Accent: How did IC Voicestream come about?

Ryan Dowling: The first thing is that Ithaca College didn’t have a co-ed a cappella group and we really wanted to start something up so we could add something else to the music scene at IC. With our actual style, we really wanted to separate ourselves from the other two, Ithacapella and Premium Blend. They both do modern music but we wanted to take it and do something different with our arrangements and only do modern music and emulate the sound of the bands as much as we can.

A: What’s the deal with the CD you guys are releasing?

RD: Essentially, the whole group came back a week early from December break last year and we set up a studio in [senior] Simon [Baumer]’s bedroom and we had a control booth in the hallway. We recorded each person’s part separately; a lot of the times a cappella groups will record just parts. Each person had their own part so we wanted to mix everyone in there equally and as best as we can. We mixed it and mastered it and did everything ourselves. We wanted to make it a real group thing.

A: What was the recording process like?

RD: It was a lot of fun. Essentially it was us in my house for a week working on it. It was really intense, it was a really fun time and everybody in the group got really close. There were troubles along the way just trying to figure out what kind of sound we wanted and how far should we go. A lot of a cappella groups now are using crazy effects but we decided to keep it just voices to show people how many cool things we can do. Like our bass [senior] Matt Hubert can really sound like a bass and our percussionist can really sound like drums without having to use post-production effects.

A: You guys have a pretty eclectic mix of songs on your CD, how did you choose the track list?

RD: The way we choose our songs is the whole group sits down and we suggest songs and we listen to them and then pick them. The ones that we chose to put on the CD, mainly the musical director, [senior] Paul Canetti, took the 13 best songs from our repertoire that we do that represents the hard-core like Linkin Park to the pop like Michelle Branch to show the broad spectrum of modern music that we do.

A: How did you guys get the website (www.icvoicestream.com) together?

RD: The website is also done within the group, Simon Baumer got it started and then Benjamin Costello took it and revamped the whole thing. He’s the one that maintains it and he’s in the group too as a singer.

A: What’s that random link at the bottom titled “Leigh?”

RD: Benjamin got bored one day and took Leigh Graniello, one of the singers in the group and put her face on an animated gif for no reason and decided to embarrass her and put it on the site.

A: Talk about the video that’s on the site. It’s hilarious.

RD: We always try to think of skits like when you go to an a cappella concert and they have funny skits, but for whatever reason our skits always failed miserably or didn’t come across as funny. We decided to do something and try it a couple of times and Matt Hubert and Paul Canetti did the video editing and we took the best of what we had and made into a funny skit. This upcoming concert we have another music video for one of the songs on the CD to open the concert, which is pretty exciting.

A: Talk about your concert on Saturday and everything leading up to it.

RD: Well it’s been a year in the making. We started recording at the end of last December break. As far as the concert we’re trying to hype it up as much as we can. We’ve been featured on the upcoming Collegiate A Cappella Music Organization, which is a national compilation that comes out. The song “Papercut” by Linkin Park is on there and is also on our CD. We want as many people to come out, it’s a free concert and it starts at 7. We just want to show people what voices can do. We might have some giveaways or raffles for free autographed CDs by the group. Basically we just want to get as much advertising as we can out there.

A: How would you say IC Voicestream is different than the other a cappella groups on campus?

RD: The main thing is that when we pick a song and sing it, we don’t try to make it sound like an a cappella version of the song, we try to make it sound like the actual song.

A: What’s the best reason to go out to the concert on Saturday?

RD: Well it’s free and I think that a lot of people who have stereotypes about a cappella music are the ones that should come, because they’ll be blown away by what we sound like.