2 things to notice: When Geoff sings lead, or when he has one of his spectacular high to low lines - you can bet that Layne, the beatbox, arranged. Geoff is not the guy to push himself in front of the others, he holds back and arranges with himself doing fabulous bass guitar riffs in the background, and taking a single verse as the others do. They've talked a bit about the fact that Layne is likely to push Geoff further than he thinks he can go. The synth sound is coming from Cesar, far right.
This is an absolutely beautiful and powerful song and video. Left to right.... Layne Stein - beatboxer, baritone, arrangements. J None - guest, baritone, former member. Geoff Castellucci - bass, arrangements. Eli (like jelly) Jacobson - tenor, rock tenor, lighting. Cesar De La Rosa - baritone, tenor. At present they only have 4 members so they collaborate with various artists for the 5th depending on the song. Geoff has his own channel where he sings solo with instruments. He clones himself 3-4 times for harmonies. Each with their own name and personality.... Jeff, Jeoph, Goff and Daryl. It started as a joke and took off from there. His Halloween video is.... Jack's Lament from Nightmare Before Christmas. It's absolutely beautiful. Rollercoaster ride of highs, lows and everything in between. A good recent video of his 5+ octave range is.... I See Fire from Hobbit 2.
VoivePlay always credits everyone involved below the title. Many of their covers are more theatrical in nature but even in this traiditional line up fashion they are incredible. Geoff rarely takes the lead but with this one and Oogie Boogie's Song he was the logical choice. He plays villains so well. :) He uses subharmonics to get down in the basement as it were, voicewise. Not sure what Cesar was doing whilst playing air guitar. Check out his cover of Jack's Lament from Nightmare Before Christmas. It's wonderful. As someone else has commented, J.None is the black singer next to the beatboxer. The guard who walked in was a former VP member Tony Wakim sho still helps out behind the scenes. It's hard to work out who is singing the Kuyrie Eleison, but both J and Cesar appaar to be singing during those. Yes, Geoff has a five octave range. Hear it in his Blackbird, for example.
This one is from the Hunchback of Notre Dame. They really brought it to a whole new level. These guys are just so good. So much talent for one group. It's insane. For this time of year, I'd recommend checking out some more of their Halloween offerings. Oogie Boogie's Song(another Geoff lead), In the Hall of the Mountain King and Hide and Seek just to name a few. ❤
Voiceplay is one of my favorite a cappella groups! If you haven't heard their cover of Valhalla Calling I highly recommend it!! If you really enjoy a cappella I also highly suggest checking out Home Free (they are more of a country group, but also branch out to a variety of different genres), they're tied with Voiceplay for my #1 favorite group.
Great reaction, they are jaw dropping good!! They are based in Orlando, totally independent, no label, no manager, and they do almost everything themselves. Layne and Geoff have known each other since middle school, have been singing together since high school and professionally since 1997, If you want to stick with the Halloween theme for now, I'd go with Hide and Seek (Ding Dong), Friends on the Other Side, Hoist the Colours, and Phantom of the Opera. Geoff has only been doing solos since Covid shut the world down and Voiceplay stopped touring. His other Halloween pieces are The Headless Horseman, Monster Mash, and Ghost Riders in the Sky.
Loved this man! I love it when the reactor is utterly bamboozled by VoicePlay. VoicePlay and Pentatonix are my top two favorite groups. I like a few from Home Free but I generally am not a fan of country so I don't listen to them nearly as much as I do Pentatonix and VoicePlay - Geoff will absolutely blow your socks off with his low notes and a lot of the notes in this one are not even close to how low he can go - check out 'Valhalla Calling', 'My Mother Told Me', and 'Oogie Boogie song' and your jaw will hit the floor!
Welcome to the #theaterkidsofacapella The guard was played by Tony Wakim, former member and co-owner of PattyCake Productions with Layne Stein (the beatboxer), but was voiced by Eli pronounced Ellie. The whole group is crazy talented! If you have seen Nightmare Before Christmas Voiceplay has done quite a few covers from that movie.
Geoff doesn't often take lead on a song, usually they switch between solo's quite evenly. But this is a villain song, and Geoff's voice fits very well for villain songs. With villain songs it is more likely that Geoff will get a bigger lead part
J.None is second from the left. L to R Layne Stein- vocal percussion/baritone J.None- baritone (former member who sings bass for Navy Sea Chanters in DC) Geoff Castellucci- bass Eli Jacobson- tenor (pronounced El-lee) Cesar de la Rosa- baritone/ tenor 2 The guard is played by Tony Wakim - who co-owns Pattycake Productions with Layne, which is where this was filmed, and is also a former member of VoicePlay
It is from Hunchback of Notre Dame. The guard that walked in to tell the bad news is Tony Wakim who used to be the baritone for VoicePlay. His passion was to do productions and he and Layne (the vocal percussionist also baritone and classic violinist (nicknames - The Carrot Lord and VioLayne)) bought Pattycake Productions. Most of Geoff's solos and VoicePlay's videos are staged in there. In the Air Tonight was done outside the back door to the studio. Almost all of the efforts that go into a production is done by them. Layne and Geoff usually alternate the responsibility for each video, occasionally Eli (nicknamed the Rock God) will do the arranging (Eleanor Rigby and Creep), he does the lighting, computer generation, green screens. This time it was Layne who did the arranging, pre-mix audio, camera work, staging, costuming, who would be the feature vocalist (in this case, J None who used to be baritone for VoicePlay before the US Navy recruited him for his vocal talents. It is a 5 yr stint and he's over halfway through. He was stationed in Seattle (VP is in Orlando) and he made it back for a few (Friends on the Other Side, Nothing Else Matters (Metallica), In The Air Tonight (Phil Collins), Valhalla Calling (Miracle of Sound). He recently got a promotion and moved to Washington DC where it is easier to get to Orlando. Cesar, air guitar and high notes here covers both baritone and tenor lines as needed and brings a lot of sass to the videos. See his audition video with VP We're Good for an example of that. VoicePlay loves Halloween and have an extensive list of videos, one of my personal favorites is In The Hall Of The Mountain King which should have been nominated for a brilliant acapella video.
Geoff has tutorials on his channel on how he sings so low. Left to Right are Layne Stein, J. None, Geoff Castellucci, Eli Jacobson, and Cesar De La Rosa. J. None was a member but joined the Navy for five years to sing for them in 2021. His new promotion has stationed him in Washington DC so he is close to their home in Orlando Florida. He was stationed in Seattle, Washington here on the West Coast and flying home on leave to do videos and minis with the guys.
Geoff Castellucci sings in the subharmonic register, in allows him to sing really low (at least one octave lower than in chest voice). He made some videos about it on his channel, and if you want to learn more about it David Larson posted well explained videos about it on his youtube channel. Btw thank you for your content 😉
For example Geoff reached F1 in chest (i am maybe wrong but F#1 sure) and in subharmonics he already reached a B0 (check the halo theme if you want to see it)
You asked for suggestions... But there are so many! 🙂 I'd start with something totally different, and some years old, so that you can appreciate how good they were already and how much they grew, e specially on the production side. So I'd suggest "I can't help falling in love", or "True colors", or "I can't make you love me" in this area. But if you prefer something "stronger", why not their "Vikings" couple songs, "My Mother told me" (from the pandemic times, so they had to record separately...) and "Valhalla calling"? Or, for a change, "Halo Theme" (to be watched til the very end... Including the long spoken outro. You won't regret it), or, as we are in full Halloween mode, "In the Hall of the Mountain King", classical instrumental track from Edvard Grieg's "Peer Gynt" that they turned in an hilarious, yet virtuosistic, story of mythological characters with no words but a lot of story telling. And why not their version of Metallica's "Nothing else matters"? 😁 Or their "Post-apocalyptic trilogy": "Warriors" (Imagine Dragons), "Dream on" (Aerosmith), and "7 Nation Army" (The White Stripes). Or pretty much whatever you find there that calls your attention 😅. Now, they're had a number of changes in their lineup in the last years, so you'll see different faces in some of those videos. Here's a video by Huldra Draco showing their whole story since the beginning in 1997, when they were called "4:2:9": th-cam.com/video/R6WxCwHnebI/w-d-xo.html . I hope it'll help. 🙂 Subscribed in anticipation of more of VP & Geoff "solo" stuff. 🙂 See you next time!
Layne was not just slaying the beatboxing, he was also the one to arrange this for them. He and Geoff roughly alternate for arranging and whoever does it is also responsible for the look of the costumes, the direction of the video and filming, the video editing and at least the rough edit of the audio, after which it is then sent on to Ed Boyer for the final mix. Eli (rhymes with jelly) sets up any computerized backgrounds and the lighting track set to time with the audio. Occasionally he helps with arranging. For instance, he was the one to arrange their cover of “Creep” a few months back. He’s the guy with the shaved head who sounded entirely too glorious singing for Esmeralda’s destruction.
Hey Vivi! Yeah I thought this was amazing too, and I'm really excited to react to more of their music. I plan to react to some Home Free soon as well. Are there any specific songs by Home Free that you would recommend someone new to them start with for reactions? Thank you so much for all of your love and support. It really does mean so much to me 🙂❤️
I personally love "End of the Road" th-cam.com/video/-lCRFAFtj-A/w-d-xo.htmlsi=DMBog5zMrjsNvG7x and Unchained Melody, Scott. And, because they're well known songs, it is easy to trace a parallel. I hope you enjoy them, too.
Thank you for reacting to these guys! They are incredible! Curious which ones you’ve seen from them before. Others gave you some info so I’ll just make a random comment. Geoff is like the total opposite of Gabriel Henrique 😂
J None was second from the left. That is Cesar on the far right. Him and Eli take the real high notes. Usually Eli goes the highest, but Cesar has pierced the clouds a time or two as well. As for the leads, they always try to give equal time to each member. None of them are "lead" singer. It is the actual song that seems to decide who takes front and center. In their version of Creep, it was Cesar who started and ended. In Friends on the Other Side, it was in one lead. Just depends.
How do you sing that low? Loads of natural ability, years of daily practice and training, and learning different techniques. In other words, dedication. Geoff can sing bass, baritone, tenor, and high tenor.
2 things to notice: When Geoff sings lead, or when he has one of his spectacular high to low lines - you can bet that Layne, the beatbox, arranged. Geoff is not the guy to push himself in front of the others, he holds back and arranges with himself doing fabulous bass guitar riffs in the background, and taking a single verse as the others do. They've talked a bit about the fact that Layne is likely to push Geoff further than he thinks he can go. The synth sound is coming from Cesar, far right.
He sings higher and lower. Voiceplay puts descriptions below of members and roles within the group.
This is an absolutely beautiful and powerful song and video.
Left to right....
Layne Stein - beatboxer, baritone, arrangements.
J None - guest, baritone, former member.
Geoff Castellucci - bass, arrangements.
Eli (like jelly) Jacobson - tenor, rock tenor, lighting.
Cesar De La Rosa - baritone, tenor.
At present they only have 4 members so they collaborate with various artists for the 5th depending on the song.
Geoff has his own channel where he sings solo with instruments. He clones himself 3-4 times for harmonies. Each with their own name and personality.... Jeff, Jeoph, Goff and Daryl. It started as a joke and took off from there.
His Halloween video is.... Jack's Lament from Nightmare Before Christmas. It's absolutely beautiful. Rollercoaster ride of highs, lows and everything in between.
A good recent video of his 5+ octave range is.... I See Fire from Hobbit 2.
VoivePlay always credits everyone involved below the title. Many of their covers are more theatrical in nature but even in this traiditional line up fashion they are incredible. Geoff rarely takes the lead but with this one and Oogie Boogie's Song he was the logical choice. He plays villains so well. :) He uses subharmonics to get down in the basement as it were, voicewise. Not sure what Cesar was doing whilst playing air guitar. Check out his cover of Jack's Lament from Nightmare Before Christmas. It's wonderful. As someone else has commented, J.None is the black singer next to the beatboxer. The guard who walked in was a former VP member Tony Wakim sho still helps out behind the scenes. It's hard to work out who is singing the Kuyrie Eleison, but both J and Cesar appaar to be singing during those. Yes, Geoff has a five octave range. Hear it in his Blackbird, for example.
Running riffs - I was pretty sure those were from the air guitar.
If you've seen Disney's "Hunchback of Notre Dame", this is their villain song.
This one is from the Hunchback of Notre Dame. They really brought it to a whole new level. These guys are just so good. So much talent for one group. It's insane. For this time of year, I'd recommend checking out some more of their Halloween offerings. Oogie Boogie's Song(another Geoff lead), In the Hall of the Mountain King and Hide and Seek just to name a few. ❤
Voiceplay is one of my favorite a cappella groups! If you haven't heard their cover of Valhalla Calling I highly recommend it!!
If you really enjoy a cappella I also highly suggest checking out Home Free (they are more of a country group, but also branch out to a variety of different genres), they're tied with Voiceplay for my #1 favorite group.
Great reaction, they are jaw dropping good!! They are based in Orlando, totally independent, no label, no manager, and they do almost everything themselves. Layne and Geoff have known each other since middle school, have been singing together since high school and professionally since 1997, If you want to stick with the Halloween theme for now, I'd go with Hide and Seek (Ding Dong), Friends on the Other Side, Hoist the Colours, and Phantom of the Opera.
Geoff has only been doing solos since Covid shut the world down and Voiceplay stopped touring. His other Halloween pieces are The Headless Horseman, Monster Mash, and Ghost Riders in the Sky.
Subscribed!! Looking forward to more of your VP reactions. Mind-blowing isn't it!!!
I see more Voiceplay in your future 😉.
Loved this man! I love it when the reactor is utterly bamboozled by VoicePlay. VoicePlay and Pentatonix are my top two favorite groups. I like a few from Home Free but I generally am not a fan of country so I don't listen to them nearly as much as I do Pentatonix and VoicePlay - Geoff will absolutely blow your socks off with his low notes and a lot of the notes in this one are not even close to how low he can go - check out 'Valhalla Calling', 'My Mother Told Me', and 'Oogie Boogie song' and your jaw will hit the floor!
Welcome to the #theaterkidsofacapella
The guard was played by Tony Wakim, former member and co-owner of PattyCake Productions with Layne Stein (the beatboxer), but was voiced by Eli pronounced Ellie. The whole group is crazy talented!
If you have seen Nightmare Before Christmas Voiceplay has done quite a few covers from that movie.
Geoff doesn't often take lead on a song, usually they switch between solo's quite evenly. But this is a villain song, and Geoff's voice fits very well for villain songs. With villain songs it is more likely that Geoff will get a bigger lead part
J.None is second from the left.
L to R
Layne Stein- vocal percussion/baritone
J.None- baritone (former member who sings bass for Navy Sea Chanters in DC)
Geoff Castellucci- bass
Eli Jacobson- tenor (pronounced El-lee)
Cesar de la Rosa- baritone/ tenor 2
The guard is played by Tony Wakim - who co-owns Pattycake Productions with Layne, which is where this was filmed, and is also a former member of VoicePlay
It is from Hunchback of Notre Dame. The guard that walked in to tell the bad news is Tony Wakim who used to be the baritone for VoicePlay. His passion was to do productions and he and Layne (the vocal percussionist also baritone and classic violinist (nicknames - The Carrot Lord and VioLayne)) bought Pattycake Productions. Most of Geoff's solos and VoicePlay's videos are staged in there. In the Air Tonight was done outside the back door to the studio. Almost all of the efforts that go into a production is done by them. Layne and Geoff usually alternate the responsibility for each video, occasionally Eli (nicknamed the Rock God) will do the arranging (Eleanor Rigby and Creep), he does the lighting, computer generation, green screens. This time it was Layne who did the arranging, pre-mix audio, camera work, staging, costuming, who would be the feature vocalist (in this case, J None who used to be baritone for VoicePlay before the US Navy recruited him for his vocal talents. It is a 5 yr stint and he's over halfway through. He was stationed in Seattle (VP is in Orlando) and he made it back for a few (Friends on the Other Side, Nothing Else Matters (Metallica), In The Air Tonight (Phil Collins), Valhalla Calling (Miracle of Sound). He recently got a promotion and moved to Washington DC where it is easier to get to Orlando. Cesar, air guitar and high notes here covers both baritone and tenor lines as needed and brings a lot of sass to the videos. See his audition video with VP We're Good for an example of that. VoicePlay loves Halloween and have an extensive list of videos, one of my personal favorites is In The Hall Of The Mountain King which should have been nominated for a brilliant acapella video.
Geoff has tutorials on his channel on how he sings so low. Left to Right are Layne Stein, J. None, Geoff Castellucci, Eli Jacobson, and Cesar De La Rosa. J. None was a member but joined the Navy for five years to sing for them in 2021. His new promotion has stationed him in Washington DC so he is close to their home in Orlando Florida. He was stationed in Seattle, Washington here on the West Coast and flying home on leave to do videos and minis with the guys.
Geoff Castellucci sings in the subharmonic register, in allows him to sing really low (at least one octave lower than in chest voice). He made some videos about it on his channel, and if you want to learn more about it David Larson posted well explained videos about it on his youtube channel. Btw thank you for your content 😉
For example Geoff reached F1 in chest (i am maybe wrong but F#1 sure) and in subharmonics he already reached a B0 (check the halo theme if you want to see it)
❤😊
Thank you as always for all of your love and support brother. You know how much it means to me 🙂🫂❤️
You asked for suggestions... But there are so many! 🙂
I'd start with something totally different, and some years old, so that you can appreciate how good they were already and how much they grew, e specially on the production side. So I'd suggest "I can't help falling in love", or "True colors", or "I can't make you love me" in this area.
But if you prefer something "stronger", why not their "Vikings" couple songs, "My Mother told me" (from the pandemic times, so they had to record separately...) and "Valhalla calling"?
Or, for a change, "Halo Theme" (to be watched til the very end... Including the long spoken outro. You won't regret it), or, as we are in full Halloween mode, "In the Hall of the Mountain King", classical instrumental track from Edvard Grieg's "Peer Gynt" that they turned in an hilarious, yet virtuosistic, story of mythological characters with no words but a lot of story telling.
And why not their version of Metallica's "Nothing else matters"? 😁
Or their "Post-apocalyptic trilogy": "Warriors" (Imagine Dragons), "Dream on" (Aerosmith), and "7 Nation Army" (The White Stripes).
Or pretty much whatever you find there that calls your attention 😅.
Now, they're had a number of changes in their lineup in the last years, so you'll see different faces in some of those videos. Here's a video by Huldra Draco showing their whole story since the beginning in 1997, when they were called "4:2:9": th-cam.com/video/R6WxCwHnebI/w-d-xo.html . I hope it'll help. 🙂
Subscribed in anticipation of more of VP & Geoff "solo" stuff. 🙂
See you next time!
Cesar does the same sort of "synthesizer" sound effects on their cover of Phil Collins' "In the Air tonight"
Layne was not just slaying the beatboxing, he was also the one to arrange this for them. He and Geoff roughly alternate for arranging and whoever does it is also responsible for the look of the costumes, the direction of the video and filming, the video editing and at least the rough edit of the audio, after which it is then sent on to Ed Boyer for the final mix.
Eli (rhymes with jelly) sets up any computerized backgrounds and the lighting track set to time with the audio. Occasionally he helps with arranging. For instance, he was the one to arrange their cover of “Creep” a few months back. He’s the guy with the shaved head who sounded entirely too glorious singing for Esmeralda’s destruction.
This is the villain song for The Hunchback of Norte Dame. Rated G, approved for all audiences
Amazing 🤩
Hey Vivi! Yeah I thought this was amazing too, and I'm really excited to react to more of their music. I plan to react to some Home Free soon as well. Are there any specific songs by Home Free that you would recommend someone new to them start with for reactions? Thank you so much for all of your love and support. It really does mean so much to me 🙂❤️
I personally love "End of the Road" th-cam.com/video/-lCRFAFtj-A/w-d-xo.htmlsi=DMBog5zMrjsNvG7x and Unchained Melody, Scott. And, because they're well known songs, it is easy to trace a parallel. I hope you enjoy them, too.
All the members of Voiceplay have between four and five+ octave ranges. Geoff sang tenor through high school and into college.
Oogie Boogie and seven nation army
Thank you for reacting to these guys! They are incredible! Curious which ones you’ve seen from them before. Others gave you some info so I’ll just make a random comment. Geoff is like the total opposite of Gabriel Henrique 😂
J None was second from the left. That is Cesar on the far right. Him and Eli take the real high notes. Usually Eli goes the highest, but Cesar has pierced the clouds a time or two as well. As for the leads, they always try to give equal time to each member. None of them are "lead" singer. It is the actual song that seems to decide who takes front and center. In their version of Creep, it was Cesar who started and ended. In Friends on the Other Side, it was in one lead. Just depends.
Please, react to Gabriel Henrique A Thousand Years. Gorgeous
How do you sing that low?
Loads of natural ability, years of daily practice and training, and learning different techniques. In other words, dedication.
Geoff can sing bass, baritone, tenor, and high tenor.