I recently joined a women’s a cappella group and it was one of the best decisions I have ever made. We call ourselves the CUP-ellas (how cute is that?!), and we’re buzzing with the excitement of building our group and performing! Before I joined, I didn’t know much about a cappella other than what was in the “Pitch Perfect” movies, but it’s so much more than that. It’s such a creative form of music and expression, and we are free to make music in any way we choose, because we are the music.

A cappella is more than the base of a funny movie. It takes hours of practice and lots of hard work. A cappella is harder than singing in a choir with no background music because you always have to listen and keep the tempo with each other. Sometimes, not everyone gets to sing the melody of the song, but that’s the fun part. Everyone is singing something different and when it’s all put together, it sounds amazing. This also helps with the creativity aspect of it. You are free to sing covers of songs as differently from the original as you want. You can make songs faster and jazz them up, slow them down and make them melodic or my personal favorite, put songs together and make mashups. You can do whatever you want with your songs, because you are in charge of the music.

All of the girls in CUP-ellas are so talented that sometimes it’s a shame that not everyone can have a solo all the time. We learned to blend in with each other when we’re singing, so when I hear each one of them sing individually, I am impressed all over again with the amount of incredible talent in our little group. We all come from different majors, sororities and hometowns and we all have different friends and interests, but put us all together and we become one of the greatest groups of people I have ever had the pleasure of being a part of.

That’s the great thing about a cappella. It’s more than just singing music. It’s expressing who you are in a group. It’s being a part of something bigger, and coming together to make music. It’s different than any other type of music, and a cappella is quickly becoming more and more popular. There’s something about it that grabs people’s attention. Every time we perform, our audience is entranced by the music. It amazes people that we can make music using only our voices.

Being in an a cappella group has given me confidence to perform and share music with the people around me. I love my little group and each person in it. I look forward to weekly practices and I love performing with them. A cappella is aca-awesome, and so are the friends it has given me.