Opposites

For this weeks mini composition piece based on a poem, Sophie and I have taken the poem and decided to use all of the words the way they are written, and add ‘ooh’ harmonies. We began by creating a chord sequence in a minor key, and then improvised on top of that. We recorded all of our improvisation and used the best bits to create our song. This method of writing is fun and experimental, and I like to be creative with it. We also improvised not just with our voices, but on the piano, with one of us playing the chords and the other improvising on top. This was helpful to establish a main theme and tune.
Me and Sophie are both a part of Dodici Voce, a small female chamber vocal group, and we have been learning Mozart’s ‘Ave Verum Corpus’ for an upcoming gig. I think this song has influenced our writing, even if we didn’t intend on that happening. The harmonies are very close knit and choral, and I think we subconsciously used that to create our song.
This is the same version of Ave Verum Corpus, but sung by a different choir, to show the type of choral harmony music we sing at Dodici Voce.

 Of course we didn’t copy off this once piece. Sophie and I sing a lot together for fun, so we added a few touches of personal style. We sing a lot of harmonies and slow, dramatic songs together. Sophie is classically trained, so she adds a lot of higher notes and vibrato, where I am more musical theatre and pop trained, so I added some trills and resolves.
Although our voices are not similar, I feel that we make an interesting sound together and we work very well as a team.