One Love

Writer: 
Bob Marley
Year: 
1968
Voices: 
Women's four part
Ranges: 

Tenor: C4 - C5
Lead: G3 - A4
Bari: G3 - B flat 4
Bass: F3 - B4

Bob Marley's classic song of social connection is just made to sing with your choir friends. This arrangement started life as a short workshop song, so its opening and closing choruses are learned easily by novices in an afternoon. The verses were added for the host choir to develop it into a performance piece later, and so are more demanding both vocally and musically.

It is conceived as a chorus rather than quartet piece, with parts joining into unison and separating out into 2, 3 or 4 parts at different stages. And whilst the parts are labelled and notated as the classic female barbershop voices, in fact they mostly all operate in the same range.

The biggest challenge is the rhythmic feel and fitting the flow of the lyrics within it. Listen to Bob Marley's original to find the groove.