In its earliest days, Jordan Hadfield's a cappella group recruited a member from the laundry room in a University of Maryland, Baltimore County dorm. Since then, Mama's Boys, formed by Hadfield and three other freshmen in 2003, has evolved from a loose crew of guys to a polished group of performers selected through a competitive audition process.

The chorale has sung before an Orioles game, opened for comedian Lewis Black, musician Gavin DeGraw and earned a batch of Rice Krispie treats from a fan on the Ocean City boardwalk.

In an era of high-tech musical wizardry, the art of unaccompanied singing is more in vogue than ever before. College is prime a cappella time, Hadfield says.

"You're living on campus and you have time to dedicate to it, and it will completely change your life if you do," says Hadfield, a Dundalk native who graduated in May.

Once chiefly associated with bow ties and middlebrow sensibilities, a cappella has become a varsity sport with pitch-perfect prestige. Serious groups with as many as 18 members devote at least four hours a week to rehearsals, perform in jampacked theaters, go on tour, record CDs and compete at collegiate gatherings.

Now, it's cool to be a self-professed geek with a flair for arranging tongue-in-cheek covers of songs in frequent rotation on college radio stations. "College is the scene of the great mating dances," says Don Gooding, the founder of A-Cappella.com. "You cannot underplay the importance of trying to be attractive in the growth of a cappella."

Since 1981, the number of varsity a cappella groups has swelled from 250 to well more than 1,100, says Gooding, who also owns Varsity Vocals, which runs the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella and annually releases a "Best of College A Cappella" compilation.

In the Baltimore region, an informal tally of college a cappella groups easily tops one dozen. Johns Hopkins University's Web site lists eight groups on that campus alone. Goucher boasts three groups. Towson University has two registered groups. And one Web site directory shows 10 a cappella groups at the University of Maryland College Park.

A cappella's growing influence can be seen on both YouTube and MySpace, which teem with collegiate a cappella offerings. On a recent episode of The Office, Andy wooed Angela with an a cappella version of ABBA's "Take a Chance on Me," backed by buddies on conference call. In the 2007 film Superbad, one hapless character escapes a rough moment by singing a wavery rendition of "These Eyes" by the Guess Who, accompanied by a crew of wasted coke heads.

The current a cappella craze got a big push from Rockapella, the Persuasions, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Bobby McFerrin and other musicians. Beat boxing, ubiquitous in hip-hop, has permeated a cappella in the form of vocal percussion, further propelling the genre's popularity. Because of their emphasis on contemporary music, some a cappella groups have members dedicated solely to imitating drums, bass guitars, violins and other instruments.

Technology helps

With the advent of notation software, a cappella groups have also gained more creative control of the genre. Gooding remembers when as a member of the SOBs at Yale (where he also sang with the Whiffenpoofs, the first college a cappella group), "I had to do my arrangement of 'Shenandoah.' It was pencil on paper and absolutely laborious. Now, you can put the notes down on your computer and you can have it play it back to you to hear what it sounds like. It's a huge productivity tool."

From Dr. Dre's profanity-laced lyrics to vintage television theme songs to the Flight of the Conchords' deadpan send-ups, untold anthems have become fodder for the current a cappella explosion.

Gathered around a laptop perched on a baby grand piano, Red Hot Blue, Goucher College's co-ed a cappella group, rehearses a song that you'd never peg as a prospect for four-to-seven part harmonies.

Using music notation software, Arreon Harley, a 19-year-old music major from Columbia, has broken the song down into an onomatopoetic flurry of sound bits emulating strings, brass and percussion.

Later, when soloist Nene Tomi introduces the lyrics in a chunky alto, she lassos the jangling bracelet of notes into the hit "Rehab," Amy Winehouse's unrepentant paean to alcohol.

It's a melodic disconnect, a mash-up of aural trickery and disconcerting lyrics. As arrangements such as Harley's improbably cross heavenly harmonies with hard-edged pop tunes, the possibilities for high irony are endless.

"We just try and take what's fun and make it more fun," says Lindsey Rich, a Goucher senior and Red Hot Blue's president. "And sometimes we use songs to poke fun of ourselves," says Rich, noting the deliberate juxtaposition of "Rehab" with a cappella groups' reputation as "notorious partyers."

A cappella isn't just for fun. Formed in 1991, Red Hot Blue donates all proceeds from their concerts to AIDS charities.

Nor is irreverence the genre's only goal. A cappella ensembles cover a bewildering variety of music. At Johns Hopkins University, for example, Ketzev sings Jewish music, Kranti sings Bollywood, Adoremus sings Christian music and the Mental Notes blend song and comedy. As it accommodates musical styles from around the world, a cappella has become "this global fusion of popular music from other cultures," Gooding says.

Recording the tunes

Cutting a CD is practically de rigueur for college a cappella chorale today. "Ten years ago, I probably had hardly any a cappella groups in the studio; maybe two or three groups a year," says Eric Kilburn, owner and engineer of Wellspring, a recording studio in Acton, Mass. "Now, I probably have 20 groups."

Production values have become "bigger and more sophisticated," Kilburn says.

Individual microphones, the use of pitch modulators, distortion sustainers and other bells and whistles are now routine during recording sessions. Kilburn speaks of one collegiate group that spent more than $30,000 for a project at another Boston-area recording studio.

But, "if you have a lot of talent and good songs and great singers, you can go a long way on $1,000," he says. Typically, a student a cappella group will then spend $1,000 for 1,000 copies of its new CD, he says.

At a late night rehearsal at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Micappella gets going on "Two Princes," a syncopated Spin Doctors song arranged with Sibelius software by student Ally Hunter-Harris. Mark Grambau, with co-director Charles Calixto at the piano, dissects Harris' clever arrangement, meting out rhythmically challenging "ba dap ba daps" to basses, tenors, sopranos and altos.

"From my understanding, a cappella is a collegiate thing," Grambau, a 20-year-old illustration major who will graduate this spring.

"It's harder to get something started" in high school, he says. "But in college, everyone's managing their own time." And as co-director, "I can apply for a budget, so I can spend money for trips and get CDs made."

But high school a cappella is on the rise, says Deke Sharon, who founded the Contemporary A Cappella Society while a student at Tufts University, where he sang with the all-male Beelzebubs. "We're just now at a tipping point where schools that have choral music programs are beginning to incorporate contemporary a cappella into repertoire the same way as they may do with madrigals and folk music."

Sadly, all undergrad a cappella experiences eventually come to an end, often leaving former group members at loose ends. "It stinks," Hadfield says.

"There are approximately 5,000 experienced college a cappella singers graduating each year, and most of these folks have little or no opportunity to continue singing in a similar ensemble," Sharon, 39, says. "But I just started a program this summer called the A Cappella League to create post-collegiate groups, and it has taken off quickly."

After college, finding an a cappella group to join is "pretty much word of mouth," says Mark D. McGrath, the baritone in a local quintet called Some of the Parts. Last year, he found a second tenor to replace a departing member at a neighborhood holiday bonfire. "You can meet in the strangest places," McGrath says.

In the meantime, lonely graduates in search of harmony have a way of returning to their former groups for a song or two. "Everybody comes back," says Lindsey Rich of Goucher. "I know I will come back. It's just a matter of when and how often."

stephanie.shapiro@baltsun.com