Singing harmony... ahh.. there's a subject that's dear to my heart.

A few weeks ago, I was very excited about the chance to have a wonderful singer join the Gospel Messengers. Doug came with impeccable credentials, having sung most of his life with reknowned rhythm and blues groups, all the way back to the Five Satins, the Flamingos and the Coasters. My feel for harmony is just that... not based on formal training. I can read sheet music just passably, but I have always sung the harmony that I hear. The Male chorus that I've sung in for the last nine years sings from memory, not sheet music. When Doug came to our first practice, we were all excited at the prospect of learning more about harmony and we were very receptive. We quickly discovered that there's harmony, and there's harmony. And harmony, too. We sing in a very straightforward four part harmony. It's what we hear and what we love. Ironically, the first time Doug heard a CD of ours he said, "I thought you said you did old black gospel quartet stuff... this sounds like folk music." Was I proud, or what? Most of the older style black gospel quartet songs we do are done in straightforward four-part harmony. If that sounds like "folk music" it's because it is folk music. Doug's concept of harmony was much more modern and he tried to change our four part harmony to three part. It sounded great to him, but we didn't like it, and weren't comfortable with it.
I told him that we had gone from a trio singing three-part harmony to a quartet singing three-part harmony. That made absolutely no sense to us, and we parted ways very respectfully. We heard harmony radically differently. I ended up putting together a three page statement about what we seek in singing harmony, just to avoid repeating the same mistake with someone else.

Ya want to be a Messenger, Ron?

The workshop that I've done for many years, that I did a thread on here: The Gospel In Black And White has been a great revelation for me. It helped me to learn a lot about harmony. I can't say that I am really that much more knowledgeable I guess, and I still cannot express my understanding of harmony in formal terms, but I've become much more aware of how differently people hear harmony (and therefor sing it.)

I particularly enjoy singing harmony on a song that I've never heard before (singing very quietly until I'm sure that I know what I'm doing. If the melody and chord progression are fairly straightforward, I can anticipate where they're going and sing a fairly "safe" harmony.

When we had Colin Kemp, Leadfingers, Noreen, Theresa and Sussex Carole visiting us here at the house, we sang with the Messengers, alternating sea chanteys and old black gospel. It was great fun, and our harmonies worked well together.

If you ever make it to our kitchen table, I'll invite the Messengers over, and we'll have a fine time singing.

And eating.

Jerry