I decided to come to Oberlin at 11:32 PM on May 1st, 2022, twenty-eight minutes before the decision deadline. I remember sitting in my room with my computer open, intermittently making Google searches and sitting immobile, trying to come up with some reason to prefer one school over another. What made me decide to come to Oberlin, in the end, was the Conservatory. Music had always been one of my many interests, but I’d never really had a chance to surround myself with it.
I came to Oberlin crossing my fingers that there would be musical opportunities for non-Conservatory students. To my relief, there absolutely are. However, I’ve come to value the Conservatory for another reason as well. I’m grateful for the chance to be surrounded by people who are sincerely invested in their work — like, to name an example out of many, the wonderful people I’ve met in the composition department. This isn’t an attitude that’s exclusive to the Conservatory, of course. It’s an ethos you can find all throughout Oberlin.
One particular place I’ve found this ethos is in my a cappella group, the Obertones. The Obertones are Oberlin’s only a cappella group for men and non-binary people. I auditioned for the group at the beginning of my second year at Oberlin. The callbacks happened to be on my birthday, and as a birthday present, I got an email in my inbox a few days later asking me how I felt about singing bass. I’ve been part of the group ever since.
We have three rehearsals a week. In between athletic events, theater rehearsals and performances, classes, concerts, and so on, we try to get five hours of rehearsal each week. This may sound like a lot, but time flies when you’re having fun. And rehearsals are a whole lot of fun.
In a typical rehearsal, we’ll warm up and then sing a barbershop tag called Lost. (A ‘tag’ is a short section — usually the very end — of a longer barbershop song.) Since every Obertone member has Lost memorized within a couple rehearsals of joining, we sometimes play around with the tag (i.e., singing it with obnoxious vibrato, changing the lyrics in the middle of the song to try to make someone laugh, etc.). Then, we’ll move on to rehearsing our set. We arrange all our songs ourselves. That means that, for every song the Obertones sing, one Obertone has spent some time transcribing the original song and turning it into an arrangement that the group can sing. (Arranging is a lot of fun! Especially if you like music composition.) After an hour or two, we’ll wrap up the rehearsal, usually with a run of the song or songs we’ve practiced that day. It’s really satisfying to see an arrangement gradually come together over the course of the semester. And it’s also just a lot of fun to sing together with your friends!
Speaking of which: in my three and a half semesters in the group, the Obertones have become some of my closest friends at Oberlin. Every spring break, we go on tour to a different part of the United States. My first year in the group, we went to New England and New York. I have so many wonderful memories from that week-and-a-half: singing in Washington Square Park; enjoying the seaside of Portsmouth, New Hampshire; stopping for Mexican food at a random highway-side restaurant in the middle of Pennsylvania. One memory that sticks out: we took a recording of our set in a church in Massachusetts. When we performed my arrangement — For A Week Or Two by the Fleet Foxes, a soft acoustic ballad by a band known for their soft acoustic ballads — I was struck by the sound. Inside the spacious interior of the church, our singing had extra reverb, fitting the song’s slow, pensive character. The arrangement came together better than I had ever imagined it would.
If you’re reading this, there’s a decent chance you’re a high school student thinking about coming to Oberlin next year. You might be in the same position I was in three years ago: counting down days or minutes until midnight on May 1st, trying to figure out which school you’re going to. I hope this post has given you some insight into how I made the same decision, and how it turned out for me. I didn’t know I was going to join the Obertones when I came to Oberlin. Honestly, I didn’t even know doing so was an option when I finally made my decision to enroll. But I am glad that I’ve had the opportunity to spend my college years here, surrounded by people who are invested in what they’re doing, whether that’s music composition, oboe playing, horse riding, or a cappella singing. Or something else.
