 The words, acapella empire, probably mean nothing to you. But this man, Deke Sharon, has built one. He's the musical force behind NBC's The Sing-Off and both Pitch Perfect films, and soon he'll be starring in an acapella reality show on Lifetime. It's not an exaggeration to say that Deke is responsible for much of the modern acapella scene. And sure, that's a pretty specific scene, but that doesn't seem to bother him. When you look at the fictional representations of acapella, the ones that have been really big, so Pitch Perfect and Glee, the attitude of those works toward the acapella itself can seem mean. Yes, Dave, we're part of an acapella singing group. The commentators in Pitch Perfect are mean. Oh, totally. So first time we were sitting around that table with Liz Banks, I turned to her and I said, look, I know this movie is a comedy first. You need to make fun of acapella. I want you to. Make fun of us. Every joke, no limits. However, if at the end of the movie people are not out of their seats cheering for this group, you don't have a movie. And American culture has changed in a major way. I know you cover a lot of tech stories as well. The fact of the matter is what used to be seen as dorky is now respected a lot more. In fact, the whole idea of nerds, I think it was Neil Gaiman who came up with this whole idea of someone who's a nerd in high school is someone who has a deep love of something and a great knowledge of and for it. Like a lot of entrepreneurs, Deke found a niche market and built an industry around it. Unlike most tech entrepreneurs, however, it's a decidedly analog niche. Acapella as a word, if you said acapella, people thought classical music, church music, maybe doo wop or barbershop. But I wanted to sing songs that were on the radio. I wanted to sing current pop music. And in fact, there was a college acapella group that came to my high school, the Tufts Beelzebub's, right up here. And they performed for the whole student body. And I was like shaft of light. Wham hit me and I was like, this is amazing. Deke would go on to attend Tufts and after auditioning three times, finally made it into the Beelzebub's himself. It was there he developed a musical vocabulary that would define contemporary acapella. Instead of the choral and doo wop sounds of the past, he used the human voice to emulate a modern rock band. All right, so take us through the anatomy of an acapella arrangement. How do you make one? So what we have right here is lollipop, which is the troublemaker's like standout moment in the movie. So what we've got here is a little bit of the verse. And you can see you've got Jesse and Benji here singing in harmony together. Take a look at the girl next door. She's a player and a downright bore. Jesus loves you. She wants more. Oh, bad girls get you down. The beps are being sung almost like they're like a skank guitar. Take a look at the girl next door. She's a player and a downright bore. Jesus loves you. She wants more. Oh, bad girls get you down. The doodoo's are very like classic acapella doodoo. Take a look at the girl next door. She's a player and a downright bore. Jesus loves you. She wants more. Oh, bad girls get you down. Then the bass line starts too low for me to sing, but I'll see what I can do. Take a look at the girl next door. She's a player and a downright bore. Jesus loves you. She wants more. Oh, bad girls get you down. And then a little vocal percussion along with the whole thing. Take a look at the girl next door. She's a player and a downright bore. Jesus loves you. She wants more. Oh, bad girls get you down. You end up with the demo recording that I did with my partner in crime Ed Boyer. Take a look at the girl next door. She's a player and a downright bore. Jesus loves you. She wants more. Oh, bad girls get you down. What you're hearing right now is 100% my voice and Ed Boyer's voice. And we just layered ourselves in all these parts to try to give a picture of like what's this arrangement going to sound like. The music itself is just one ingredient in the success of this movement. Deke is a savvy businessman and an acapella evangelist and that started right out of college. Are you saying to yourself, I'm going to find a way to just make this my job? When I graduated and moved back home to San Francisco, I filed a nonprofit paperwork for the Contemporary Acapella Society of America. How were you able to like pay your bills like running a nonprofit acapella awareness society? Other colleges heard my arrangements and they called me and said, would you do arrangements for us? So by the time I graduated, I already had a full fledged arranging business happening. And then in 2009, acapella had its 21st century big break with the Sing Off, a music competition show a la American Idol, totally devoted to acapella acts. Did you know how they knew you or how did you know those folks? So I got this phone call right before production started casting it already happened. And I walked on set and it was it was an absolute full TV show. But I have to say that people didn't know what they didn't know. My first day I asked like, so when are sound checks for all the groups? And I was like, sound checks? There aren't going to be any sound checks. And I was like, we're dead. So I literally just ran around and did whatever it took to try to make that show happen. And by the end of the first season, they made me a producer. This was our one this was our one opportunity. It wasn't like we're going to get another chance. Oh, if this reality show about acapella falls on its face. It's not like anybody's ever going to take another chance on this for the next 30 years. So this was it. It worked, though. The sing off has become a holiday tradition on NBC and groups like Pentatonix have gone on to huge success. Acapella oddly enough is having its pop culture moment. What was the process of working on Pitch Perfect? The Bard and Bellas, they've been cast to be as diverse a group of people as possible. It's like the Bad News Bears. And when they came in that first day sat in a circle and I was like, how many of you guys have sung acapella before? We knew Kelly had because she was our one ringer. We were like, can we have one acapella singer, please? And for the rest of them, it was like, I sang for a semester in junior high school. Does that count? And I was like, this movie's over. It's not going to happen. It'd be as if like, OK, go out and get 10 different actresses. And they all like, oh, I can swim. I can swim great. Turn them into a synchronized swimming squad where they all kick the exact same way and their arms go up exact same way. It's the same kind of idea. I can't believe I just used synchronized swimming as an outing for acapella. Yeah, totally. I'm going to get so many letters. Looking at the landscape now, how do you feel about sort of like where acapella was when you like finally got onto the Beelzebubs and where it is now? So everyone used to sing. All of our ancestors at the end of the day, end of the hunt, they'd gather around the fire and they'd sing together and they'd tell stories and there was a sense of community. Even a hundred years ago, if you wanted to make music, you had to make it yourself. There was no recording. The act of music was something that everyone had inside of them and they knew that. But for some reason, once recordings got out there, once people decided Pavarotti goes on stage and everybody else sits in the audience, once American Idol hit the airwaves and they started lambasting people who weren't as good at singing, people are afraid to sing. I can't tell you how many people I've heard say, I'm tone deaf. You're not tone deaf. There are three people on the planet who are tone deaf. What I hope we're able to do through this entire thing, through this entire movement, is to convince more people to get back into singing groups. Get off the couch. Because people sing in their car, people sing in the shower, people get drunk and sing karaoke, but they're not singing with other people and having that experience connecting. But the human voice is the most varied, the most versatile instrument and the most powerful instrument. I mean, no synthesizer, no piano can make you laugh or cry within three seconds. That's what we have inside of ourselves. What can we do? How can we use our voices in different ways and stretch and expand the sound of what a cappella can be?