
An Instrumental Part of My Dartmouth Experience
Hey guys! Like I mentioned last week, I want to keep introducing myself through a series of posts, so I thought this week would be a good opportunity to give you all another picture into my life through the a capella lens. I am in a group called the Dartmouth Brovertones, which is one of Dartmouth’s three, all male a capella groups (there are nine groups all together). Now, I don’t know how much you all know about college a capella, but I suspect there are a number of misconceptions floating around, so I thought I would start off by telling you all a bit about what college a capella is NOT:
- No. 1
College a capella is not Pitch Perfect.
- No. 2
Unlike Glee, not every member of the group is an earth-shattering soloist.
While some members of our group are phenomenal soloists, I certainly didn’t get into a capella for the wonders of my solo voice. I only auditioned after a number of my freshman floormates convinced me to tag along with them to tryouts, and ended up in a group because it turns out I can decently sing a bass part after years of playing the cello. I still don’t consider myself an amazing singer, but if singing is something you’re remotely interested in, I would encourage you to step outside your comfort zone and give a capella a shot!
- No. 3
Unlike the romanticized idea of a “riff-off,” our shows don’t come together perfectly polished and synchronized out of thin air.
Being in any performance group is a significant time commitment, and it takes a lot of hard work from every member of the group to arrange our own music, learn our parts, and get things up to performance speed (and even occasionally throw in some choreography). We rehearse three times a week, and often more during performance weeks. But in my opinion, the rewards are well worth it. Performing with the Bros is such a blast and being in the group has definitely been an instrumental (ha!) part of my Dartmouth experience.