Visualizing Harmony

Subject: Visualizing Harmony
From: sophocleese
Date: 05 Oct 99 - 11:57 PM

This may sound a little strange. A question that I have long been interested in is how people visualize harmony. I think of different lines taking their own routes from beginning to end, meeting each other, and crossing each other and finally resolving out. But it seems to me that there are a lot of people who think in broader terms, of chord progressions, and sing to fill in the empty spaces. I think the way you see it, or hear it changes the notes you sing. I just wondered how other people out there who sing harmonies thought about it. And why they think about the way they do.

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: JedMarum
Date: 06 Oct 99 - 12:04 AM

... I simply find a complimentary note to the melody, and follow the singer's lead ... a little 'vision' and a little practice, a happy accident or two, and sometimes magic happens! Of course, sometimes, I fall flat on my face too!

There are harmony theoretical approaches that work well, if you have that training, and the guess work or 'visualization' is usually a sub-conscious attempt at the applying the harmonic theory your brain has picked up through listening and sining all those years ...

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: katlaughing
Date: 06 Oct 99 - 12:18 AM

I never thought about it, 'cleese. I was the youngest in a musical family of five kids. I just always was the one who harmonised and still am. I will be very interested to read what others have to say on this. kat

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: Margo
Date: 06 Oct 99 - 12:23 AM

I am a very visual person. When I'm learning a harmony, I see shapes: thirds, fourths, fifths, etc. Sounds wierd, I know.

When I play the concertina, I actually see the shapes of the chords made by the buttons themselves. A 1-3-5 major chord is a triangle!

Margarita

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: bbelle
Date: 06 Oct 99 - 12:56 AM

Margarita ... that is exactly how I do it, too! Glad to see someone else has the visual harmony gift! I type the same way ... I visualize the word and type it ... I also relate to those harmonic "accidents" ... it's like the tones totally mesh and it makes the hair on your neck stand up because it's like one voice ... moonchild

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: M. Ted (inactive)
Date: 06 Oct 99 - 01:29 AM

I could not harmonizer by ear--and I tried for years to do it!- It occurred to me one day that, when I played my guitar accompaniement to a song, that I was actually playing several harmony lines at the same time--now, I basically just pick a note out of the guitar part(as long as it's not the melody note!) and follow it though the changes til I get to the end--you do have to think about where you're going to end up, in relation to the melody voice--

In music theory, the melody would be thought of as the "salient line" and the harmony as the "recessive line"--the names tell you what you need to know: that your harmony shouldn't overshadow the melody! So a good rule of thumb is to keep it from moving around too much--

You could visualize this as keeping on a straight line (on a single pitch) but 'curving" a little to accomodate each chord change--

Here is a good tip--it doesn't hurt to "rest", particularly on pick-up notes and in other places where the melody is particularly busy, and to fall back in when it reaches a sustained note--

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: Patrish(inactive)
Date: 06 Oct 99 - 06:34 AM

I love listening to harmonies and trying the odd one myself(usually very odd..)I think of them as shades, light and dark when lots of harmonies(and sometimes discords) are together I feel the depth of the song almost goes into another dimension, you dont just hear it, you feel it in your heart and could almost reach our and touch it. Sounds a bit soppy but thats what it does to me.....

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: WyoWoman
Date: 06 Oct 99 - 09:06 AM

I also "feel" harmonies as color and texture, light and dark. I was raised in a singing family and also just grew up learning how to fill in, so sometimes it's hard for me to pick out the melody for all the harmonies I hear.

I've come back to music after a several year hiatus and I'm having a hard time separating out the various vocal lines -- in a way I never did before. It's bothersome to me because I used to be able to just hone in on the second soprano line, or the alto or "that higher line" and stick with it, but now my ear meanders a bit.

I guess practice is the key, but again, my opportunities to sing with other people tend to be limited to the occasional jam and mostly to me driving in my car with the CD player jammin' loud.

This is a lovely thread and I'll continue reading with interest. Thanks for starting it, Soph.

Best, WW

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: MMario
Date: 06 Oct 99 - 09:33 AM

I can't harmonize by instinct.....so my sense of harmony is pretty much limited to hearing it. One image that has stuck in my mind through the years involves a hymn sung at the midnight Christmas mass every year by a friend of the family. She would do a high descant - and to me it always seemed to be a dove flying high over the rest of the music.

She would sing the descant only to one verse and ONLY at the Christmas service. For years that "made" Christmas for me, and I still "hear" it, and see the dove fly every Christmas;though the singer died twenty-some years ago.

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: Pelrad
Date: 06 Oct 99 - 11:00 AM

11 years out of choir and I can no longer harmonize without working it all out laboriously beforehand, but I have always seen it as bands of color under- and overlying each other to make a sort of rainbow. If that makes any sense.

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: M. Ted (inactive)
Date: 06 Oct 99 - 11:13 AM

This is so amazing to me! I always wondered what was going on with you people--as I said above, I have had to figure our harmonies by wrote--I had an idea that there was something going on that was sort of magical--

Excuse me for waxing on this subject, but I think that harmony singing is one of the great achievments of humankind--MMario, your Christmas story tells it all!!

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: Escamillo
Date: 07 Oct 99 - 01:17 AM

If this make any sense, I visualize harmony as three-dimensional curves, you can imagine a set of three, four or sixteen planes one on top of the other, separated in heigth by some distance, but taking infinite different forms, touching and trespassing each other as the music goes. I see authors constructing entire buildings, cathedrals and heavens with these ethereal elements.

Not finding an end to the amazing harmonies of Bach, I got surprised by the marvelous Brahms, and then by the strange and beatiful Kodaly, and then by the new world of Ligeti, and by the depth of African harmonies. It is endless.

By myself, I can try some duettos, á la Sinatra/Minelli, but only as an amusement. Best regards, Andrés Magré (Escamillo á la Bizet)

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: sophocleese
Date: 07 Oct 99 - 10:01 AM

I am enjoying these answers to my question. This is fascinating. Music is sound but, as well as the emotional experience, people transfer it into sight and touch. Thank you all for writing.

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: Pete Peterson
Date: 07 Oct 99 - 11:08 AM

My mother was a piano player and piano teacher who gave her last piano lesson ten days before she died. (classical AND jazz-- she played piano in "night clubs" in late Prohibition which I have always taken to be a polite way of saying speakeasy) She started me on piano as one of her students and I took lessons once/week from 6 to 12 (roughly) and I can't now look at a piano book and PLAY it, but I can pick out a melody one note at a time (say, from the Fiddlers Fake Book) slowly, or generally sing a new song out of a book up to speed. I think what Mom gave me was "instinctive harmony" especially on most folk tunes. I can (usually) hear a vocal line and hear what the higher harmony is; if people are singing a duet I can add the baritone harmony. I don't usually stop to visualize, it just IS. If I do visualize, I am thinking of a piano keyboard and see the note played and visualize the entire chord, in whatever inversion it's being played in. I wish I could see those colors and textures, I am envious!

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: katlaughing
Date: 07 Oct 99 - 11:55 AM

Pete, that is a good phrase, "instinctive harmony", that is what it is like for me. But, I still like to sit down at the piano. I don't think it is a good thing to take lessons from a close family member; I could not learn piano from my brother. He expected us to be professional classical pianists same as him, impossible, intimidating, and scary! Thank goodness I learned from a really patient and kind lady, even if her last name sounded funny to us kids: Mrs. Heiny (hine ee).

Soph, I didn't mean to imply that I don't see anything when I hear or make music. I have always had vivid scenes in full technicolour rolling aorund in my head, just never for the harmony as an isolated thing, rather the entire piece of music and the images it conjures from my heart, soul, and mind.

kat

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: Davey
Date: 07 Oct 99 - 01:12 PM

'cleese, a good question and some fascinating replies. I've never thought of harmonies in terms of visualization, but as something I've had to struggle to learn. My partner has been singing at camps most of her early years and seems to find harmonies effortlessly, and how I envy that...
M Ted, I find harmonies in a similar way to you, by listening to the notes in a guitar chord and following the chord changes. Practice also improves the ear and one's ability to pick out harmonies.
I also have a wonderful resource, our song circle, where there are several who can find harmonies easily. I often sit next to one of them and try to sing along with them, as long as they don't accuse me of 'stealing their notes' *BG*... I've trained my ear that way.
Wyo, it's too bad you don't have a group to sing with, but you do have a practice space (your car) where you can try out different things along with tapes you are playing. Just keep your windows closed when you're in heavy city traffic and you won't get too many strange looks ..*grin* I recall a time when I was practicing harmonica, pulled up to a stop light, and was surprised by applause coming from the car next to me...

good thread.. cheers... Davey

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: Art Thieme
Date: 07 Oct 99 - 01:50 PM

Strange, after pickin' and singing for almost 4 decades I've realized why I always was a SOLO performer. Harmony was something that, in all that time, I never could enjoy trying to participate in. I was terrible at it too. I'm sure I offended Mr. Hartford on several occasions when he wanted to play behind my shows on the riverboat, but it just threw me off to a huge degree. I just never felt comfortable playing along with others or singing with others. Does that make me a musical mountain man---a loner to the 'nth degree? I think so. My psyche simply wasn't tuned to making music with others. If you check out my recordings, there is only one song where another voice apears---Cindy Mangson on an Illinois/Wisconsin version of "Down By The Brazos". And she put that on the tape after I was finished.

When I asked Steve Goodman why he had switched from all acoustic to a huge backup ensemble, he said, "I've heard it with all of those extra sounds in my head for so long---but I couldn't afford all that. The record company pays for it now. This is the way I heard it in my mind even when it was just me and the guitar."

I thought that was pretty fantastic---to have that ability---or that clutter---depending on how you view it.

Another friend used to hear colors---or so he said. Sort of like Disney's __Fantasia__---or a good LSD trip.

Also, I used to follow my own instruments. That's how I stayed on pitch. I'd hit the note right before I sang it at several key moments in a given song and hope that I was in tune. I could take a breath when I needed to and not when the arrangement called for it. I could do extra riffs when I wanted or needed to also.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 07 Oct 99 - 02:14 PM

I consider myself a pretty adept "instinctive" harmony singer. High harmonies are fairly easy, and I don't give them much thought- I sing what feels like should be there, and if the harmonic doesn't ring, I change as needed. I believe the secret of a really resonant harmony are the notes that depart from the predictable path of the harmony, giving it a sense of surprise and distinctness. Some singers are also strong melody line singers, and some aren't, and the ones that aren't will drive you up the wall when you do harmony.It also takes a lot of practice to keep your "harmony ear" in tune, and I often sing harmony in the car with tapes.

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: M. Ted (inactive)
Date: 07 Oct 99 - 02:31 PM

Art--It turns out that you don't need to know anything about harmonies, or even be able to harmonize to sing harmonize with others-- you can just sing the melody!

Seriously though, when you play and sing a soloist, you have to do all sorts of things to fill up the spaces--

When you work with other musicians and singers, you have to thin down what you are doing considerably--

One thing that is hard for me is to sing without having an instrument in my hands--and I also follow my own instrument for pitch--I was at a party with some guys who had sung with a harmony group from the 60's--they did let me sing the melody--but without my guitar, I suffered from pitch creep, and they kept waving their hands "higher" and making me start over again!

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: M. Ted (inactive)
Date: 07 Oct 99 - 02:31 PM

Art--It turns out that you don't need to know anything about harmonies, or even be able to harmonize to sing harmonize with others-- you can just sing the melody!

Seriously though, when you play and sing a soloist, you have to do all sorts of things to fill up the spaces--

When you work with other musicians and singers, you have to thin down what you are doing considerably--

One thing that is hard for me is to sing without having an instrument in my hands--and I also follow my own instrument for pitch--I was at a party with some guys who had sung with a harmony group from the 60's--they did let me sing the melody--but without my guitar, I suffered from pitch creep, and they kept waving their hands "higher" and making me start over again!

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 07 Oct 99 - 06:47 PM

This is a great thread! I am not a very visual person- sorry, Art, I always thought the Bach fugue portion of the Fantasia movie(as well as most of the other sequences) was pretty dumb since I'm more of an "instinctive harmonizer".
Educators have been aware for some time of the different "intelligences"- some of us are very visual, some analytical, some musical, etc. etc. That's so clear just from this one thread!
Allison

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: paddymac
Date: 07 Oct 99 - 07:46 PM

Barber shop singers have a method for learning harmonies that is both fun and functional, and seems to readily transfer to other vocal idioms. The guiding principle is simple - find a note that "works", stay there until it doesn't "work" anymore, then find another that "works". I think of it as a kind of vocal tablature. The notes that "work" are 'most always components of whatever chord is being played. Couple this with the many fine tips shared above and you'll be on your way to having fun.

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: DougR
Date: 07 Oct 99 - 11:43 PM

I can sing harmony, but I never thought much about WHY I can do it. It just seems to come naturally. I've done it since I was a kid and it just seemed the natural thing to do. I'm sure there must be some explanation for why some can, and some can't, but I have no eathly idea what it may be. I just hear the natural harmonic notes to sing, and assumed everyone else did too.

DougR

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: Alice
Date: 08 Oct 99 - 12:01 AM

Davey, there is no heavy city traffic in Wyoming!! *grin* nor in Montana, so WW has no danger there. A few howling coyotes can be fun to harmonize. Our samoyed dog likes to howl to music, and he can be fun to harmonize with. It is strange that even though I am an artist, I don't visualize music. I hear and feel it, but don't see it. If I have to picture notes in my mind, I do see piano keys, since that was the first instrument I studied.
WW, I wish we lived closer, because it would be great to get together with you and sing.

alice in montana

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: WyoWoman
Date: 08 Oct 99 - 12:22 AM

Alice -- I agree. Maybe we can meet in the middle somewhere!

As I"ve read this thread I've been trying to think how I would tell someone how I stay on key, how I find my pitch and match my voice to it. I've done it so long, it's hard to break down the how's. But I think actually feeling the pitch has a great deal to do with it. I sometimes imagine a musical staff, too, with my voice honing in on that inky black dot of the note and just drilling down into it. I also imagine my voice dancing, touching down lightly on the staff.

As I think about singing and pitch and all these related ideas, I can *feel* the part of my brain where the musical concentration is located -- behind my right ear and up about two-1/2 inches. I wonder if that sensation has anything at all to do with the portion of the brain that actually relates to music. Does anyone out there know?

WW

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: MAG (inactive)
Date: 08 Oct 99 - 01:42 PM

I like singing harmony, and it's easy for me because I've done it all my life. Our Mom had me and my three sisters singing as a quartet, matching outfits and the whole nine yards. If I know the melody to a song, I just know the intervals well enough to place either an alto or a descant. I'm in trouble if someone plays an alternate chord to the way I learned the song, tho'!

I DID spend years and years getting over a performance tic from the experience, however. One sister never did; would run at the mere mention of gathering 'round the piano ... actually, so do I, if I'm in the same room with family.

but I love girl group harmony stuff: Straw into Gold, Lotus (defunct), Pointer Sisters, LaBelle, Roches.

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: DougR
Date: 08 Oct 99 - 03:36 PM

WyoWoman:

Do you have perfect pitch? Those that do can be driven nutty by someone singing a little flat or a little sharp. I dont'know the answer to your brainy question though.

DougR

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: sophocleese
Date: 08 Oct 99 - 04:14 PM

My husband has perfect pitch. His greatest difficulty is when he is sight-reading and either the choir director starts it in a different key or the choir sinks a little. Then he has the problem of reading something that isn't being sung. Somebody who is singing in key with themselves, even if its a little off of the perfect note, doesn't bother him.

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: katlaughing
Date: 08 Oct 99 - 04:45 PM

Sopho, you've really gotten me to thinking. Something I've just always taken for granted (harmonising, not thinking!:-). Another thought occured to me: since I was also a pianist and classical violinst, in school orchestras from 8yrs old on, I am sure I naturally learned a lot about harmonising through that, too. Esp. the violin with first and second parts, one always compliments the other. I was always in first section, but they don't always get the melody line. Curiously enough, I never cared about getting to sing the melody line, with singing, but get me in an orchestra and I hated "playing second fiddle"! Competition emphasised more there, I guess, than at home.

This has been so intersting and fun to read. Thanks for starting it.

kat

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: MAG (inactive)
Date: 08 Oct 99 - 06:36 PM

What is "perfect pitch" ?? I thought it was when someone asked for a "C," and you gave them a "C." (with voice.)

Someone sharp or flat drives me crazy, but I don't have perfect pitch.

MA

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: Susan A-R
Date: 08 Oct 99 - 08:42 PM

I tend to listen to the melody, and the chords if someone is playing them, and then I try to find what's missing, and what fits. I'm not a terriffically visual person (some of us legally bind folks are, surprisingly, but I am not one) I have always wanted to find the harmony that added some beauty to a piece. To me, there are times when it just needs to be there. I do find it difficult to fit in a harmony when someone else has gotten there first (three parts) Any tricks folks have learned?

Interestingly, I also find that there are times when I really don't want harmony to be there, when I think that the unison is almost more powerful. I sing with a wonderful natural tenor who does not read, and although I love harmonizing with him, our voices in unison on certain things are great. We do a song called The Blue and the Gray, and the verses are gorgeous in unison. We harmonize on the choruses, but never the verses. We also do Song of A Thousand Years, and the first line of the chorus needs to be unison, like a very7 fierce trumpet, then harmony is ok.

I wonder how many of us "natural harmonizers" grew up in families where round singing was part of the culture? How about hymns? I have a hard time in church now, as my Dad (who died two weeks ago) always sang the base line and I miss it a lot. Mom and I would also try to hack out the alto, but I do not do as well with written harmonies.

I too like this thread.

Susan

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: MAG (inactive)
Date: 08 Oct 99 - 09:07 PM

Yeh, I love rounds, and grew up on them, too.

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: WyoWoman
Date: 08 Oct 99 - 10:59 PM

When I was in college, I had a roommate who was a concert pianist. You could go over to the piano and crunch your hands, toes, elbows down on a dozen notes at once and without looking she could tell you precisely what notes you were playing. Never missed a single one.

You could be standing in the middle of a supermarket or on a sidewalk or whatever and ask her for the e-flat above Middle C and she'd be able to nail it for you.

That's perfect pitch.

I have good relative pitch, meaning I can usually start a song in whatever key I've learned it. And I'm driven crazy by people singing or playing off pitch, but that may be more a function of training than of some innate pitch.

WW

Subject: RE: Visualizing Harmony
From: MAG (inactive)
Date: 09 Oct 99 - 12:52 PM

Well, last night at coffeeehouse I muffed a song I've been doing for 15 years; "Ghost of William-O." Every verse started up a third.

Oh well, 2 out of 3 ain't bad.

this is thread drift ...

MA