Duets — male and female voice

When your partner picks up a mic — or when you're at a campfire with one of the other parents who sings — these are the songs to have ready. Duets are about vocal pairing, not just two people singing the same melody. The best ones split parts: one voice on melody, one on harmony, sometimes alternating verses.

How to harmonise without overthinking it

There are entire books on harmony singing. Three rules will get you 80% of the way:

1. Sing a third above or below the melody. This is the default folk harmony. If the melody is on the note C, the harmony singer goes to E (a third above) or A (a third below). Your ear will land you in the right place if you just aim for "the note that sounds nice but different."

2. The lower voice usually carries the melody on verses; the higher voice floats above on the chorus. This is the Gillian Welch / David Rawlings rule, but it applies almost universally.

3. Sing the consonants together, the vowels can be sloppier. Tight phrasing on word endings is what makes a duet sound crisp. The pure vowel sounds in the middle of words are where the harmony actually lives.

The classic listening exercise: put on Gillian Welch's Time (The Revelator) and try to figure out which voice is which on every track. Welch and Rawlings switch the lead constantly within songs.

Songs in this app's duet section

Easy first duets

These have an obvious split between male-lead-verse and female-harmony-chorus, with simple chord progressions. Start here.

• Wagon Wheel — Old Crow Medicine Show / Bob Dylan fragment. The lead trades verses naturally; the chorus harmonizes itself. Three chords (G, D, Em, C). The most-played song in any campfire of the last fifteen years.
• Down to the River to Pray — public-domain spiritual, made modern by the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack. Works as call-and-response.
• Shady Grove — Appalachian traditional. Modal, beautiful, easy.

The Stan Rogers duet — Barrett's Privateers

Not technically scored as a duet, but it works as one with a low male lead and a higher voice ducking in and out on the chorus. The chorus is so insistent that even at a 12-person campfire it tends to become a 12-person duet — everyone joins in by the second time around.

Mandolin Orange / Watchhouse repertoire

Andrew Marlin and Emily Frantz are the modern duet template — quiet voices, gentle guitar and mandolin, songs about loss and the seasons. Their songs are copyrighted, so this app doesn't reproduce them, but they are the listening assignment for any duo wanting to sound like this. Start with their album Tides of a Teardrop (2019) and learn three songs by ear from it.

Their setup, which translates directly to your situation: - He plays guitar, sings lead and harmony alternately. - She plays fiddle and mandolin, sings lead and harmony alternately. - They share the melody back and forth within songs.

That is exactly the partnership you're describing — guitar/mando-strong primary, fiddle-strong secondary — and it's worth studying their stage setup as much as their songwriting.

The Civil Wars / Joy Williams & John Paul White

The other essential modern duo. Hauntingly close-harmony. Their album Barton Hollow (2011) is a master class. Like Watchhouse, copyrighted — buy the records, learn by ear.

See also: the Hearthside chapter

This chapter is the traditional/Americana side of duet singing — Gillian Welch, Watchhouse, the Civil Wars sound. Its sibling is the Hearthside chapter, which covers the post-2007 indie-folk duet renaissance: Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova, the Lumineers, Of Monsters and Men, First Aid Kit. Same male-female harmony architecture, same close-mic intimacy, but the songs are anthemic-stompy where these are restrained-and-keening.

If your Afternoon Acoustic listening hits the Lumineers register more than the Gillian Welch register, jump there for six songs in that vein, fully arranged for your family band.

Public-domain duets in the trad pile

• Pretty Saro — Appalachian. Bob Dylan recorded it; Iris DeMent recorded it; sing whichever way fits your voices.
• Wayfaring Stranger — modal, atmospheric, public domain, infinitely transposable.
• I'll Fly Away — gospel standard, public domain, cheerful.

The microphone problem

If you're doing this around a campfire, ignore this section. If you're doing it ever at a small gig:

A folk duet wants one mic for both voices — the old-school approach. Both singers crowd the mic and lean back when not singing. This forces tight phrasing and gives the duet that "Civil Wars" intimate sound. It's harder to set up well than two separate mics, but it sounds dramatically better when it works.

The default rig: a single large-diaphragm condenser (e.g. AKG C414 or a Shure KSM44) on a tall stand, both singers facing it from a 90° angle. You'll need a quiet venue.

Listening list (study these)

A short curated list of the best male/female folk duos to absorb. Don't try to learn their songs first; learn their sound, then come back to repertoire.

• Gillian Welch & David Rawlings — start with Time (The Revelator) (2001).
• Watchhouse / Mandolin Orange — start with Tides of a Teardrop (2019).
• The Civil Wars — Barton Hollow (2011).
• Iron & Wine + Calexico — In the Reins EP (2005).
• Robin & Linda Williams — long-running American duo, a personal Garrison Keillor favourite.
• Anais Mitchell & Jefferson Hamer — Child Ballads (2013), an album of traditional ballads in modern duet arrangements; the tutorial in how to harmonise on traditional material.
• Kate Rusby + various collaborators — English folk, gorgeous high voice.
• The Be Good Tanyas — Vancouver-based all-female trio; their duet/trio harmony work is essential listening for anyone doing folk in BC.