AriKoinuma.com

If I’m going to write some reviews of live gigs, I better have some photos, shouldn’t I?  I’ll try to remember that, the next gig I attend.  I have a decent camera, too.

This last Saturday was International Children’s Festival in downtown St. Paul, so my family and I checked it out.  While the booths they had set up was ho-hum, the live acts were terrific.  We caught the first two acts on Sunday morning.

Rince na Chroi is a Celtic dance ensemble for girls, and they were accompanied by Two Tap Trio.  The girls were extremely well-trained, and I also noticed how relaxed they seemed on stage, with smiles abound on everyone’s faces.  They certainly knew how to put on a good show!

Two Tap Trio was able accompanists, and in particular, I was very impressed by their bodhran player.  A bodhran is an Irish drum that’s about 1.5-2 in diameter and skin only on one side.  Here’s a pretty thorough tutorial on it:

It’s a very, very expressive drum in the hands of an able player, and the skinsman in Two Tap Trio was great. He had dynamics and pocket, and never overplayed. It’s funny because I have produced 3 Celtic folk albums so far, but each time my job was to put in elements that are not traditionally Celtic — so I really am ignorant of what “traditional” Celtic music is supposed to sound like.

Two Tap Trio was very competent and pleasantly understated.  If I were to produce them, I would put them in a nice wooden room, hopefully use abundance of room mics (as well as close mics) and capture them playing live together.

Next up was Up till 2, a pop a capella group.  Now, I am not as unfamiliar with this type of music — after all, I went to St. Olaf, where they have a in-house group called the LimeStones — and I have seen a few groups over the years.  And what strikes me about them is how similar they are to each other.  Not just in terms of their sound, but also in terms of their characters.  These vocal groups tend to attract middle-class, well-educated and slick-looking and sounding guys, unlike most indie rock musicians.

So if they are so similar to each other, what’s Up till 2′s claim to fame?  Well, they had one guy who was the dedicated beatmaker — yes, he made drum sounds using his mouth and a microphone — so their music had beats.  Now, that’s one fundamental way to differentiate themselves from the run-of-the-mill vocal groups.  And the guy was good, too — his rhythm had a nice propelling momentum to it, and he locked in tight with the guy who was singing bass.  They claim to make sounds of a band using nothing but voices, and they did it fairly well, but beyond the “rhythm section” I felt like what fell on top didn’t go quite far enough to support their claims.  If they’re going to reproduce a whole band, they can feature imitations of guitar riffs and horn swells more prominently.

Which brings me to my next point: if I were to produce them, what would I do to further set them apart from other vocal groups?  Most a capella recordings I heard are simple live captures of their performances, but in these guys’ case, I’d try overdubbing and have them fill out their music more with their staple imitation of instruments.  Of course, I’d be careful not to overdo it, so that the live versions of their songs won’t sound thin and disappointing, but a studio is a studio — subtle enhancing on essence is perfectly allowed, in my opinion, even for vocal groups.  It’ll also be interesting to play with different mics and effects on voices.  I’ve never heard of a vocal group who really take advantage of what a studio offers to more regular bands, so that’ll be an exciting experiment.

All in all, they put a very entertaining show — they were animated and energetic on stage, and their chemistry together as a group was apparent.  A good family entertainment, for sure.