IWTL how to sing harmony
That’s it. I sing ok; I’ll never be great. But I’d like to learn how to sing harmony. I can’t even hear where I would go to make harmony when I listen melody.
Posted Jul 29, 2020, 2:01 PM UTC
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That’s it. I sing ok; I’ll never be great. But I’d like to learn how to sing harmony. I can’t even hear where I would go to make harmony when I listen melody.
Posted Jul 29, 2020, 2:01 PM UTC
I'm not a singer, but a guitarist, however I do think I might be able to help. The most straightforward way of harmonising a phrase is to raise or lower all notes in the phrase by a fixed scale degree. For demonstration take a C major scale and assign a number to each:
C D E F G A B 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Now, lets harmonise a phrase in C major in thirds. You could see this as a constant raise in scale degree by +2. So if the original phrase goes "C D E (1 2 3)", your harmony phrase is "E F G (3 4 5)".
Of course you could use other scale degrees (fourths, fifths, etc.), or mix them up.
While this method works well during writing, it might take some more time in the beginning and might not work in an 'on the spot' moment. In that case you should rely on your ears. I think that recognising and producing scale degrees would be most important to learn.
For practice you could try to sing the major scale in segments, for example in thirds. So you do C D E, D E F, E F G (or with numbers, or do re mi, whatever is comfortable). Then maybe try to skip every 2nd combination, so go straight from C D E yo E F G, or try larger intervals than straight going up or down the scale.
Another thing that would be beneficial to learn are intervals (rather than scale degrees). Recognising them will probably make it easier to extend this to other scales or spice up your harmony phrases.
Good luck!