30th May, 22
Once again, I've dropped the ball slightly with blogs. Abby and I met for a rehearsal after changing our idea to be far simpler. We are using Loopy, an iPad app designed for simple looping projects. After a lot of back and forth, we settled on “Easy On Me” by Adele for our cover. It felt “trendy” and pop-y enough to be relevant for a classroom of learners, whilst still allowing us to play with some soul/gospel inspired elements of harmony blocks, and vocal ornaments. First, we improvised different layers and loops to get a feel for the structure, recording and saving them through loopy onto our phones. The song structure is repetitive and fairly simple which helped us get through this quickly. Once we had chosen our layers, we wrote documented the order and timing we would record each section in, so we had super clear framework to refer to, almost like our own form of notation. And then we practiced and practiced and practiced, tweaking harmonies, timing and rhythms as we went. It was so so so fun playing around with singing harmonies. Vocal layering is one my absolute favourite things to experiment with and not something I’ve been able to play with much this year. Below is a short recording of our rehearsal and I think the joy I am feeling is pretty obvious on my face.