I never did any singing before I went to college - I didn’t even think I had a good voice. But I walked into the wrong audition room during orientation (I was trying to audition for band, go fig) and the choral director talked me into singing a few bars. Voila. After one semester of learning the basics in women’s choir, I auditioned and was accepted into NCSU’s women’s a cappella octet, the Ladies in Red. Then during my senior year in college, I founded the co-ed group Wolfgang. I was only able to sing with them for one (their first) semester before I left college for the Real World.

I originally got into arranging because when I was in LIR, we had very limited access to arrangements, and the ones we *did* have were sticky sweet stuff like “Mister Sandman” and “Lollipop.” Don’t get me wrong, I like that stuff too, but when all your singing pals are singing Indigo Girls and Joni Mitchell, you feel rather old fashioned. :) I joined CASA to take advantage of their “12 free arrangements with membership” program, but it took them months to arrive, and when they did, they were appalling sloppily handwritten pieces that were completely unuseable (which is not to say there’s not good stuff in their library - but this was early on in the program). So, my only option was to learn to arrange myself. You can find my very first solo arrangement on the LIR CD - it’s Dolly Parton’s Jolene, and I’m still really proud of it as a “first time out of the gate effort.”

Once I got about a dozen arrangements under my belt, I started a web site that I called “A Cappella Arrangements Online.” That was in 1994. I wanted to offer my work for free to other groups who might be in the same circumstances that we in the Ladies were. Back then, I just charged $2 for copying and postage and would mail out copies of my stuff, and the only reference people had for what it would sound like were the MIDI files I’d post. I kept arranging, and the site got really popular - other people started donating their arrangements to the effort, and I was getting so many requests I couldn’t keep up with snail mailing them out. So I found out about acrobat, and exported my work to that format and posted them. A few other people have since started up arrangement sharing sites, but I’ve always been proud to have been the first.

After I left college, I was approached by the Ultimate A Cappella Arranging Service. I worked for them for two years, doing commissioned work for pro and semi-pro groups. I quit the service because I didn’t like doing it for money - it took the fun out of it, and I also didn’t like that I couldn’t give my work away to any other groups when I was done (which makes sense - if you commission a piece, it should be exclusively yours - I just didn’t like it). I also spent two years as webmaster and designer for the Contemporary A Cappella Society (CASA). I continued arranging until I hit burnout, around 1998 I think. I might get back into it one day - I’m always hearing new songs and thinking “that would sound *great* with this voice track…”

I don’t sing with any groups at the moment, but I’m always really happy to see how many groups are still out there using my arrangements!