I'll take a cup while you're up, Ebbie:

Getting back to harmony.. of the musical kind. Last night I had practice with my friends Joe and Frankie. We've been together now for over 9 years and because we all have a good, natural sense of harmony, none of us has stepped forward to do "arrangements." At least that's the way I've perceived it. In truth, I guess I have been the one, although I have never felt capable of doing it. So, even when I've been doing a lot of the arranging, I would never call it that. Sometimes I think that things we think we can't do are often things we just haven't done yet. Or realized that we've been doing them all along. Last night, I tried something different, because we were having trouble finding good harmonies on a song we all love. Because our tenor is gone, we've had to rework a lot of the harmonies, and it's been a good experience. Joe, our wonderful bass singer has an enormous range and he decided to come up and sing Frankie's baritone harmony. That pushed Frankie up into a high tenor range, which was too high for him, so he slipped down underneath Joe's harmony. That left us with our bass singer tenor and our baritone singing bass. And we really stunk (Whoops, that's being judgmental!) By the time we realized it and went back to what we used to do, we'd lost everything. So, what I started doing was at each chord change, I stopped and showed the guys what notes they could hit that were in that chord. It was a breakthrough for us. After all these years. When we found our notes at each chord change, then it was relatively easy for the guys to hear where they were going. Along the way, I realize that I was "arranging" our harmonies. Considering that I can't do it, it worked out fine. :-)

When we are singing in the Male Chorus we all sing in, I have reached the point where I can hear the baritone harmony on the piano. I think that's because when a chord is hit, you hear all four harmony notes simultaneously. It's different on guitar, and harder for the guys to hear. That's why stopping and playing the individual notes of the chord was so helpful.

I'm curious to hear from you Catters who really know what you're doing, "arranging" harmonies..

Jerry