I have a minor gripe with ccmixter, but I think it’s just the nature of the beast.

I am into acapella music. You know, Take 6, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, The King’s Singers, Rockapella, …. But on this site, acapella is a “pell”, which is the literal definition: no instruments.

It makes it very hard to search for music related to my-definition-of-acapella music. They drown in a sea of “pell”s. Not to mention my own music doesn’t get found as easily, for the same reason.

I think I might create a new tag for these types of pieces: acapella_group or something. I don’t like it, but I can’t think of anything better…

Ah well. Woe is me. :’ )

If you have any suggestions, it’d be appreciated. ccmixter is amazing, but I feel like my musical interests are different than much of what I’m hearing on the site—although my interests are broadening because of it!

(Hey, at the very least, thanks for listening to me complain :’ )

There’s a yearly tradition in my family that every Thanksgiving I explain what I do to my father in law. Every year I have to start from the beginning (copyright, gift economy, CC, Magnatune, sampling, turntables, remxing, etc.) and walk him through it to the end (unexpected collaborations, sample pools, freesound, ccM, …) Every year I get roughly the same questions and he gets stuck at the same places. For example, when I get to the part about a cappellas he will ask “…like a barbershop quartet?”

You’ll have to forgive me but given your chosen nickname it strikes me that you shouldn’t complain that the mixter uses a literal definition to tag it’s samples :-). Sorry but I couldn’t resist :-).

I have found, and others have used, some really nice a cappella group singing from over at Magnatune. There is a link to the Magnatune library under the samples tab on this site. There’s an all female group over there called Kitka that is great.

Then nature of lots of stuff here is that there is combination of a lot of elements and building of songs with beats etc. I think the odds of finding a tightly harmonized all vocal creation of more than one human vocal origin is fairly small on this site in particular.

I too am a big fan of a cappella singing. I loved the groups at my college that did it and the ones that visited.

There are few places better than this one to broaden your horizons though. So keep listening.