A capella, sometimes incorrectly appearing as one word, “acapella," in the most strict sense is defined as vocal music without instrumental accompaniment. However, the more popular understanding of this vocal genre is the sound a barbershop quartet makes,
such as the sound of the group Rockapella who sang the “Where in the World is Carmen San Diego” theme song.
 I came across UCSD student Ben Pezzner by accident while lurking in the nancies.org boards a few months ago. Ben had posted a link to a page on his site that contained an a capella version of Typical Situation from Under the Table & Dreaming.
In the last decade A capella groups have seen a sort of renaissance on the campuses of America’s universities. So, what makes Pezzner’s a cappella recordings different? Listen to a clip of Ben's A capella version of Ants Marching and see if you can guess.
 Click here to listen to this Ben's Ants Marching clip.
(331kb .mp3)
You may have noticed that all of the different parts sound remarkably similar. That's because all of the voices are Ben's! What you're hearing is a combination of up to twenty different vocal tracks layered on top of each other.
We decided to talk with Ben about how he got started doing DMB a capella, and the methods used to achieve his unique sound. In addition to the interview, Ben recorded a brand new solo a capella version of Drive In Drive Out. He also recorded an awesome tutorial on how he creates DMB solo a capella music.
 To best illustrate the one and a half hour or more process Ben goes through creating each of his solo a capella covers, we asked him to create a brief tutorial.
In this tutorial Ben shows how he built Drive In Drive Out from the ground up.
We interviewed Ben by phone on Monday, August 9th. In the interview we discussed how he started doing solo a capella music and some of the process of creating a DMB song.
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