August 13, 2010
My blog by Kuba Suttles
www.bowtownmusic.com
Singing harmony part 2
By far, the most popular part of my vocal workout is singing harmony. It is also the most challenging, and the most difficult part being, holding your own notes while someone else is singing a different part.
I think that the most difficult part for a teacher is to remember what it was like when you first started to learn and how important it is to get to the very basic beginning of an idea like harmony. I remember when I first became aware of harmonies and how to do them. I, like so many kids, started playing in a band at the end of high school. The Beatles had just come to America and we had to try and play some of their songs. I tried very hard to listen to their vocals, especially when two or more of them were singing at the same time. After a while it struck me like a bolt of lightning that the notes they were singing were the same notes as the chords I was playing on my guitar!
So if you have checked out the first blog on harmonies and tried some of the exercises, you may be ready to try singing harmony to a song. Now, if you are singing by yourself, you will not experience the full experience or frustration of singing harmonies but you will get an idea of how it works.
I have chosen a relatively easy song to work on harmonies with my students, Amazing Grace. It is basically a three chord song, so the harmonies can be very rudimentary.
I want you to go back to the exercise doing the arpeggios beginning with the root, third, fifth, then root, fourth, sixth, then seventh (below the root), second and fifth. So that's Do, Mi, Sol, /Do, Fa, La, /Ti, Re, So and end with Do. These are the harmony notes of the three chords we will use for Amazing Grace.
Let's start with the first note of each chord/arpeggio. So the first line of the song starts on the first chord and changes to the second chord on the word "sweet" and changes back to the first chord on the word "sound". So the harmony I want you to sing through the first chord is just, Do. Then you will notice that the harmony for the second chord is also Do. So you end up singing the entire line with just one note. This may sound easy to do and also kind of boring, but if you try it with someone else doing the melody, it takes on a whole other dimension.
Now the most difficult part come when we go to the third chord on the word "me". You will notice that the first note for the third chord is Ti. Then it's back to the first chord on the word "once" and so, back to Do. So every time there is a chord change, I want you to sing the corresponding note.
After you have tried the song through with the first note of each arpeggio, try doing the same thing with the second note, then the third note. You will notice that starting with the second note of each arpeggio is the only time you actually sing three different notes for each of the three chords.
Here are the lyrics, chords, and harmonies in the key of G.
chords G C G D
lyrics Amazing grace how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.
harmony 1 G G G F# (below G)
harmony 2 B C B A
harmony 3 D E D D
