Acapella Recording

In the spring of 2026, as I was preparing to say goodbye to Run For Cover, which I had been singing in since my first week of college and I had poured so much time and energy into both as a singer and as the Music Director of the group, I wanted to cement my time there by recording some of our greatest hits from my time in the group. Now, this was no small undertaking; during ideation, RFC had 19 members in the group, and each of our arrangements had a minimum of five parts on it. For an acapella recording, it is generally desirable to have two different voices on each part (besides featured parts such as soloists and vocal percussionists), and two full takes for each singer on a track. That meant that with each arrangement we recorded, we would need at least 9 recordings, and often more. 

In order for this project to get anywhere, it needed a lot of up-front work. I worked with the RFC Exec team to first determine which songs we wanted recorded. We decided on four arrangements, with a potential fifth that could be recorded if we had time for it. We were also talking with Cadenza, another group on campus, about recording an arrangement that we had previously performed together, which they would be taking the lead on, but still required singers from our group. With that in mind, I began the next step, which was determining who in the group would be singing on which songs. 

The first step was easy. I cracked open a spreadsheet and put down the soloists and vocal percussionists, which I labelled as featured parts. Then, I laid out the amount of parts on each arrangement, and began balancing out who I wanted where. As the former Music Director of the group (elections for the next year had already happened), I was pretty familiar with each individual group member's voices, who I was confident in, who I was concerned about, etc., so some assignments were fairly obvious. The largest balancing act I had to play was trying to balance the amount of recordings each individual person had for the grouping of our four songs, the grouping of our four songs with the one we were recording with Cadenza, and the grouping of all of that with the potential fifth song we were recording. I shot for a range of 2-3 for the first, mainly 3 with a few 4 for the second, and 3-4 for the third. I kept track of these with a secondary chart beneath the main one, ensuring that everything stayed up to date as I added and moved people around. 

Now knowing who was going to be on each part, the next hurdle was going to be managing scheduling for all 19 members. Because I was hard at work on Serakah, my major's capstone project through the beginning of the spring quarter, my timeline for this project ended up being crunched into the second half of the quarter. I knew that I would need to be strategic and on top of everyone in order to coordinate everything, so I got to work. First, I defined my own availability on a second tab in the same spreadsheet, essentially marking myself available as much as possible without compromising other commitments, rehearsals, and school. I was also able to get the group's social media manager, Michael, to work with me on recording, who had a much more open schedule than I did and thus opened up other times that people could potentially record. Because he wasn't on the music team though (Music Director/Assistant Music Director), RFC Exec wanted someone on the music team to be in the room when he was leading recordings, to give notes to the performer as they were recording and ensure that the take went cleanly and smoothly. 

With that in mind, I created a group chat with myself, Michael, and our music team, Jesse and Patrick, and handed the form over. I gave them a somewhat-complicated color scheme such that it would display when I was available, when Michael was available with at least one music team member, and when he was available without a music team member. I created a legend for these different colors, and sent the schedule out, telling everyone to sign up for one timeslot for each song they were performing on.

Before we began recording, we needed a space and equipment. We decided it was easiest to use the Logan Center for the Performing Arts, which has recording studios within it, and we checked equipment out from their equipment cage. I gave Michael a rundown on recording within Logic, setting up the equipment and the files so our files would be congruent with each other and we'd be on the same page. We decided to store our files in a Box folder and just upload new versions every time we finished a session, labelling the file with the date. Finally, I combed through each of the files we were recording and took copious notes for singers to read through before recording, but also as a note for Jesse and Patrick to go off of when I was unable to be in the booth. I linked these notes in the same sheet in nice large text so it couldn't be missed. 

As we began to record, the scheduling sheet sprung to life. I worked hard to keep it up-to-date, blacking out times that were no longer available and coloring past recording sessions in either red or green, depending on whether the recording had been finished or something went wrong and it needed to be inspected in some capacity. In all red slots, I left a comment notating the issue for legibility and as a reminder to myself. 

As we continued to record, I found that I was having trouble keeping track of who needed to sign up for times, so I generated a third spreadsheet for myself to be easily able to bump people, and generally stay up to date with the project's progress so nothing fell through the cracks. This sheet was separated by track, and had each individual file recorded colored in either green, yellow, or red, indicating that the track was either recorded, scheduled, or not scheduled. This made it easy for me to send reminders and track down people who had not signed up for times, which was especially crucial considering the end of the year was quickly approaching and people would be leaving town or dealing with finals. 

Throughout the process of recording, we ran into quite a few issues. The most common was certainly the senioritis from a hefty portion of the group, leading to flakiness and carelessness when it came to commitment, which put a lot more on my plate when it came to poking and nudging to ensure that we finished before the end of the quarter. One of our vocalists ended up getting nodes before we began recording, so I had to go back and re-assign his parts to other people and coordinate with them on scheduling. Additionally, there were a few logistical issues within the tracks we were recording, as some of the arrangements switched time signatures or tempos partway through; I mostly resolved these in Logic by marking them early on in the file so that the metronome stayed consistent all the way through. There was one tricky case, however. 

The third track on the EP, a cover of Undeniable You by Jukebox the Ghost, is quite heavily framed around having the block parts go off of the soloist's timing. This was obviously an issue in the recording booth because we were recording one person at a time, and in order for everyone to stay in-line with each other the singers were going off of the Logic metronome. I went through quite a few iterations as to how this problem could be solved, but none of them seemed super graceful, and I ended up resolving to make the more "flowy" parts of the song an aspect of post-production, rather than in the booth. I essentially re-arranged the entire score, changing all fermatas (a musical notation that tells the performer to hold a given note for an unspecific amount of time) and replacing them with longer measures with specifically long held out notes. This timing wouldn't exist in the final score, but it felt necessary to keep all performers on the same page while in the booth. 

Finally, in the same track, there is a breakdown that continually adds onto itself, growing again and again with how many parts are present, growing to be 14 parts in total. With only nine parts, including the soloist, being recorded, this was a big problem. I realized though that with so many parts, we didn't really need two takes of each, so I decided that I would have each performer record a different part on each of their takes. I warned them all beforehand to come in with both prepared; many are pretty similar to each other, and they're all very repetitive, but I wanted to give ample heads-up. I then created another small chart, marking who was singing which specific parts. However, these parts as I was labeling them were not labeled in the sheet music, and they overlap quite a bit, so while I was retiming the score, I went to that part and labeled each track with its own unique color, such that it was impossible to be confused with any other color. 

As of writing this, recording is completely finished! We were able to hit the recording deadline, and now post production is well underway. I am actively taking on the task of pitch correcting, mixing, and mastering for all four tracks we recorded, as well as the combined arrangement with Cadenza. For that combined arrangement, we are looking to release it before the school year begins, and for RFC's EP, we are hoping to release it sometime between June and March 2027. This page will be updated when those are released.