Pacifica Stories

A few weeks ago, Pacifica’s a cappella team, Wolf PACappella, released their first EP “Before You Go,” comprised of eight songs and including voices of 22 past and present Pacifica students. This incredible achievement has been years in the making, and is no small feat considering the significant amount of time, coordination, and talent required to bring everything together.

Tehillah Alphonso is going into her fifth year directing Wolf PACappella, and she gave us insight into the recording and production process of the EP. Tehillah, along with her co-director Rachel Gonzalez, were in charge of the arranging, scheduling, tracking, and outsourcing for the vocal edit, mix, master, and cover art. Additionally, an advisor-elected student executive board helped with communication to the group and overall team morale.

The first step in producing the EP started with choosing which arrangements to include. At the start of each year, the a cappella team has song pitch meetings to choose the repertoire they want to learn for competitions and performances. This leads into choosing specific songs, and arranging them based on the voices they have on the team that year. This process can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks per song, depending on the arrangement’s length, complexity, and number of parts. The team then learns, memorizes, and musically shapes each song, which can take up to a month and a half. Next, they have to create a recording schedule.

“Because this group is composed of high-achieving, full-time high school students (as well as two directors who work full-time in the music industry), this is actually the toughest part of the process,” said Tehillah. “We typically need to block out 1.5 hours per student, per arrangement. For example, our 2023 ICHSA set (tracks #5-8 on the EP) included two arrangements we wanted to record. Multiply that by 1.5 hours, and each person would need to spend approximately 3 hours in the ‘studio’ to record. Multiply that again by 12 students, and we would need to set aside 36 hours to get every student recorded. So as you can see, the process of just getting everyone in front of the microphone is a huge undertaking (but so incredibly worth it).”

As for the actual recording, some creativity was required. Since Pacifica does not have a studio space, or the budget necessary to rent one with the number of hours required, Tehillah and Rachel set up a makeshift studio in a closet on campus. Tehillah brings all of her recording equipment– microphone, reflection shield, mic stand and pop filter, interface, headphones, cables, and huge acoustic panels down from the Valley to campus once a year for just this purpose. Only one student records at a time to ensure maximum focus, accuracy, and control in post-production. By the time the session is over, each singer should have two identical takes of the full arrangement recorded (three if the student is a soloist, beatboxer, or primary bass singer), plus a few backups, in case anything goes wrong with the original recordings. They record and use multiple takes of each singer for a fuller sound in post-production (versus one take of each singer that would make for a smaller, more live-sounding track).

Once everyone is recorded, Tehillah and Rachel go through each singer's track, splice together the best takes, and confirm that there are no background or extraneous noises that weren’t noticed while recording (e.g. doors closing, clothes rustling, air conditioning, airplanes/outdoor vehicles, background conversations, etc.). Once that process is complete, they send all of the isolated tracks to their vocal editor, Justin Crichfield, who lightly corrects the pitch and rhythms in everyone's tracks so there is a cohesive group sound. From there, Justin passes on the edited tracks to the mix engineer, Ed Boyer, who works his magic to create an exciting, innovative, and dynamic production. Once the mix is complete, Ed forwards the final mix to the mastering engineer, Bill Hare, whose job is to adjust the volume of the track to a threshold that is compatible with all speakers (phones, computers, headphones, portable speakers, etc.). Between each segment of post-production, Tehillah is in constant communication with each engineer to approve of all the edits made to the track. Once she receives all the final mastered tracks from Bill, it's off to distribution for streaming platforms. This process was made even more complex for the arrangements recorded while we were off-campus during COVID. However, all of the hard work was worth it in the long run.

“I am so incredibly proud of these kids and the literal years they put in to make this EP happen,” said Tehillah. “I hope that everyone who listens to these 8 songs is able to appreciate the time, effort, and love to make this body of work and a cappella possible. And even more so, my biggest hope for my Wolf PACappella students is regardless of where they are in their lives—whether that be a year from now, their college years, or starting their adult lives—that they are able to listen back to this EP and look back at this aspect of their high school experience with pride and joy. I love this group, and I cannot wait to see what we do together next.”

Stream Wolf PACappella’s “Before You Go” now on all music streaming platforms!

Follow Wolf PACappella on Instagram.