Basic Harmonising

What is Harmony?
The term Harmony is used to refer to notes that "blend" nicely with the melody. The melody consists of the essential notes that form the basic structure of any tune. Harmony requires at least 2 tones or voices and can be done with any number of additional tones/voices. Most harmony is written for 3 to 6 voice parts. Some arrangements go to as many as 8 or more parts, but these are uncommon. A good step to harmonizing is to fully know the melody, and then sing to it in a slightly lower pitch not an octave low. If you have another person with you, it also helps to sing with a piano first, and then move on to singing and harmonizing more independently. Once you have some sense of the basic 1,3,5 major chord -- or 1,3,5,7 major 7th chord -- you can harmonize by singing any of the notes. The 1 is the soprano or lead (Lead is singing soprano an octave low for a male or female with a lower alto voice.). The more people you have the more of the notes you can sing. Once you have a sense of the basics of harmony in some key, you can then start to experiment with other notes and chords.

Where is the melody?

This is such an important thing to know!! If you dont understand where the melody is, you dont understand where your foundation is! It works like this: You have your melody and everything around it (Below or Above it), are Harmonies that support and enhance the melody! The Melody is usually the part that you sing to your favourite song You know The one that keeps on sticking inside your head, that stays with you! YEP! That one! Lets take an example. Let say that its like an apple pie Everything is important about an apple pie to make it an apple pie But you cant make apple pie without APPLE! The rest is just to compliment the flavour of the Apple.

Who has the melody?

The Melody can live in any vocal part Soprano, Alto, Tenor or Bass! Depending on how the songwriter has structured the song. And only once youve found that part (Once you understand where the melody is) then you can start stacking harmonies around it. There is a specific structure to harmonising:

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Steps
1. "Form a chord with the melody". A chord is when 3 or more notes are played or sung at once (in tones, or voices). These notes are often referred to as triads with 3 tones (1,3,5 intervals) the most basic chord for harmonizing, the 1,3,5 chord. 2. Try the most basic chords (1-3-5) like "C-E-G." The 1 represents the 'root' note, then skip one up to note 3 that represents the 3rd (the note 2 places up from the first one). Then skip from the 3rd to place 5 which represents the 5th (or the note 4 places up from the root and 2 places up from the 3rd). You can also have 1-3-5-7 by adding the 7th and/or the 1st (root) note up or down the octave.

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3. Practice singing harmony, by trying harmony with a keyboard or a piano. When you play a piano, a good note to harmonize is: Assuming a C major scale, strike the C note and, then strike 2 together with your harmonizing note (two) which is found by skipping the next note, and singing the next one in the same direction, from the original note. But that's rather crude. 4. Sing along with a recorded song the way you're supposed to. Slower songs such as hymns are easier. 5. Try to sing a little bit higher or lower in pitch. Try to sing along at this higher or lower pitch and have it sound good. 6. Realize this might sound awful when you first try it. Just continually try to sing a little higher or lower than the original and have it sound good. If it sounds bad, then you're not harmonizing. If it sounds good, then you probably are. 7. Harmonizing to a great degree is intuitive. You learn what sounds right and wrong, and that proves that you know the right/wrong notes. Just loosen up and try to sing at the slightly higher (or lower) pitch... If you play an instrument like a guitar or piano you can find the harmony by first playing the note you are singing then move that note up to the 3rd on the scale (in the key) of the song you are playing like C (C-E-G) or G (G-B-D); notice they skip a letter, but of course sharps and/or flats are found in many keys which is usually the black keys on a piano type of keyboard.

Exercises:
1. Listen to Exercise 1 and learn it by heart that you can sing the next note freely without thinking about it. 2. Listen to Exercise 2 and when the first note is played try to harmonise with it and keep that note until you hear it. Do this exercise until you feel you are comfortably with it and it comes freely. 3. Listen to a random note and harmonise with it. 4. Harmonise with well-known song on the radio. The softer the song is the better you can hear the harmonies!

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