Who are Ocean Harmony?
We are a men's close harmony singing club and we are based in Colbury, near Ashurst on the west side of Southampton. We are from a variety of backgrounds and have a very varied age range (20 to 72!) but we share one major interest - that of singing in close harmony. We are lucky enough to be involved in a musical hobby that uses nothing more complicated than the human voice and we spend a fair amount of time training our voices to give the best possible performance.
Do you have uniforms ?
Yes we have two uniforms - well three actually! We have flashy waistcoats for formal performances and they are reversible - so that's two of the uniforms! The third uniform is what we call walkout uniform that we wear for less formal occasions and for going out as club if we are traveling somewhere. Below is a photo of our chorus in our Walkout uniform - the performing uniform can be seen elsewhere on this web site.
What is the singing style?
Strictly speaking it is called Barbershop singing because that's where it has its origins. But it is also called close harmony because that's what Barbershop singing is. Not every song we sing is strictly in the Barbershop style. We like to sing songs that people recognise so that they are entertained so that sometimes means we have to depart from the strict Barbershop style.
What are the objectives of the chorus?
Firstly to enjoy ourselves! We have to work quite hard to learn the songs because everything we do is learnt by heart and sung unaccompanied. But we do have fun in the learning process and it is very satisfying when the plan comes together and we release a newly learnt song for performance.
Secondly to strive for improvement - there is always room for improvement - that applies to almost anything doesn't it !? Each time we sing a song we try to do it better than the last time we did it - doesn't always work but we try!
Thirdly to increase the size of our chorus so that we can always put out a reasonable amount of guys to perform for our paying customers, but also to create that richer sound that comes from a lot of men singing a song.
Finally, to entertain for local clubs, weddings, dinners, parties etc. We charge a modest fee for our services, but all the money we earn is put back into the club to improve something like uniforms or risers (that's what we call the staging we stand on to sing).
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