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For some people, singing can serve as a distraction. Others choose to establish music as the focus of their lives. For Alex McCoy ’11, it’s both: He has been singing since the fourth grade, yet he does not view the practice as any sort of existential experience—it’s a sort of joyful habit.
“I am majoring in music, so it’s always good to practice music. But I like to sing,” McCoy remarked. “There’s not special meaning, really.”
Despite his claims that his motivation for singing is simple, activities involving music dominate McCoy’s schedule. McCoy participates in the Vassar Devils, Vassar College Madrigal Singers, Vassar College Choir, voice lessons and Vassar Camerata. Thus, he experiences and performs a wide range of music including a cappella and Baroque stylings.
He values each of the groups for the amusement and the knowledge they provide him with. For example, he specifically cites voice lessons for helping him to improve his singing technique while acknowledging that the Devils provide a complementary source of camaraderie, “like another group of friends.”
These groups are just ones McCoy is active in on campus. In addition to these, he is a part of Voices of Gotham, a competitive a cappella chorus in New York City that combines barbershop quartet music with doo-wop. All in all, it presents a very active agenda for McCoy, and that is how he likes it.
“It’s definitely hard to balance other things like academics,” he explained. “I like to keep busy. I would hate to have tons of free time. But that’s always been a problem—scheduling and rehearsals.”
One such busy weekend is coming up. McCoy will perform with the Vassar Devils on Friday, Dec. 11 at 9 p.m. in Blodgett Auditorium. Then the junior is off to New York City on Saturday for a holiday-themed concert by Voices of Gotham at 8 p.m.
With his little spare time, McCoy has been working on arranging barbershop music.
He modestly explained the process: “There’s a little manual you can get. Studying and being around the music, you pick up things and figure out how it works. To figure out how it all fits in is interesting.”
A specific style of a cappella harmony, barbershop consists of four parts: The lead sings the melody, bass sings the lowest notes, baritone the middle and tenor the highest.
“I know that people picture barbershop harmony as being four old guys wearing straw hats, but really it’s much more that,” McCoy described. He added, “new, young, dynamic quartets and choruses like mine are helping to make barbershop more approachable, along with innovative arrangements and fusing styles like jazz and contemporary a cappella to create a new ‘face’ of barbershop.”
Through his comments, McCoy reveals more than just a passion for singing, but rather a deep appreciation for the intricacies and inner-workings of a complex skill. He understands that singing involves stylistic elements in addition to the physical, vocal performance. Thus, he displays maturity with the craft rather than a flippant attitude. That is how he is creating a new face of singing as a whole.
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