<p>I loved this show last season and am so happy it’s back. Anyone else watching??</p>
<p>Yes! My only complaint is that they get rid of a group prior to everyone performing. Sometimes I want to keep everyone out of one “set” of groups and get rid of two out of another!</p>
<p>I think maybe they split it up so they could rerun the two hours separately. I agree though. Also, I don’t like them having the “pro” groups - this one didn’t really thrill me anyway!</p>
<p>I love the Sing Off! I especially root for the college groups.</p>
<p>Love this show!!</p>
<p>Oh, I was hoping someone had started a thread on this!</p>
<p>But should we be careful about spoilers for the west coast viewers?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Me neither! In fact, I had low expectations of them before they even performed. Five voices is really difficult… too many limitations.</p>
<p>I didn’t mean to kill the thread with my comment about waiting. :eek:</p>
<p>I hear you Terwit. Same thing happened on the Two And A Half Men thread.</p>
<p>I hate reality TV, I have gotten really tired of the American Idol-type format, but Sing-Off is the exception for me. Although maybe expanding it to 16 groups and dragging it out will wind up being too much. I love that the music is different from what one normally hears, I love that there are genre conventions but enormous variation between groups, I love that they ARE groups, I love that in some sense they all sound like groups I’ve loved most of my life: The Wiffenpoofs, the Persuasions, Sweet Honey in the Rock, the Five Blind Boys of Alabama, the Mills Brothers. But most of all, I really appreciate Ben Folds and Shawn Stockman as judges. While being upbeat and supportive to everyone, they are both really substantive, and Folds especially never fails to teach you a lot about what you have just heard. (“Rubbing seconds”? I can guess, but I probably ought to look it up.) Sara Bareilles did a good job of establishing a personality for herself, although it was a lot more LA / showbusinessy than I would have guessed.</p>
<p>I don’t mind the pro groups so much. As on all of these shows, everyone is pretty much a pro, at least if they are any good. The Branson guys had great quality and no depth whatsoever – their slick professionalism was both an asset and a liability. </p>
<p>I agree that a small group is problematic, but when they work they can be better, more distinctive. Both of last year’s finalists – and they were pretty clearly the best groups from the jump – were five-person groups. (Six, maybe, for one of them? I don’t completely remember.)</p>
<p>Kind of embarrassing for them that they were cut so early! But sounds like the folks in Branson enjoy them, so I guess they’ll be fine.</p>
<p>I liked Delilah and Kindred9. No one in the early show really impressed me. I typically don’t like the overly-smiling, sports-jacket type groups. They seem so “Osmond” :-). </p>
<p>I like Sara much better than the dingy girl from last year.</p>
<p>I’ve followed the show both previous seasons…just love to hear the sound. I was especially looking forward to this season with my Alma Mater’s Yellowjackets competing!</p>
<p>I didn’t see the end of the show, so I didn’t know the Branson boys got the boot. I would have cut Kindred9 before them, even though I didn’t think they were going to go too deep in the competition. </p>
<p>That “dingy girl” from last year, Nicole Scherzinger, is an extremely successful pop artist who was a reality show contestant at the outset of her career. She was unavailable because Simon Cowell hired her as a judge for The X Factor. I didn’t like her as much as Folds or Stockman (other than, you know, to look at), but I thought she held her own and had an awful lot of cred as a young, female pop star with real mass appeal who had gotten her first break through TV. And obviously had several Paula Abduls worth of IQ.</p>
<p>The big shock to me this year is how great the a cappella groups are at colleges I never would have imagined having great a cappella groups. Who ever told anyone, “Go to Dartmouth, they have great singing and dancing there”? But the Dartmouth Aires are absolutely terrific, week after week, genre after genre, and a real threat to win. (Pilobolus wasn’t a bad dance company, either, when it was founded. So maybe Dartmouth IS a great song-and-dance college.)</p>
<p>I don’t like the BYU group as much as the judges seem to, but they are clearly really strong. And who knew that Rochester and UDelaware had such good singing groups? I sure didn’t. The only non-surprise is that Howard has a primo jazz-and-blues oriented group.</p>
<p>In the past, the collegiate groups on this show were place fillers, destined for a quick exit. Even my beloved Whiffenpoofs, who were marvelous but lacked the flexibility and star power to compete seriously in this format. </p>
<p>There’s a real College Confidential lesson here. Conventional wisdom would have it that Yale is the be-all and end-all of collegiate a cappella, and in some senses that’s justified. But it’s clear that a kid can go to any number of schools and wind up singing in an absolutely first-rate vocal group with people as good as you could find anywhere.</p>
<p>A cappella singing has a long long tradition at Ivy League schools and does not necessarily mean that a superlative music education is available at those schools. The groups are generally self sustaining and usually not directly connected with music departments. However a good music school associated with a university will furnish a good talent pool. I think this might be the case with Rochester. Anyone familiar with the Eastman School of music associated with Rochester is not surprised by the high level of musicianship within that group. [url=<a href=“http://www.esm.rochester.edu/ensembles/erc/]Eastman-Rochester”>Eastman-Rochester Chorus - Eastman School of Music]Eastman-Rochester</a> Chorus – Conducting & Ensembles - Eastman School of Music<a href=“I%20do%20like%20the%20show”>/url</a></p>
<p>I’ve been watching The Sing Off on Hulu, and loving it. The local Dartmouth Club has organized get-togethers at local venues to watch the Aires, since Michael Odokara is a local boy, from Portland.</p>
<p>I must say that I am crazy about the Pentatonics. I can’t see anyone else winning, although they are all great.</p>
<p>I think they are ALL good this season. I can not pick a favorite!</p>
<p>Love the Mormon boys!</p>
<p>Really? I do not like the Mormon boys. I think they should have been eliminated a round or two ago. Certainly next time.</p>
<p>To me, the top three are the Pentatonix, the Aires, and AfroBlue. As much as I love the Aires, I would not have placed them up there until their Queen medley, which was just superb. AfroBlue is superb, but stylistically their range is limited. Pentatonix is just so great and so much more stylistically sophisticated…</p>
<p>I’ve been watching The Sing-Off this year because the lead singer for the Dartmouth Aires went to high school school with my daughters!! He only went by Michael Odakara then- not sure when he started hyphenating his last name. He was in the musical theater productions and the chorus when he was in high school, but I never thought of him as the one who would end up on national TV! You just never know who will end up famous :)</p>