Her Campus was pleased to host a cappella group, Pittch Please, for our HC Night Out last month. The men sang their hearts out and serenaded the ladies of HC Pitt as well as the rest of our guests at Peter’s Pub. With the guys’ help, we raised well over our goal for our charity partner, Strong Women Strong Girls. To show our gratitude, we wanted to feature them this week. Find out more about these musical gems…
Her Campus: So, gentlemen, what is your story?
Pittch Please: We were started by Tyler Kirkland in 2011 as an invite-only all-male group comprised of students from different a cappella groups on campus. They performed shows for a few years in the Pittsburgh-area and the members also began to include Pitt Alumni. After what was thought to be their last show, a push from student fans and current members led the group to seek registration as an official student organization. This is now our second year as an official student group. In our first year we became the first Pitt group to win the Quarterfinal round of the ICCA’s, and went on an east coast tour.
HC: Why Pittch Please?
PP: The founding members had a brainstorming session and picked Pitch Please for the “puniness” that’s required in just about all a cappella group names, and later on we added the second “t” so the name would be Pitt affiliated.
HC: Nice. We are all about the school spirit. What makes you unique to the other a cappella groups on campus?
PP: We’re the only all-male group on campus, we’re the newest group, and we have an unhealthy obsession with singing ballads.
HC: If you could describe your group in three words, what would they be?
PP: We only need one word to describe us: “Fam.”
HC: What is your favorite song to perform? Biggest challenge?
PP: This year our favorite song to perform has been our version of Sam Smith’s “Lay Me Down.” The feedback we’ve gotten from that song and our newbie Xavier killing that solo has been really great. Our biggest challenge so far has probably been “No. 1 Party Anthem” by the Arctic Monkeys. It has a lot of close harmonies that are difficult to sing but when in doubt we just sing quieter and let Maurice slay.
HC: Yes, slay! We can contest to that from HCNO, for sure. Now, let’s have some fun. If you had to give superlatives to your members, who would win “most likely to eat an entire pizza at 2AM?”
PP: Dixon. His love for Antoon’s reigns supreme to most things.
HC: “Most likely to get a 4.0 every semester?”
PP: Tyler Prah, our 17-year-old Sophomore-by-credit.
HC: “Most likely to streak down Forbes?”
PP: Josh Lorah, our unpredictable former president.
HC: “Most likely to cry at a haunted house and knock out one of the zombies there?”
PP: Kamal Raslan, he’s a big scaredy cat.
HC: “Most dateable?”
PP: George Burnet, he’s just so cute.
HC: George Burnet, you heard it here, ladies. If your group could perform anywhere in the world, where would it be and why?
PP: The Beacon Theatre in New York for the ICCA Finals. Only the 10 best groups in the nation make it, and every one of them is disgustingly good.
HC: Do you have any horror stories from performing on campus?
PP: A gig that comes to mind is when we sang at a fundraising event in front of the Dean of students and a lot of other important Pitt people, and we were missing a significant portion of our members. It was early in the year so we weren’t very confident yet, and, of the people who could come, a lot were also sick. There were no mics and it was a super intimate space. They somehow still seemed to like us at the end, but I’m convinced it was out of pity.
HC: Do you arrange your own music?
PP: Yes. Everything that we sing is arranged by current members, alumni, or sometimes even members from other groups that want to arrange something for an all-male group. It’s great when we have a lot of different people that are able to arrange, because we get to pick music that we really enjoy singing instead of relying on somebody else to pick music for us.
HC: Cool. So, what Pittch Please performances do our readers have to look forward to coming out and watching next?
PP: Our big winter show is on Thursday, December 10th, and we perform a lot of other smaller gigs on campus throughout the year that we always promote on our social media (shameless plug). Also if you’d like to see us perform with 9 other super-talented groups in the ICCA Competition (yes, the one from Pitch Perfect), come check it out on February 20th at CMU.
HC: Great! Well we wish you the best of luck. Thank you again for your time! If you ever want to show up at our meetings for an impromptu jam session, I don’t think anyone would be upset…
Photo credit: Emily Kearns