Lovers' Duets - Bringing It Together

Luke wraps up this series on Duets.

Over the past few weeks, we've presented Separated Duets and New Lovers' Duets. While these formats can be used quite effectively in an impro show, there are some general ideas and techniques that Lovers can use in their duets to make them more successful.

Blending

Blending is the ability for singers when performing in unison to come across as combined, coherent sound rather than just multiple people doing the same thing at the same time. It’s a difficult concept to explain, but an easy one to spot when not done right. You have all probably heard people singing together some time and can pick one person's voice out the chorus - they are the ones not blending. It comes back to the basic impro concept of yielding. It is not the idea of showing that you are the best singer in the duet or group, but that the group of singers is best at singing.

The reason this is particularly important with Lovers is that it shows musically that they are together, in a much stronger and subconscious way than just stating the fact. In West Side Story’s imaginary wedding scene One Hand One Heart shows this to a tee. It is the apex of their relationship and they show this, not only in their acting but in the way they sing this short song.

Legato

On a singing front there is musical technique that is quite prevalent in lovers' songs. The term legato refers to musical phrasing that is smooth with no notable breaks in the notes. This is a way we can approach our singing love duets that the audience will immediately will understand and give shape to the phrasing of the lyrics. On a technical front you want to create the elongated sounds on the vowels rather than the consonants as not only is it less stressful on your voice, it is easier to give emotion on those sounds.

So try singing

I willlllllll lovvvvvvvvvvvvvve you!

As opposed to

I will loooooove yoooooou!

And you will immediately see the difference. A great example of this legato style is A Little Fall of Rain, from Les Miserables. You can see how they keep their phrasing long and smooth and hold the notes on the vowel and despite not using the full dynamic range of their voices they create a quite touching love duet.

If you are the musician playing the music for a love duet, it is important to realize that they are big emotional songs and a lot of the drive for the song will come from your playing. It is important to listen to the song and hear when the sings what to cut lose in a big swelling build or if they want to pull it back into a quieter softer moment. As the musician you can also drive these changes, if you feel the characters need to go there with key changes and way you attack the melody from verse to verse.


Kris Anderson is particularly good at this in song from One Bride I Can't Believe What's Happening Now. Tristan Ham as Golly is singing about his favorite park being destroyed - he starts it in a very plaintive tone which is matched by Kris' playing. On the word Give, Golly changes the tone to be much angrier and aggressive, and you can hear Kris play root chords into the next line with much more attack which really supports the choice the singer has taken. This allows the music to become another character, which scaffolds the action and emotion and gives another clue for the audience into the character's state of mind.

Happily Ever After

And that brings us to the end of the Lovers' Duets. I hope this helps next time you are a dashing romantic lead in your next musical scene and gives you some other ideas on how you can approach these songs.

Got a question about structure or techniques for Lovers' duets? Leave a comment and we'll look at it for a future article.

Coming soon, we will explore the Fools' duets, and see how they differ in intent and structure to the Lovers'.

Photo by FadderUri

Lovers' Duets - The Separated Lovers

Luke discusses how to construct a separated duet.

In a separated duet the two lovers are singing the same song at the same time they are just, well, separated. This style of duet can be used on the downward swing on the Lovers emotional arc and usually has a torch song quality. The trick to this duet is that they are both singing about the same event or emotion but from different points of view. This is useful as it allow two reflections on the same situation at the same time.

Once again the trick to this is how you use the chorus, and often times it works well as a simple repeated line. While Summer Nights from Grease is more of an upbeat song, in tempo and tone, it does provide a good example of the same scenario being told from different point of views, but coming together in the end. Danny tells the story of their summer as a hot fling, focusing on the physical aspect of their time together while Sandy focuses on the wholesome aspects of their relationship. It works well because it sets up the characters and creates their point of conflict from that point on.

Theses songs will usually be performed in a major key, but may be more somber and low tempo. How it plays out will depend on the needs of the story and characters when the song comes up in the show.

Using a male and female character, a simple format might play like this

Female - Verse1
Female & Male - Chorus
Male - Verse 2
Female & Male - Chorus

Sometimes the chorus is split between the characters as shown below

Female - Verse 1
Female - Chorus Line 1 & 2
Male - Chorus Line 3 & 4
Male - Verse 2
Male - Chorus line 1 & 2
Male & Female - Chorus Line 3 & 4

Both formats work, but often the simple one will be more effective.

Where Have You Gone?

There was a good example of this in the rehearsals for Seven Brothers with Tristan and Amy. In the song Where Have You Gone Golly (Tristan Ham) is singing about the loss of his lake, which is all he sees as being interesting to Nancy (Amy Currie). Nancy is seeking someone who can control the weather to help it rain in her town but she does still reference Golly. While they were singing about different points of view they came together beautifully on a simple chorus, to show there was still a connection between the two.

Photo by Al Caeiro

Lovers' Duets - New Lovers

Luke Rimmelzwaan presents the first of a series of articles on Duets.

Lovers, Villains and Fools

During the process of Seven Brides we discovered that we had a cast of most excellent singers and that afforded us the opportunity to explore to format of a musical. This allowed us to go a little bit further than having a narrative spiced up with an occasional song to using duets, trios and group songs to enhance the characters and their story.

Perhaps the most successful part of this was the duets, and certainly on the night they were some of the more popular fare. During the rehearsals I was offered the opportunity to be vocal coach, and as part of that I developed some shorthand styles to help people into the musical genre, particularly those who are less familiar with the conventions of the form.

We split up duets between three types: Lovers, Villains and Fools. This doesn't mean that foolish characters can't do Lovers duets or that mean characters can't be part of a Fools duet, it just gives a context to a type of duet. That being said the character archetypes will tend to fall into that sort of duet, and I will generally be using the archetype point of view in these examples. In this article I will talk about Lovers Duets, the general styles that we used and give some examples from existing, mostly easy to source, musicals as well as how we used them in the show.

A Whole New World - New Lovers and the Duet

The basic concept behind this Lovers duet is the moment the love begins to bloom. They might not declare their love outright but we can see what's really going on, can't we. This sort of duet gives us a chance to set up some motifs the lovers can use throughout the show, be it a lyric or phrasing or musical cue.

A very good example of this is A Whole New World from the Disney movie Aladdin. This song starts with one Aladdin singing to Jasmine, setting up the style and tone of the song. Jasmine then responds in kind and they start singing in unison more as the song progress. In very Disney fashion it has a lot of upward key changes and keeps building and building until it pulls it right back on the ultimate line. In impro it would be difficult to do a song so complex but there are some valuable methods we can pull from this song.

So using a male character and a female character, a basic format might look like this:

Male - Verse1
Male - Chorus
Female - Verse 2
Female - Chorus
Male & Female - Chorus, Coda

Of course the song could be longer if it needs to be but this format gives a hint to the audience that as they come closer together musically they are emotionally coming closer as well. Also key changes can be used in the last chorus to build a bit of oomph and the coda can be a patented big finish, but as seen in A Whole New World it can be just as effective if they drop it down a bit after the chorus. If the singers have a good ear it is also a great place to have a harmony, but probably just on the coda.

A good example from One Bride for Seven Brothers is In This Lake With You (recently featured on Musical Hotspot). Nancy (Amy Currie) and Golly (Tristan Ham) each take a verse, then collaborate on the choruses, with finally a lovely, delicate slow coda.

Photo by Al Caeiro

Podcasts, Emails, Contributors, Oh My!

Lots of interesting things happening on Musical Hotspot.

Greetings. As MH approaches its 100th post, just a quick update on some things you might find interesting or useful at Musical Hotspot.

Podcast

The Musical Hotspot Podcast is up and running! If an article has audio to go with it, as well as listening to it on the site, you can have the audio delivered to your computer (and your mobile devices) via podcast. If you're an iTunes type, you can use the iTunes link above to subscribe directly.

Email

We have quite a few subscribers who get Musical Hotspot via RSS. If techy terms like 'RSS' scare you, but you know how to read email, it's now really easy to have articles emailed to you when they come out. Just look for the Email link at the top of the page to get it going.

Contributors

I've been keen for a long time to have other folks contribute articles to Musical Hotspot. I'm really pleased to have Luke Rimmelzwaan (actor, singer, scholar, gentleman) on board. Luke has a great knowledge of musicals and structure, knowledge he used to guide our recent production of One Bride for Seven Brothers, and he's going to share some of that on the site, starting next week.

Your bit

You can help to shape the future of the site. If there are particular subjects or topics you'd like to read about on Musical Hotspot, leave a comment or drop me an email. My list of 'articles not yet written' is still pretty big, but I'm always keen to find more material that is interesting to improvisers.

And, as always, it's great to get comments from readers! If an article resonates with you, makes you laugh, makes you cranky, makes you want to share what you know, leaves you wanting more, ... leave a comment! Nothing makes me happier than when someone takes the time to leave a note.

Simple Chorus - In This Lake With You

One of the keys to constructing an impressive and memorable song is a simple chorus.

There are a great many ways to approach song construction for an improvised song - and very few rules at all. You don't have to rhyme, you don't need a chorus or a bridge, strictly speaking you don't even have to sing. But most of the time, you're creating something that will resonate with the audience and meet their expectations of what a song should be.

Popular songs are generally verse-chorus based, with a well defined structure for both. Those songs have the luxury of growing on you after a few listens. The trick with an improvised song is to get that catchy hook right away, that riff that the audience thinks they've heard before somewhere.

The key for me is to find a memorable chorus - a simple memorable chorus. I've seen lots of improvised songs with complex choruses that continue the story; sometimes they work, sometimes not. But an improvised song with a simple chorus works pretty much every time.

What does it take to put a simple chorus together? One way is to just use the title of the song - nothing else, just the title. Some relevant examples of improvised songs that previously appeared on Musical Hotspot are Soap Gets In Your Eyes and Don't Call Me Jack, Mon.

It's really easy to take that structure, and shake it up a teeny tiny bit with some simple rhyming. Repeat the title or a phrase on the first, second and fourth lines of a chorus, and rhyme with it on the third line. This AABA form is easy to master, and it results in really catchy choruses.

In This Lake With You

The example this week is from a rehearsal of One Bride for Seven Brothers. This is one of those alternate-reality stories, not the story the audience saw on the night. In this version, Nancy Buttons (Amy Currie) is an adventurer, an Amelia Earhart type, who is looking for a scientific solution to her town's long drought. She travels to the brothers' town, where it has rained non-stop for years, in the hope she can discover the source of the rain. Golly (Tristan Ham), the youngest brother, has been collecting rainwater and making a lake of his own. After realising Nancy shares his love of water, he and Nancy take a trip to the lake, where they start to fall in love.

In the song In This Lake With You, Amy sets up a great (simple!) chorus:

I'm in this lake with you
I'm in this lake with you
My dreams have all come true
For I'm in this lake with you

It's simple to pick up, simple enough that Amy and Tristan can trade chorus duties on the first chorus. That makes for a really effective duet.

Photo by freefotouk