The and the make campus sing.

• Position: Inspiring ENVIRONMENT

Fourteen hipsters enter front stage from the right to nestle around a cluster of microphones. Perfectly imperfect with their jeans, sports coats and miscellaneous ties, they start the show with a human beat box.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Chazz Duffy, known as a vocal percussion specialist, puts the microphone to his lips, and it sounds like an invisible drum set has taken the stage. The rest of the group members chime in with "Dah dah, dah dah," and senior James Brunson takes lead vocals. Seconds later, the audience claps and taps to their harmonized version of Earth, Wind and Fire's "September."

From the famea television show "Glee" to the box office hit "Pitch Perfect," a cappella has sung its way into the spotlight of mainstream media. Its history spans back much further than the recent rise of the musical style. The Toccatatones, the university's all-male a capella group, and the Petal Points, the university's all-female a cappella group, have serenaded campus, the High Point community and venues across the country for more than a decade.

These student-led groups perform covers of recent songs and classics from decades past at numerous events--family weekends, presidential scholarship weekends, faculty meetings and more. This spring, both released new studio albums available on iTunes.

The Toccatatones, which formed in 2001 in memory of music professor Todd Owen Carter, features the vocal talents of 14 undergraduate males. Their new album "Fire Away" contains 11 songs, with American Idol winner Phil Phillips' "Home" being the first single. The single received nearly 3,000 listens in its first three days online at SoundCloud. Other songs on the album cover a broad range of iconic artists such as B.o.B., Styx and James Taylor.

"Seeing this album come together and being able to share our love for a cappella music with the community is more than...