Noteworthy Individuals– An Interview with the group Noteworthy

One of the mostunique and quirky– and “geeky” according to America’s Got Talent– choral groupsis always seen on campus with their show-stealing performances and vocals. Wedecided that we should get to know them a little bit better, especially becauseone of us really shares the bizarre sense of humor. Without further ado, aninsight into the group from the members themselves.

Phillipe: Can you give us some background on Noteworthy, and how it’s different from other a cappella groups?

Michael: It’s astate of mind.

Christoph: Noteworthy is a student a cappella group that was founded ten years ago by people who were in another group. A few that liked to write music decided to form a separate group because they wanted to write original music.

Michael: Noteworthyis the youngest established musical group on campus. We have an emphasis onstudent-written songs and we’re not afraid to indulge in non-student-writtenworks. We also like to be sort of goofy, which has been our modus operandi for the last couple of years.

Joey: We try to emphasize showmanship.

Michael: We try to focus on the show as a whole, which is pointless if we’re not having fun. I like these guys but I wouldn’t spend six hours a week with them if it weren’tfun.

Christoph: Last week, we had a show, so had to practice a lot more.

Michael: Shows are flimsy plots that allow us to make stupid jokes to introduce every song.

Phillipe: I’ve seen you guys at TEDxBerkeley and the Grammys.

Chris: The Poker Face commercial got on something that was advertising the Grammys. It gotpopular through a Youtube competition where everyone voted on videos.

Michael: Someone wanted to use our video in a montage of Lady Gaga videos.

Phillipe: It’s pretty well known, and even went viral. I have friends in Columbia that show itto their roommates.

Michael: We’rehappy with 4 million views. We’re not Rebecca Black or anything.

Joey: Now it’son the front page of results if you search for Lady Gaga.

Michael: We’ve been the youngest group that’s two digits in age. When you typed Berkeley a cappella into Google before, it used to be on second page of results but now it’s on the first.

Harris: This is sort of a random question but do you have any sort of association with any ofthe candidates running this year for ASUC?

Michael: Not really, but most of the people probably support GOOGLE.

Chris: We don’t get funding from school, so the ASUC activities don’t really affect us.

Michael: The UC Choir Ensemble is our umbrella group. The election doesn’t really affect us, especially since Christoph and I are seniors. 

Phillipe: You guys always perform on Fridays, right? 

Michael: Just this semester. We do it based on people’s schedules.

Phillipe: Do you feel that there is anything difficult about performing in such a public setting?

Christoph: It’s a difficult place to sing because it’s hard to hear ourselves.

Lyle: there’s also a lot of background noise and there are a lot of people passing by.

Michael: You also get crazy random happenings. Once, a man in a wheelchair came and talked to us about an accapella gig he sang in Las Vegas. If it’s an inopportune time of day, you get a small crowd or it might be hot, or even raining.

Christoph: What we usually do is sing on Sproul and then come down to the breezeway.

Harris: Why does every group sing under Sather Gate? Is there a reason?

Michael: One of the groups started doing it and it just started being the thing to do. You can rehearse and rehearse but it’s different from performing and it’s a good practice. You can’t stop when you screw up when you’re performing. 

Brian: And people start to recognize you.

Michael: But sometimes people think you’re a part of another group because they just groupus all together.

Phillipe: Do you have any songs that you wrote this year that you want to talk about ororiginal pieces that you covered?

Michael: We broke ground in being the first accapella group to openly sing a gay love song.I didn’t want to sing a song that made us look gay but I realized that we were just singing straight love songs.

Brian: Most of our songs are written by Daniel McCandless, who used to be in Noteworthy.

Christoph: It’s hard to find original a cappella music. Often times, we’ll have one or two peoplethat write most of the music. If people aren’t writing new music, like lastyear, we sing a lot more of our older original music. We have a library oforiginal music and the copies of older songs that people have arranged in thepast.

Michael: The first song ever written is the Alumni Song that we sing every year.

Julie: Do you ever have conflicts on what you want to sing?

Christoph: This semester we sang twelve songs for a show. Two members are new and we had tostart over. Usually in spring semester, everybody has sung all the songs in thefall. We try to make sure everybody gets a chance to sing the songs that theywant to sing.

Michael: We usually confer. The music manager usually puts out his plan and we discuss it. It’s really a democracy.

Christoph: We also have a rule that if you arrange or write a song for the group, the group has tosing it.

Phillipe: For future people who want to try out for Noteworthy, what do you want to say?

Michael: Well,what is the purpose of a group of students doing something? In the case of performing, we’re really just here to have fun and if you’re in Noteworthy, we want to have fun and have fun singing, performing, and writing new songs. If youwant to do that, then you should join us.

Brian: Just have a really open mind because we do shocker stuff. It might not be the beststuff but we do crazy stuff.

Michael: Cadence and other groups compete and don’t come back even though they win,other groups don’t win and do come back.

Christoph: The type of thing they [the competitions] expect is not the kind of things that wedo. They just expect an entirely different type of singing and we would have tochange everything we’re doing.

Lyle: It also takes time away from our practice time during the semester.

Phillipe: Allright, thank you for your time.

Interviewed by philoniusphunk, aeolia, and 숲틱HS
Writeen by philoniusphunk