monkey nonsense

so i’ve been watching “the sing off” on hulu. i’ve always enjoyed acapella music and with all the hype with glee, it’s nice to have a show with different acapella groups singing without the drama of glee! i’m always amazed when humans can mimic instrument sounds, like a drum beat. so i was watching episode 2 when the all women’s mormon group is singing a coldplay song that usually has violins so they’re mimicking it with their voices.

now there’s not much musically that i can usually comment on as an expert. but if there’s ONE thing i’ve mastered during my many years of school orchestra… it is faking violin bowing!! in my humble opinion, fake violin bowing requires the same, if not more, skill as actually playing the violin! as when you play the violin for real, you need to make sure your bow is going in the same direction as everyone else. timing wise, you need to make sure that you pull your bow at the correct rate… otherwise, u’ll be on your up stroke when people are still going down! then, the angle at which you bow matters. you can’t be stroking the E string (angled upwards) when everyone else is on the G string (angled downwards)! finally, if you’re faking it, you need to make sure you don’t actually hit the string! otherwise, you might actually make a bad sound (not even joking here… my middle school orchestra teacher complained about the sound coming from my violin. he blamed it on my strings and “cheap” fiberglass bow. no… it was definitely the operator, not the equipment!!)

so when i saw them start their songs by air violin bowing… i was not impressed. their speeds were not matching! they were not in sync! it was terrible!! butchering the art of fake violin playing! i was outraged!

p.s. i feel like all dude acapella sounds better than all girl… and heck, even better than coed. my 2 favorites are the bubs and nota. man, they make every song sound awesome.