First Reaction: Pentatonix - Hallelujah 

The members of #Pentatonix. In this video we have: • First verse: Tall blond guy, Scott Hoying, lyric baritone. In describing a man's vocal range, "lyric" means that the actual range exceeds the nominal range. In Scott's case, he sings everywhere from about the middle of a normal bass range through most of a normal tenor range. Probably five or six octaves. In live performances Scott typically takes over the bass harmony line when their bass has a solo. • Second verse: Bearded guy wearing a stocking cap, Avi (pronounced Ah'-vee, emphasis on the first syllable) Kaplan, lyric bass. Avi is an operatically trained basso profundo - his lowest notes have blown out speakers in live performances - but his range extends to somewhere in the middle of a normal tenor range. If this were a live performance you'd be hearing Scott singing the bass line during Avi's solo, but if you listen carefully you can hear the bass starting up during Scott's solo, and the voice doesn't change as it continues into Avi's solo. So what gives? Early on, they decided that when they're recording in the studio for release on an album, it's worth a small cheat to improve the audio quality. The bass records one track with the bass harmonies for the entire song, and a separate track with his solo, which is then layered in over the bass track. And since this is an official video of a song that was released on an album, that's Avi you hear singing bass while he's also soloing in the baritone and tenor parts of his range. • Third verse: The only woman in Pentatonix, Kirstin (also called Kirstie, which rhymes with thirsty) Maldonado. Kirstin sings everywhere from a low alto through coloratura soprano, the highest female range. And she has fantastic whistle notes on top of that. Lately Pentatonix has begun referring to her as an "alto soprano." • Fourth verse: Guy wearing a wide-brimmed hat, Mitch Grassi (pronounced Grah'-see, emphasis on the first syllable), natural contratenor. No one is certain whether Mitch can sing higher than Kirstin or Kirstin can sing higher than Mitch; I suspect that it varies from day to day, though everyone agrees that Kirstin has better whistle notes. Mitch is known for his ethereally beautiful (some say "angelic") high vocals. Shawn Stockman, of Boyz II Men, said Mitch has "one of the prettiest voices I have ever heard in my life." Mitch switches seamlessly from chest voice to mixed voice to head voice. He has a range of just over six octaves. And we call that stunned look people get the first time they realize that the beautiful high voice is coming from a man, "being Mitch slapped." • The fifth member of Pentatonix (PTX for short) is Kevin Olusola (pronounced Oh-loosh"-oh-luh', primary emphasis on the second syllable, secondary emphasis on the fourth) beatboxer extraordinaire. There may be a better beatboxer than Kevin, but if so I've never encountered him or her. We don't get to hear Kevin sing as often as we'd like because he's generally too busy being the entire percussion section, but when he does sing he has a lovely tenor voice that occasionally descends to the uppermost reaches of a baritone range. He's also known for the beauty of his falsetto, which goes higher than Mitch's and Kirstin's voices. Kevin has perfect pitch. He began piano lessons at age 4, cello at age 6, and alto saxophone at age 10. When he was a teenager he performed at Carnegie Hall twice, once on the cello and once on the saxophone. He beatboxes while playing the cello, which he refers to as "celloboxing." He graduated from Yale in 2011 with a pre-med major and had already been accepted to Yale Medical School when he gave up his dream of becoming a surgeon to pursue his dream of becoming a professional beatboxer instead. He speaks five languages fluently: English, French, German, Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese. He's one of the kindest people in the world, and when he laughs the whole planet seems like a brighter place. In 2017 Avi found it necesssary to leave Pentatonix, for a variety of personal reasons. He has since gone on to have a very successful solo career, and I strongly recommend subscribing to his RU-vid channel, which you can find here: youtube.com/@AviKaplanMusic Avi's replacement joined in either late 2017 or early 2018 (depending on how you figure it) and has now been with Pentatonix longer than Avi was. You'll see him in all of their newer videos: • The second black member of Pentatonix is Matt Sallee (pronounced Suh-lee', emphasis on the second syllable), lyric bass. In addition to being the newest member of Pentatonix Matt is also the youngest member, and I'm told that bass voices improve with age. Matt's range seems to be growing on a daily basis right now. His current lowest note appears to be A1, which just barely counts as basso profundo, albeit not the blowing out speakers variety (though he may achieve that within a year or two). But on his high end Matt reaches nearly the top of a normal tenor range. To find his current range I recommend listening to a recent live stream of "Hallelujah." You can find one here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-FqphhPapkoc.htmlsi=tC6Ew07JGeQKQvDL Matt's arrangement of the second verse seems to be designed to show off his full range, and it will blow you away. I believe Matt has the largest range of any member of Pentatonix, past or present.

This was recorded in the studio for release on their 2016 Christmas album, "A Pentatonix Christmas," so in the official video they're lip-synching to the music they've already recorded. Which, in the case of Pentatonix, means that they're actually singing the song so they're in proper time and completely synchronized with each other and all their movements are genuine. But the audio track is from the studio recording. This was shot in the Mojave desert outside of Barstow, California. Because it went with a song on that year's Christmas album, they were all dressed in warm winter coats, even though they were filming it in August and the temperature was around 98° Fahrenheit (36.667° Celsius), so they were all miserably hot. Kirstin had injured her foot or ankle and was unable to walk with them; it was as much as she could do to stand in one spot while the men walked up behind her. And they were off-road and afraid that they wouldn't be able to find their way out in the dark, but they really wanted the video to include Mitch's hat eclipsing the setting sun. So they needed to do it as quickly as possible and then leave immediately, which is exactly what they did, and they were VERY relieved to be putting it behind them. And yes, they did manage to make it out before full darkness fell, just barely.

Next: Amazing Grace, The prayer, Sound of Silence, Daft Punk!

They won the third season of "The Sing Off", it's a great place to learn where they came from and how they work together to make a song their own...

Superb. We Pentaholics love them. If you do more Pentatonix there have been only ONE change. Avi Kaplan left amicably. Matt Sallee joined 2016/7. Sometimes Kirsten and Mitch ( with the heavenly voice) Sometimes looks so different that people think they change singers all the time. Greetings from South Africa

great reaction to the leading acapella band in the world!

Pentatonix loves RU-vid reactions and reactors; they're well aware that reaction videos have helped to make them the success that they are today. Unfortunately, their copyrights are owned by their publisher, RCA, and RCA doesn't share their love of reaction videos. RCA is notorious for making copyright claims that get reaction videos taken down. The claims all seem to be about the video, not the music, and there are several strategies people use to keep their reactions up. Some people only react to live performances. This works, but it's limiting. In general, Pentatonix is as good live as they are in their official releases, but that's musically; there are a few of their official videos that have important video effects that can't be duplicated live. The most obvious one is "Imagine," but several others spring to mind. Also, if you only react to live performances you can't react to any "Behind the Scenes" or "Making of" videos. Another strategy is to pause the video frequently. This is probably a good idea (be sure to rewind a bit whenever you do this), but the definition of "frequent" is subjective so I don't recommend it as your only protection. What seems to work best is to slightly mask the video, combined with frequent pauses. Some people put a translucent "PENTATONIX" or "COPYRIGHT" over the video; others put what appears to be a window with raindrops on it over the video. Remember, the pentaholics are here to see your reaction, not the video - we've seen the video numerous times already. We only need to be able to see enough of it to be sure what exactly you're reacting to, in real time.

Splendid. You should do their version of Imagine!! 😅

Subscribed. If you decide to continue down this rabbit hole you can expect a LOT of new subscriptions; Pentatonix fans are enthusiastic about reaction videos to anything our favorite band puts out. Some useful terminology: • pentaholic = Pentatonix fan • PTX = abbreviation for Pentatonix - extremely useful in searches • the trio = Kirstin, Mitch, and Scott • Mitch slap = what you get the first time you realize how incredible Mitch's voice is. • Avi-lanche = like a Mitch slap, except with Avi instead of Mitch. • KO = like a Mitch slap or Avi-lanche, except with Kevin Olusola. (Note: You never become immune to Mitch slaps, Avi-lanches, KOs, or the similar things that Kirstin, Scott, and Matt do. They always have the ability to surprise us.) You can't go wrong listening to anything Pentatonix has released; it's all gorgeous. But all pentaholics have our own personal favorites that we like to recommend. These are some of my favorites: • "Hallelujah" ( a recent live performance, with Matt: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-FqphhPapkoc.htmlsi=tC6Ew07JGeQKQvDL ) • "Imagine" (the official video) • "The Prayer" • "Bohemian Rhapsody" • "Sound of Silence" • "Run To You" (an original, written by Avi and Kevin) • "Happy Now" (another original) • "Daft Punk Medley" (their first Grammy winner) • "O Come All Ye Faithful" • "O Holy Night" (they did a totally new recording for their 2023 Christmas album; you can find the official video here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ReJAU2mXm8w.htmlsi=upj2Q3vLqigVEtgm ) • "Pure Imagination / Christmas Time is Here" (preferably the live Vevo recording) • "Kiss From a Rose" (preferably the live Vevo recording) • "You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch" • "The Lucky Ones" (an original, written by Scott) • "Thank You" (an original, written by Scott and his then fiancé, now husband, Mark Manio Hoying, shortly after the end of COVID lockdown, about how much easier it was to get through that time because they were together) • "The Kevin Show/Kevin's Fifth." This is a live feed from a concert they gave in Owensboro, Kentucky, Kevin's home town: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-DbCasvcNx78.html and this is the very special performance of "Kevin's Fifth" (without "The Kevin Show") from Kevin's birthday in 2022: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-7m0g7xThIWs.htmlsi=99F7iG5qkdgPCm43 Additionally, IF you're familiar with _"The Wizard Of Oz"_ (the 1939 movie starring Judy Garland), I recommend "Todrick Hall - The Wizard of Ahhhs (ft. Pentatonix)": ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-QkVeKb2igrg.html If you've never seen the movie it won't make sense, so take care of that first. One advantage to reacting to "The Wizard of Ahhhs" is that you won't need to obscure the video to avoid copyright claims. Most of Pentatonix's copyrights are owned by their publisher, RCA, and RCA is notorious for getting reaction videos taken down over copyright issues, but the copyrights for "The Wizard of Ahhhs" are owned by Todrick Hall, and Todrick seems to be more interested in good publicity than in stomping on innocent reactors. (I regret to say that Todrick has gotten a lot of bad publicity in recent years, for very good reasons; he appears to be something of a jerk. But making copyright claims against other RU-vidrs isn't one of his vices.)

Recommend their cover of Kiss From A Rose.