How do I teach someone to sing harmony?

Subject: RE: How do I teach someone to sing harmony?
From: Artful Codger
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 04:21 PM

Sharon: The Monty Python skit parodied "helpful" advice shows. If featured a pair of annoyingly perky hosts teaching people how to do complex things with ridiculously simplistic instructions. The flute bit went something like:

"Well, how to play the flute: You blow across one end, and you move your fingers all up and down the other!"
"Super. Super."

Subject: RE: How do I teach someone to sing harmony?
From: PoppaGator
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 05:38 PM

Per M.Ted:
"...musicians hate singers who "come by it naturally"--because musicians, no matter how good their ears, have to work out all the little details by rote, and the singers just breeze in and get all the attention;-( "

Good point, and the further elaborations in the next few posts were also very interesting and on the mark.

However, my first reaction was that of someone who thinks of himself as an (intrumental) musician AND as a singer ~ as do many of us here, I'm sure. (Of course, as a rank amateur, my qualifications in either category are debatable, but that should not detract from the logic of my observations.) Do we, or should we, hate ourselves? Maybe so, maybe not ~ but it shouldn't have anything to do with being able both to sing and to play an instrument ;^)

If I come up with a harmonizing phrase while singing, and do so "naturally," I am likely to forget it next time we sing. Maybe I'll improvize a better line next time, maybe not. Maybe worse, in fact.

If I want to work up a vocal arrangement that can be "set in stone," I'll take each sung phrase that I dream up and play it on my guitar, as a simple series or "line" of single notes, no chords and no full-blown arrangement. That's usually enough of a mnemomic procedure for me; I can more easily remember a series of physical placements of fingers on fingerboard than I can a sequence of notes. Of course, if you can write music, it wouldn't hurt to write the phrase as well. (My knowledge of "the dots" is so limited that I don't generally write down any dots of my own; I am able to scribble down some tab whenever I'm afraid of forgetting something.)

Despite all the jokes and the often-genuine ego problems, a vocalist is a musician. or at least should be one. One's own voice is a unique instrument in a number of ways: most obviously, mechanics and technique are less of a factor than for any other instrument ~ if you can think of a note or phrase, you can pretty much sing it right away, without searching out the correct key or fret or valve, etc. This makes the voice the easiest intrument of all with which to improvise, but also the instrument upon which it is most difficult to repeat or reproduce a bit of improvised music.

Subject: RE: How do I teach someone to sing harmony?
From: Rockhen
Date: 20 Jul 08 - 12:40 PM

Forgive me if I have repeated something within someone else's post. I have not read the full thread, yet. :-)

I think it can sometimes be more difficult to teach someone who has a vocal range that is very different to your own. For example, sometimes, young children find it harder to sing along with a male voice than a female, at first as, to them, it means singing the tune an octave or so, lower than they can. They can try to sing the lowest note they can manage rather than the equivalent note, an octave higher.

Or, as another example, for a woman to teach a man to sing in harmony, I think it can be made more complicated by the song being sung higher so the man in question may have to learn a harmony which is an octave and a bit different to the tune as the woman sings it. This is simplifying things a lot, but I think it can make it more difficult. Similar voice ranges have a head start, I think, in working together vocally for those who are just starting out at this.

Subject: RE: How do I teach someone to sing harmony?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 20 Jul 08 - 12:51 PM

For someone that doesn't have a concept of harmonization, you have to teach them
a harmony part that works and have them sing it as if it were the actual melody of the song. If you do this with enough songs, they may get the idea.

In the meantime, singing harmony is a cultural thing. You usually grow up with it.
It can be taught as an adjunct to formal music theory as part of a sight-singing course.

For a guitarist, one possibility is that the singer can learn to sing a part of the chord
played on the guitar that harmonized with the melody.

The best way to learn harmony is to do a trial and error approach where the learner
composes a harmony part and sees where it works and where it doesn't. This is the
best way to learn aside from formal music theory.

The most simple parts are best to start in which there is one note held throughout most of the harmony parts. For example, the fifth note of the chords that are being harmonized is held and will harmonize with most moving melodic lines. Eventually,
the learner will begin to hear the third note of the chord. The basic harmonic tones
for harmonizing are the fifth note and the third. The third becomes the sixth inverted.
Simplicity in harmony requires hanging on to one note as much as possible.

Frank Hamilton

Subject: RE: How do I teach someone to sing harmony?
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 08 Oct 09 - 12:42 AM

This is an excerpt from David Crosby's autobiography. I believe he is one of those great harmony singers who can consistently elevate and enrich the other voices around him.

"In two-part harmony you have a lot of room to move around. You can go in relationship from the root, which is the melody, to another note, which can be a fourth, a fifth, a seventh, a sixth, a ninth, even a second, and it can move around. And all of those different intervals have an emotional thing to them. For example a minor third above the root gives one feeling. An open fifth is another kind of feel. With three people, the tendency is to sing what're called "triads", which is the normal three-part chord. Three out of the four notes of the arpeggio, the fourth being the octave. What we did, which made me extremely proud, was sing a lot of nonparallel stuff. I did some of my best work being subtle, moving the middle part around in internal shifts that kept it happening. Those harmonies came out of the Everly Brothers, late-fifties and early-sixties jazz, and classical music."
- David Crosby, pg 155 Long Time Gone

Subject: RE: How do I teach someone to sing harmony?
From: open mike
Date: 08 Oct 09 - 01:20 AM

learning to recognize the intervals...
would be essential...

the most common example of a third
might be the ding dong of a door bell

Do, a deer, a female deer, might also
have some good examples...

it is good if the singer can tell what
note to sing when it is written...that
is probably the best way to start...

good luck.

your experience with church and school
choirs must give you a good background
many musicians got their start in church

Subject: RE: How do I teach someone to sing harmony?
From: stallion
Date: 08 Oct 09 - 03:31 AM

First three notes of Michael Row the Boat ashore for starters! Can't beat experimenting, also, it helps singing with people who can do it, it rubs off, like training your ears...........get a J-girls cd and sing along with it, better still go along and see them and join in (if you're allowed) Then go see Finn & Haddie, and join in, great you're off then! For the UK there are many, you could get our cd, there are loads of spaces to fill in whilst you're driving about!!!! Anyway, the way I do it is by experimenting singing along with other cd's, even our own (which drives the family mad)to find new harmony lines, it is always work in progress as far as I am concerned..........on the other hand Martin sight reads so he dreams up the harmony and sings it and drags me along with him or usually fills the gaps I leave! Work work work work work at it, when the penny drops it is a joy..........................talking of Joy, you might even get the chance to sing with the J-Girls and Finn & Haddie

Subject: RE: How do I teach someone to sing harmony?
From: alex s
Date: 08 Oct 09 - 09:34 AM

some good advice here

Subject: RE: How do I teach someone to sing harmony?
From: GUEST,Stuart
Date: 06 Apr 10 - 04:37 AM

Great ear training sfotware free at "Ricci Adams" music theory. Very useful and easy to use interval ear trainer