Harmony

Lately we have been learning about harmony. How to create harmony and what not to do with harmony. We also learned how to successfully create four part harmony (SATB) for vocals. In class we chose to learn a vocal arrangement for "Run" by Snow Patrol. To begin with we spent some time warming our voices up to make sure that we didn't damage our vocal chords. Hayley taught us a few vocal exercises that we can do in our own time to make sure that our voice is frequently exercised. I found this very helpful, because, as a singer I am always looking for ways to improve my voice and singing technique. We then stated what our comfortable range was and which vocal part we prefer singing. Although i have quite a wide range and i can sing Soprano notes, I am most comfortable singing alto and always have been. We all stood around the piano and began learning our parts. Eventually we pieced it all together and managed to learn a substantial chunk of the song. I found that this exercise was very helpful for teaching us to hold our own harmony as some people in the group hadn't had many opportunities to practice this. 

We then split off into our own groups and were given the task of composing our own vocal arrangement. I worked with Summer and Yahya and we decided to do a mash-up of "Umbrella" by Rihanna and "Singing in the rain" from the musical singing in the rain. We allocated each other sections of the song and tried singing it through a few times before we began playing around with harmony, rhythm, accents and dynamics. Eventually we came out with a finished product and we began cleaning it up. The biggest problem we came across was being able to pitch our notes for a harmony after we had been singing the tune. We found the best way to progress past this was to sing the section over and over until we all understood the interval between our notes. I believe that our final performance was successful and sounded good. Having the mix of male and female voices gave our piece a bit more strength and depth and helped produce a higher quality sound.