Harmony Singing

Do you want to know methods to sing harmonies?  Successful harmonizing results in a fantastic sound. It can compound the sound of vocals into a party for your ears. However, those who attempt  Singing harmony without the right skills produce a cacophony of sounds which are testing to endure.

Start With the Scales

With harmony, one person sings a tune using one pitch at the same time as another person sings in a different pitch and/or adds notes around the first pitch.

To sing harmonies, start by becoming familiar with the major and minor scales. A scale is really just a collection of 8 successive notes inside one octave, named with the letters A to G.

The major scale has note intervals that run whole-whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half. A minor scale has note intervals that run whole-half-whole-whole-half-whole-whole.

When you sing harmony, the notes are likely to be from a major scale.

Find Two Voices

When someone sings in harmony, they sing around the initial pitch and melody. The first person begins by singing a note from the melody. The vocals are sung over a progression of chords from an instrument and those chords are basically harmonies themselves structured into a way to give a major (happy) sound or a minor (sad) sound. There are more flavors of chords however these are the main two. But I digress. The second person will join in singing the same note, taking it to the next higher or lower pitch. 

This practice is essentially repeated multiple notes throughout a tune, with the next voice singing above or beneath the melody the entire time.

Making Harmony Work

When you are first learning to sing harmonies, you have to get very comfortable with the song.  Numerous instructors suggest learning both voice parts. On average it takes lots of practice in making harmony work, however there are those fortunate few who seem to be able to join a melody at a different pitch with no difficulty. It’s sometimes known on-the-fly harmony, because the harmonizer simply jumps right into the song and begins singing.

A one who can do on-the-fly harmony has a knack for quickly finding center pitch plus the melody. After listening to the melody for a small amount of time, they can determine the pitch and melody and then start singing. These are the same steps used in ear training.

In fact, the exercises for ear training can be used to develop harmony skills as well. To provide an example, we can play a particular note with a piano, find out the pitch, and then imagine yourself singing it. Then, you would actually sing it with the note on the piano. Try it again, but now sing a note above the note played on the piano. The third time, sing a note lower than the piano note.  Now you're singing harmonies.

If you take online singing lessons, several programs have interactive pianos and voice feedback. Using the software, you can practice matching pitch and then going higher and lower. Practice is the best way to ripen accurate pitch.

No Mystery

Harmony is used in many different types of singing, including country music, pop music, and rock music. The Eagles are famous for their capacity to merge four extremely diverse voices into a melody with two or more harmonizing. Another example of lovely harmonies early on was the familiar sound of The Andrew Sisters. Boyz II Men are a contemporary example.

Adroit harmonizers make it look simple. The principles behind this type of singing are actually not complicated to comprehend, however it takes practice to learn to accurately identify pitch and then drop higher or lower.

To learn how to sing harmonies, the most effective method is to consider singing lessons.

Tags: Harmony Singing, sing in harmony, Singing Harmonies