Lesson time: (6min 57sec)
Chris Haigh shares practical strategies for playing violin alongside a singer, from filling the gaps between vocal phrases to why unison is best avoided.
© 2011 Schott Music Ltd, London
This lesson is part of the course Rock Violin Foundations
Watch a preview of the full course below.
Lesson transcript:
Hi. In this lesson, we're going to talk about working with a singer.
Now, no matter what kind of band you're in, if you've got a singer in the band, then there's a potential conflict between what you want to do and what the singer wants to do. You have to find various successful strategies for navigating this.
We're going to use an example of a simple little melody where the vocal line is taken here by a keyboard. So just have a listen to this.
The simplest and most unimaginative approach a violinist could take is to play in unison with the vocalist. Generally, this is not something I recommend for a few reasons:
If you have two things going in unison and one is out of tune, you're both going to sound bad. You will be blamed by the singer, and you will blame the singer. Thus, unison has its place occasionally, but it should not be your general strategy.
Probably the simplest successful strategy is to play in the gaps between the singer's phrases. Let me give you an example of that.
Another approach is to find a little hook or melody that you can repeat in those gaps. Let's try that.
Consider a mixture of the two: use a similar phrase, but alter it slightly as you go through.
You don't always have to stop when the singer is singing. You can play long, fairly low lines during the vocal phrases and become busier in the gaps. Let's try that out.
Another approach is to play harmony with the singer. This helps alleviate a couple of problems:
Let's try playing a third above the melody line.
Now let's try a mixture of harmonizing and doing improvised fills.
That is a series of different strategies you can use when working around a singer.
It's crucial to understand all of them and to use them to some extent. You may find yourself, as I have over many years, playing the same songs with the same singers countless times.
If you are playing the same part every time, you'll likely get bored.
Your assignment for this lesson is to find one or two songs from other sources that feature just a singer and a very simple backing (maybe just guitar or piano).
Try to work out, using these different strategies, the kinds of parts you could play in that song.
Chris Haigh has been a professional fiddle player for 25 years, with experience covering many different genres. He has played on over 75 albums, working with artists including Alison Moyet, Bob Geldof, All About Eve, Michael Ball, David Soul, Oumou Sangare, The Quireboys, Riverdance, Morcheeba, James Galway and Steps. He has played swing jazz with The Kimbara Brothers, Diz Disley, Le Jazz, The Hot Club of London, and the Quecumbar Allstars, and leads a 7-piece Soviet swing band, The Kremlinaires. Chris gives lessons and workshops on jazz violin technique and has taught jazz violin at Middlesex, Brunel and Newcastle universities and Truro College. His writing credits include nine fiddle books, among them The Fiddle Handbook. He also runs Fiddling Around (fiddlingaround.co.uk), probably the most comprehensive and widely visited source of fiddle information on the web. read more
