Applause for the Acapella App

By NEEVA SHAFIIAN

Have you ever dreamed of joining an a capella group? Well now you can–by yourself! The Acapella app from PicPlayPost for iPhone and Android allows people to create music with their own voices right on their phones. This app has become a social media phenomenon used to create entertaining videos of people around the world singing theme songs, beatboxing, or simply making random sounds. The trend has infiltrated Jericho High School with students creating their own videos.

Students discovered the app on social media platforms such as Facebook, Vine and Twitter. Accounts have been set up solely for uploading these hysterical videos, and have gained thousands of followers. One can spend hours watching thousands upon thousands of individuals around the world putting their creative minds to work and their singing abilities to the test. Senior Olivia S. downloaded the app after seeing the videos all over social media, and said that now, “everyone’s using it.” Share after share, videos quickly go viral, and the amount of downloads has a domino effect. Senior Lindsey S. said, “I saw that my friends started to download it, and I decided to also because it looked fun.” Senior Ryan F. also saw his friends downloading the app, and was quick to go to the app store and get his share of the fun so that he could make “awesome and hilarious videos” to send to his friends.

Senior Cynthia C. said, “It allows regular people to do funny a capella stuff without any kind of complicated software.” In regards to her experience with the app, Lindsey stated, “Me and my friends in my gym class did the ‘Since You’ve Been Gone’ song from “Pitch Perfect.” It was really fun, and Ms. Dunn and Ms. Corbett thought it was fantastic.” While Lindsey’s favorite video is a sing-a-long to 50 Cent’s “Candy Shop,” Olivia prefers a rendition of a Harry Potter song. According to both Cynthia and Ryan, a Jericho favorite is fellow senior Juliette M.’s rendition of Kanye West’s “Gold Digger.”

Creating fun a capella videos can also be helpful to teachers who are looking for new, exciting projects for their students. While Lindsey said the app can be perfect for an educational project in school, Olivia believes the app can generate videos that would be good additions to the Video Yearbook.

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