They've got the VOICE

Charttopping American a cappella group Pentatonix is expected to bring the house down on Tuesday for their oneperformanceonly debut show at SoundBox.
Featuring five outstanding vocalists: Scott Hoying, Mitch Grassi, Kirstin Maldonado, Avi Kaplan, and Kevin Olusola, they are considฌered one of the most exceptional a cappella groups of the decade.
They first became a YouTube sensation when they started uploading their a cappella versions of current top hits. Their dynamic vocal and visual style led to a recording contract and they have now released four EPs and four albums, including their latest “Pentatonix” which debuted at No 1 on the Billboard 200 and Billboard Digital Albums charts. The group has sold more than 3.2 million albums in the US alone, and has sold out venues worldwide.
XP had a chat with Scott Hoying, the baritone ahead of the show at Muang Thai GMM Live House at CentralWorld.

How did it all start?
Mitch, Kirsten and I grew up together and went to high school together. We started the group together in the senior year and called ourselves The Trio. Then there was this televiฌsion show called “The SingOff”, that’s when we added two more members – Avi and Kevin on beatbox and bass – to appear in the show in 2001. And we ended up winning. That’s how we got started. We were all choir nerds, just havฌing a good time and we had no idea that it would turn into something that was so good.

How is your sound designed?
It is entirely improvisational. I think the way we work best is to come in a circle and just start jamming on a song. Kevin would start beatboxing and we would keep coming up with random ideas and if something sticks, or if there is something that everyone is excited about, we keep that and go from there. That freestyle, improvisational style is what makes our arrangements so attractive to people because it’s free.

What did you listen to when you were growing up?
We live in Texas and listened to a lot of country music growing up. When I turned 13 or 14 I discovered this artist named Jackson Sullivan, then I just became in love with R&B. Now I listen to a lot of that and pop. All five of us listen to very different music, ranging from folk to classical to pop and electronic.

How do you select songs to cover?
It really depends. If one of us really loves a song we will bring it to the group. Avi could do the bass line and Kirsten can do the chorus. But we haven’t really covered a lot of songs lately because we are focusing on writing original music and working on a new album.

What songs or genre are the hardest or most challenging to cover?
No matter what genre it is, we are going to bring it back to our sound and as long as it is recorded with lyrics then I think we can do it. Probably rock stuff, or anything that is proฌduction based that we can’t really capture the sounds of the vocals, we would stay away from. So, if it’s like a classic rock song with a bunch of cool guitar licks, it would sound cheesy if we tried to mimic the guitar sound, so we stay away from that. Or we would totally revamp the song and give it a different vibe but sometimes that can be risky.

If you were to allow one musical instrument on your music, what would that instrument be?
I think that it would be piano or guitar, something acoustic so we can keep that stripped down vibe that we do and Kevin and Avi would still be heard. If we had drums or other production and sync then Kevin and Avi would become obsolete.

How do you take care of your voice?
It’s super difficult to do an hourandahalf show with just your voice. All of us are very, very conscious about vocal rest, getting hydrated and getting lots of sleep and pacing ourselves during the show. If one of us gets sick we immediately get a doctor to come to the venue to figure something out. Sometimes we would change around the set if we need, to give someฌone a break. One thing you can do is drink tons of water. We’ve discovered that hydrating is so important because it keeps your vocal chords fresh. And sleep is another important factor. Right after the show that we’ve been strained vocally, we would not talk to each other until the next sound check. It is crazy what a 24hour vocal rest will do, it would completely revitalise you.

What’s next for Pentatonix?
We will be touring till late November and we will be releasing a Christmas album which we are really, really pumped about and it’s coming together right now. We are going to be writฌing a lot of new music next year and just keep on going.

What can we expect from the show next week?
It’s going to be wild. It’ll be a bunch of origฌinals, a bunch of covers and it’s not what you would expect from an a cappella show. It’s more of a rock concert!

The writer would like to thank DJ Pueng from Eazy FM 105.5 for the assistance with the interview.