So you want to learn how to sing harmonies?

When you hear two or more people successfully harmonizing together with different pitches, you get this incredibly beautiful sound from a song. At the other end of the scale of course, when a group of untrained people attempt to sing in harmony, you can end up with a sound that is not really that pleasant at all.

The Best Place to Begin is With the Scales

When harmony is attempted, you have one performer singing a song in one pitch, and the second performer sings in a different pitch, or they might add some additional notes around the original pitch of the first performer. Add in a third performer and another pitch can be introduced as well.

The more singers there are, the more complex and rich are the harmonies. When singing in a choir you might find that a song can be sung in four part harmony, meaning the song is being performed with four different pitches.

So that you can learn to sing harmony, the best place to start is by becoming familiar with the major and minor scales. What is a scale? A scale is simply a set of 8 consecutive notes within one octave, named with the letters A to G – for instance there is Amajor scale and Aminor scale, Bmajor scale, Bminor scale….and so on till you get to Gmajor and Gminor scales.

The major scale has intervals between each not that run to the pattern of whole-whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half.

The minor scale has a different pattern of note intervals that look like this: whole-half-whole-whole-half-whole-whole.

When performers sing in harmony, the most common scale to sing in is the major scale.

Finding Your Two Voices

Typically when a singer performs harmony they will sing around the original pitch and the melody. The best way to begin is for the person who is going to sing the original pitch to start by singing one single note from the song. Alternatively you can have an accompanist play out a chord on a piano or a guitar.

Now the second performer joins in by singing the same not but at either a higher or lower pitch.  The second voice then continues to repeat this process of singing above or below the original singers pitch throughout the rest of the song.

Getting Harmony to Work

At the beginning, when first learning harmonies, you will find that a choir master or singing teacher will get you to learn both voice parts so that you reach a high level of comfort with the song itself.

Generally it can take a lot of practice in order to make harmonies work, but often there are singers who are able to join in a song at a different pitch very easily. This is what is called on-the-fly harmony, because the harmonizer is able to simply launch into the song and start singing.

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A singer who is able to do on-the-fly harmony has a genuine ability to quickly achieve center pitch and the melody. After listening to the melody for a short period of time, they can very quickly determine the pitch and melody and then start singing immediately. For ear training you employ these exact same steps.

Actually, the very same exercises used to develop ear training can also be used to for harmony skills as well.

For example, first try playing one particular note on a piano, ascertain the pitch, and then close your eyes and imagine you are singing that note. Next – now you will actually begin to sing a note along with the note being sounded on the piano. Now try again, however this time I want you to sing a note higher than the note that you played on the piano. One more time, but now sing a note that is lower than the note being played on the piano.

If you decide to take online singing lessons, there are some programs excellent programs that have interactive pianos and voice feedback. Using this special type of software, you can easily practice matching the original pitch and then singing higher and lower. By far the best way to improve at harmonizing and to develop accurate pitch is by practice, practice, practice!

Removing the Mystery of Harmony

In just about all types of singing, including country music, pop music, and rock music you will find harmonies being employed. One particular country rock band, the Oak Ridge Boys, were famous for their ability to blend four very different voices into one melody with two or more harmonizing.

When skillful harmonizers perform they make harmonizing look very simple. The concepts involved in harmonizing are really not that difficult to understand, it just takes time and practice to be able to correctly identify the original pitch and then to drop higher or lower.

The best solution if you really want to learn how to sing harmonies, is to take singing lessons.

Tags: harmonize, scales, sing harmony