How to Harmonize - Harmonies in thirds - Country Music, Pop, Rock
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 ต.ค. 2017
- How to Harmonize
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Harmonies take our music to the next level! One of the most common ways to harmonize in popular genres like country music, rock music, and pop music is to sing a harmony part a third above the melody of the song. In this video I get some help from my cousin in Nashville to demonstrate some nice sounding harmonies and give you a chance to sing along with us at the end of the video. Enjoy!!
Hahaha, cousin Jeff is a sweetie!
Cousin Jeff hahahahah you are so great
Wow. This is such a fantastic explanation of harmony, thank you!
Thank you Jeff, for unravelling the mysteries of harmony for me. As a female who sometimes with a group of all males with deep masculine voices,. I'd often feel vocally exhausted with all the heavy breathing I needed to do just to try and sing with the guys. I couldn't say "Whoah,stop,wait for me... I was out numbered and they'd be all getting right into singing with great gusto. So I'd cheat a bit, take the easy way out and sing higher, in my easier to do lighter soprano voice, as I have a big voice range, but low notes are exhausting, due to all the breath they seemto require, unlike easy lighter higher notes. And the guys would then suddenly stop their loud, strong masculine type singing and go "Hey, do that again. We love your female voice harmonising so well.... Do some more..." Harmonising? Is that what it was? I thought I was just trying to keep up with the guys.... I hadno idea what I was doing ie the principles and theory. Then their leader, a brilliant modern guitarist who is so fussy he even makes his own guitars said "Just take the major third and sing that,like this..." And he twanged a chord sequence on his guitar. It sounded pretty cool, as all hos playing does, but I still had no idea what to do and I was getting pretty anxious because I wanted to do it but I had no idea how, even though I had done it instinctively the first time. "What's wrong with you, woman?!? I just showed you how. All you have to is follow me... Sing the major third..." I couldn't do it anymore. The more I tried to "understand" this major third business, the worse I got. "Typical female... Whimsical by nature... Carry on, boys!" he ordered, in a disappointed tone. Icould have died, but I liked doing live music with the boys, so I persevered, trying to just sing unison in my lower voice with them, until I recoveredfrom "creative shock" and though "To hell with major thirds!I just came here to sing some songs with these guys because I like to sing a song or two or twenty two..." And then I could do the higher harmony they all liked. Now this is a pretty closed male group that likes to do music together but it is hard to be accepted there as a female. However, after I tried to do this harmony business for them, it got even more stressful. They wanted me to teach them how to do male low harmonies for me while I sang the higher female main part solo. Now singing the main female lead does not faze me, but I hadno idea about harmony, let alone how to teach the guys. "Oh, just do it! No excuses!" I ordered them, joking, to cover up my incompetence in matters of harmony. They tried, surprisinly, no complaints about being ordered by a female. They sounded like a frog chorus. "Er, I don't think we should perform that one in public just yet...Until we all get our harmonies right.." I tactfully suggested. But word got around among these very closed male singing social groups. "She sings harmony and makes guys sound real good.." was the gossip getting around town. And I got an invite to come sing harmony with another related male group that was very notoriously misogynistic, since its inception many years ago in a local country pub where workmen would gather to sing and celebrate "payday". Other local women who wanted to join them but were barred were fuming and wanted to know if I also did a "strip tease" act to be invited by these guys. "No... I can't even manage basic harmony, let alone strip tease act... I just focus on singing because I have more hope with that than strip tease acts.." I was clearly out of my depth with "harmony" and this other group of men who sometimes travelled to sing elsewhere were already talking about "another tour featuring female vocalist harmonising". I was in a stae of advanced panic and fear and pulled out, explaining how I had just come to sing a song, not any of this "harmony", "touring" etc stuff.But I did like theeffectsof harmony and wanted to umderstand how to do it right. Thank you, Jeff.
Very helpful and many thanks for making the two parts available separately for practice.
I can't tell how much this has helped me..thanx.
hi jeff, I'm starting to make pop-rock music, and this video was really helpful. thanks a lot for teaching great things in such a great way. One love
Made me smile, thank you!
Now, conveniently enough, this style of hamonization is really really quite popular in all the forms of popular music that are really popular today. Awesome sentence!!
That’s a popular quote that popular people properly popularly quote.
That's a smart way to make people sing your songs ;D
That was awesome 👏🏿
Love it Jeff,funny guy 😆,really good.
That's darling & brilliant.
I am getting it all and learning this is so much fun, I think doing harmonies with yourself is simply amazing, it sounds so magical, thanks jefffff
Thanks! I really appreciate that! Enjoy!
Jeff
You are amazing,,, Thank you so much, Jeff.! Your lessons are really helpful!!!!!!!!
Fantastic! Thank you so much for your kind words! Enjoy the channel!
Jeff
Ok.. this is what im looking for.. Thank you TH-cam..
Thank you for sharing this video
The oblique motion example there (vocally, not stylistically) reminds me a lot of Teenage Fanclub for some reason. I also like how you compare the harmony to a lemon sorbet. I am not a synesthete, but harmony always struck me as inducing a similar mental response to flavour blending, where the most pleasing ones tend to be like a perfect blend of fruity, sweet and sour.
Love the oblique motion example! sounds like something I hear Zac Brown band do a lot
The best one
Thank you! I really appreciate that! Had some fun doing this!
Jeff
This is genius!! Thanks
something looks familiar about cousin jeff, I cant quite put my finger on it
Really strong genes in my family. We get them all at Burler's, the local five and dime. ;-)
Jeff
There is a hint of John C Reilly in some of his expressions.
P.S. You are very cute and like your idea of two of you singing along!!!! Very cute and sweet!!!
Cousin Jeff got all the looks in my family...
;-)
Jeff
Did you write this song about harmonies in 3rds!? That was cute and awesome!!!!! Simon amd Garfunkel! I love it!
Indeed. I did write that little ditty!
Jeff
I sing lead in barbershop
have the harmony most of the time,we are always chasing those
overtones.
Lol, nice song. I'm gunna teach it to my kids :)
If you do end up teaching it to them - please post something if you can get permission to do so! I would love to hear it!
Best,
Jeff
Subscribed effective immediately!
Thank you so much! I really appreciate it!
Jeff
Jeff - this is like...the best. I sound like a 14 year old girl in that compliment, but it's the most familiar way to say it lol! This was super fun to watch and incredibly useful! Thank you for this! - Adam
Thank you so much Adam! I really had a fun time doing this one and had hoped that it would be useful and instructive! Thank you for your kind words, I really appreciate it!
Best,
Jeff
Ya know cousin Jeff sounds so much like you it could be your brother.
Hi Jeff... Thanks so much
th-cam.com/play/PL2mQP7sE6PHjjytUwLZy-IV0hGhbD3kg7.html
@@JeffRolka Thanks so much jeff
@@JeffRolka am through with the video in the link you sent... If it still remains. Kindly send the link
You sound a lot like Rufus Wainwright! Beautiful video!
Cuz Jeff is you! Lol
No way, they were on the screen at the same time! Plus cousin Jeff had a beard!
@@dleesnuts: Funny! 😆😉
Great lesson for people with little background in singing. I have some basis in music theory and playing guitar for 30 years. I understand now harmonies basically singing one of the other notes in the underlying chord.
1. What about the passing notes? Song is in G major, what about the lead singing an A. Does the harmony sing a major third, so C#? Nah, that's outside of the scale of G? D is in the scale, but a fourth removed. Or would the harmony then sing an octave?
2. It is possible to harmonise vocal lines based off the blues scale? I don't think so, because the play on the minor/major scale messes with the clean major 3rd interval.
Sorry about the long questions, just hate it when people ask questions without trying to find the answers themselves ;-)
Johan
Hello! Great questions!
1. Depends on how you want the harmonies to sound. You might sing a c, which is diatonic to G Major or you could sit on the d while the melody moves around you (oblique motion). It really depends on how you want it to sound. Simon and Garfunkel would sing the passing tones, the c, in this case. One Republic would probably have you sitting on the d.
2. When we're playing blues chord progressions, those are primarily based off of dominant seventh chords for which we would use mixolydian mode. If you're harmonizing with someone who's melody is based off of the blues scale, I would start off by choosing notes from the mixolydian mode associated with the chord in the progression that they're on. So, for example, if you're singing/playing blues in G and you're on the IV (four) chord, then your harmony singer choosing notes from C mixolydian.
Great questions!
Jeff
Great questions and answers.
I feel there is a bit of a vaccuum online when it comes to harmony singing material, compared to many other subjects related to music. Would be cool with somebody who broke down famous tracks with harmonies from various styles of music and named the intervals and how the harmonies relate to the rest of the music both in terms of harmony and rhythm.
Used 'popular' three times in one sentence right off the bat. Noice.
So what do you do when the melody hits the 5th of a major chord? Does singing the major 7th as a harmony note bother you in a country song or do you think it works? I've just been going to the root above in this case. This is an interval of a 4th but I think it works. Another solution involves part crossing in the worst possible way, but if the melody singer is singing louder than the tenor, it might work. This is having the tenor voice duck down a 3rd below the the melody voice. So if the melody goes C, E, F, G then the harmony would go E, G, A, E which would maintain the thirds sound. The harmony could go to the unison: E, G, A, G. To summarize, it the the melody goes C, E, F, G, (which is the first four notes of the Saints Go Marching In) Which would you prefer E, G, A, G or E, G, A, E or E, G, A, C or even E, G, A, B ( I perhaps should have mentioned this is entirely over a C major chord.)
So much depends on the song; where the melody goes after the note in question. I don't mind a seventh in a country song, but someone else might. Motion in perfect 4ths is generally avoided as are voice crossings, but that doesn't mean we can't do them.
This is great! :) My hardest issue is that I play by ear and keep trying to sync up to what you are singing. Argh!
Wonderful! If I may...I believe you can slow TH-cam down by using the gear in the bottom right hand corner of the picture. It might make it a little easier to sync up and then move it back to tempo when you want to try to do the alternating parts.
I hope that helps!
Jeff
Can I use the parallel thing to harmonize any song?
Yes, harmony at a third about the melody is a good starting point.
Best! Jeff
Jeff Rolka whoa! You actually replied! 99.9% of you tubers don’t respond especially in music tutorials!Thx a lot now I can sing harmony..!!I hope you grow a lot and become a huge youtuber!
Thanks! Yes, I try to respond as much as possible. Good luck and keep singing! Best, Jeff
Excellent Video, very well explained, could use a little work on beard grooming, but besides that, tastefully exquisite!
Love it!!! Cousin Jeff could use a lot of help!
Jeff
Cousin Jeff was ok but your better.
“My name jeff”
This is cute as can be.
Thanks! I had quite a bit of fun with it!
Jeff
Lol sneaky
My name is jeff
the joker???
Why does this guy looks like Gary Moore .-.
Cousin Jeff doesn't take any shi from anyone
You can say that again!
Jeff