But that's okay because, as the sticker on the back of my phone constantly reminds me, "Keep Calm and DFTBA".  DFTBA means "Don't Forget to be Awesome", and I try my best to live this way because I am constantly encouraging the students to never forget either.  :-)

So here's my "lemonade" from my lemons of yesterday: a brand new music video!  So many of you have told me how much you enjoy these videos, and being someone who loves high quality content on YouTube (and perhaps the occasional cat video...) I have a GREAT deal of videos to share.  I will always and only put up high quality, appropriate videos.  Please visit the side-bar for groupings of some of my favorite creators.  

This week's video comes from a brand new favorite of mine, Peter Hollens.  Peter has teamed up with Tyler Ward-- another YouTube creator-- to make an entirely acapella version of one of the Summer's most popular songs by Imagine Dragons.  I choose to start with this one for many reasons, but one of my biggest is to to drive home a point that has come up a number of times during choir and even in general music: the word acapella is not just a word made up by the movie Pitch Perfect.  :-)   What it actually means is a song made without instrumental accompaniment-- thus only vocal performers.  It usually has many different parts (harmonies, beat boxing, etc.), and is very difficult if done properly.  Peter and Tyler have created a video which was edited to include multiple harmonies all at once (movie magic!) which are visualized quite often by Peter's face popping up all over the screen singing different parts (look closely... it's true! disconcerting at times, but still true!).

Look for more videos by Peter Hollens coming throughout the coming months including one he created with a fantastic violinist containing dozens of different parts simply created by Peter's voice!

Enjoy!