intro Music]
6 Gianna: How long have you been into singing?
7 Scott: I feel like I’ve been singing basically my entire life. I got into singing when I was probably about two or three, when my parents had me join our local church choir. Before then we were just doing, like, little kids singing groups and, like, fun things, but from that point on that’s when I really started to realize that singing was kind of my thing. I really enjoy it. I feel like the reason why I enjoy it personally is it’s that one thing, that one thing in my life that I really feel comfortable doing, something that I can excel at, and something I can really show my true self in, if that makes sense? Everyone has, like, that thing that they’re really good at, and that they enjoy doing and singing is that for me. I feel like I’m able to express my emotions and give light to who I truly am through singing and music in general and I just really enjoy it.
8 Gianna: We hear you have perfect pitch. Could you explain what this is and how it affects your musical abilities?
9 Scott: So perfect pitch is just the ability in general to recognize any particular frequency without a reference at all; so you can play a note on the piano and I could tell you what it is or you can tell me to sing a note and I can sing it for you. The best way I can kind of demonstrate it is–without playing the piano–is if you look at the color of the shirt you’re wearing right now, or a sweatshirt or whatever, like for example, I’m wearing a green shirt right now, I just I looked down and I see that it’s green. I just know that it’s green–it’s…I don’t have to explain it, it’s just, like, green. That’s how I experience perfect pitch. I believe I was born with it, but I’m not a hundred percent sure. From a musical standpoint, having perfect pitch gives me a lot of advantages that are unique. I’m certainly able to learn music a lot faster, and that’s given me the opportunity to sing and perform with a lot more groups. Also, I’ve gotten the opportunity to arrange music and compose for my acapella group, which I’ve enjoyed greatly. I also ended up taking AP Music Theory last year, and I ended up scoring a five on the AP exam because a large portion of that exam was a sight singing, so basically you had to learn to sing a little piece of music as quickly as you can and then record it and send it in and hope you’re right basically. And that’s just one example of some advantages that I have because of perfect pitch.
10 Revy: Are you in arts programs or clubs at Northwood?
11 Scott: When I came to Northwood four years ago, I signed up for Vocals One, which is the beginning vocals class, and then after that I started progressing through the vocal classes up until now, where I’ve been in chamber singers for three years, which is our most advanced choral group–choral ensemble in Northwood–and I’ve enjoyed that greatly. I’m also the student director of our acapella group here, Pitch Please. I’ve been student director for two years, I was elected the summer before my junior year and I’ve been in that group since I came to Northwood in my freshman year.
12 Gianna: Have you been in any singing groups or clubs outside of Northwood?
13 Scott: I’ve been in quite a few music, or just singing groups in general, throughout my life. When I started singing…I started in church choir and from about age three to 8th grade, so about 10 years I was just in church choirs throughout that time period. Before I came to high school I also had spent a bunch of time doing musical theater from about second grade to eighth grade. I was in a regional theater program called Broadway Bound, which featured, like, one show every semester, just another theatre music outlet that I’d enjoyed. Also during that time, I was in three separate shows–productions at Playmakers Repertory company which is on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill. I was in three different shows in fourth, fifth, and sixth grade. But after that, I kinda dropped out of musical theatre and theatre in general. I was never a really good actor; I was mainly casted because I could sing, and that was mainly it. Once I got to high school, I took somewhat of a break from church choir while my voice was changing a little bit. I was recently hired as a choral scholar at the church that I used to sing at, and for the past two years I’ve been singing with the adult choir.
14 Revy: How has the pandemic affected your ability to rehearse with Pitch Please and your own personal rehearsal schedule?
15 Scott: So before the pandemic, I was in a church choir that rehearsed once a week for about two hours, I was in an acapella group that rehearsed twice a week for almost two hours per day, [and] I was also in chamber singers, the advanced choir that rehearsed for one class period every day–so before the pandemic I was probably singing for about–I would say roughly ten hours a week, so I was getting a lot of practice, which also took a major toll on my voice and my throat. But once the pandemic started, I basically just shut off all of my singing practice, which is really detrimental to, like, my vocal range and vocal agility–just my vocal ability in general–so I’ve had to spend a lot of time restructuring a lot of the foundations that I’ve had in my vocal abilities before the pandemic started. Rehearsing with Pitch Please and other choir groups has basically been shut down, mainly because we live in an area where we’re being really safe about COVID, which I’m happy about. But Pitch Please–we had our auditions in the fall of this year completely virtual, and then we had a couple meetings, we released a song on YouTube that got recorded and edited and produced, which is super cool–you should go check it out–but, we released that in December, and since then we haven’t really done anything, so Pitch Please has basically been nonexistent, which is really unfortunate, because it’s my senior year. Other than that, I haven’t really been able to rehearse with my church choir or anything, mainly because a lot of people in that choir are older, so they’re trying to be as careful as they can, which I understand. So I haven’t really been able to sing nearly as much as I want to and as I did before the pandemic started.
16 Gianna: How has the pandemic affected your ability to perform?
16.5 Scott: When it comes to performing virtually with the school (so choir or Pitch Please) the only thing Pitch Please has done was the song that we released on YouTube, and that was in December. The only thing that chamber singers have done is we released a couple songs in the fall, one before winter break and then we are working on another piece at the moment that’s coming out soon, which I’m very excited about. With the church choir, I have been a part of a few live morning services where I walk in and I have to sing through a service mask. It’s not the most convenient thing in the world, but I enjoy getting out and doing something live that I’ll enjoy. That’s basically been my entire experience with virtual concerts–every now and then I’ll be a part of a virtual choir video, but I haven’t had too much experience performing live during the pandemic.
17 Revy: Have you won any awards in regards to your singing, or have you been in any groups that won awards?
18 Scott: Personally, I haven’t been in any singing competitions [by] myself, but I have been in quite a few competitions, either with our school choir or with Pitch Please. My freshman year we went to…Every year Pitch Please usually goes to a competition called ICHSA, which stands for International Competition of High School Acapella. Basically, 8-10 groups perform, and there’s a panel of judges and they pick the best few, and they go to the next round, and then they do it again. My freshman year, we advanced to the semifinals of that competition, so we got to travel to Atlanta, and that was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed that. My sophomore year we also advanced to that round of competition–got to go to Georgia again, which was fun. We also earned a superior with chamber singers at MPA, which is not necessarily a competition, but we bring a couple songs to a panel of judges and they judge us, tell us what we do wrong, and tell us what we do well, and give us a rating, so superior was really great rating to get. My junior year, we did not advance to the semifinals in ICHSA, but we did learn another superior with chamber singers. We also won the Mix 101.5 Christmas Choir Competition and we were able to earn $5,000 for our choral program, which comes in handy because we don’t necessarily get too much funding. This year we have not really done that much so we haven’t been able to win any awards or compete this year, unfortunately.
19 Gianna: Are you planning to pursue music in college or as a career?
20 Scott: In the back of my mind, I always wanted to find a college where I could pursue music and still find a way to have success in my future, so with that in mind I decided to attend UNC-Chapel Hill for college and pursue a double major in music and audiology and speech pathology which is like science of the ear and speech therapy, which I find really interesting. I wanted to study something that was not necessarily more reliable than music, but something that’s more applicable to society right now, and being a doctor’s important. Doctors are important, so I wanted to apply to something in the medical field which I’ve been interested in with music, and I feel like the ear is the perfect way to combine the two, if you know what I mean. I think that’s it. I’ve always wanted to pursue music and UNC is a great place to do that. So I was recently accepted into the UNC Clef Hangers, which is the premier all male acapella group at UNC-Chapel Hill. I was very fortunate to be accepted into this group. The audition process was a little peculiar; I had a zoom call with them where I had to sing something and answer a couple questions for them, just like a, I guess, more of a low-key audition. I was lucky enough to receive a call back where I went to their campus and into the middle of a quad and found them at some tent in the middle of basically nowhere on campus, and I sang again for them to some vocal exercises and they had a bunch of questions for me about what kind of person I am, and what kind of things I like, and what my my personality is about, because at the end of the day…we’re going to be spending a lot of time together. The Clef Hangers was always going to be my first–I think was going to be my first choice. The opportunities that I will have now that I’m a part of the group are just unmeasurable [sic].
[Closing Music]
21 Gianna: Thanks for listening to this podcast on behalf of The Northwood Omniscient. We hope you learned something from it!
22 Revy: Thanks for keeping up with the Northwood Artist Series!
[End Podcast]
Photos courtesy of Scott Gilliam. Cover graphic by Gianna Cacciato.
