Gospel Harmony Question...

[leonardjamaar]

I have a hip-hop flavored beat, but I want a gospel sounding chorus. I have no words yet, but I read and write music, so referring to tonics and sub dominants and altos/ sopranos wont confuse me. When I get my lyric/ melody, how do I go about harmonizing it to sound like a church choir? Also, how do I record and mix it to sound as such?

[bdbdbuck]

My friend, it seems a pretty tall order when it seems all you really have is a beat.
Try working on it a little more, and give us a little more to go on.


bd

[leonardjamaar]

...I'm in the key of G. My chords are Amin, G, Bmin, Cdim-dim7, Emin, Bdim-dim7. The G chords are played with the 3rd in the bass, and the diminished C also has the third in the bass. The diminished B is played with the dim 7th in the bass, and all other chords have the tonic in the bass. Any suggestions on four or five part harmonies for those chords?

[Layla Nahar]

You can get the sheet music to the Destiny's Child CD - what's it called - yes - Writing on the wall. All those vocal harmonies are all written out there for ya

bonne chance!

[ataranto]

My experience with gospel is that it's basically harmonizing a melody with block triads (simply double the soparno part if you have a bass part). Mostly parallel motion: contrary motion should be reserved for special effects; same with unison/octave doubling. It's a deceptively simply style, harmonically speaking.

For example, say you have 2 bars of a C chord in the key of C, and say your melody walks up the scale C-D-E-F-G. I'd harmonize it with the following triads: Cmaj-Dmin-Cmaj-Dmin-Cmaj. That means, while the sopranos sing C-D-E-F-G, the altos would sing G-A-C-D-E, and the tenors would sing E-F-G-A-C (basses would double the sopranos an octave below). This should work whether your C chord is Cmaj, Cmaj7, or C7.

Much of the style, of course, is in the articulation. Getting the choir to sing a part with the same elaborate phrasing (while belting it out), I think, is where most of the effect comes from: that they happen to be singing different notes just magnifies it. Concentrate on the phrasing, and the harmonization generally takes care of itself.

4+ part harmonies and you're not really talking gospel anymore; that's jazz harmony (like Take 6 or Manhattan Transfer). At that point, the harmonizations tend to become exponentially more complex

[tanlith]

Just an idea... go to your local church and see if they'll let you look at the sheet music they use... it'll all pretty much be there....


- Tanlith -

[ataranto]

Originally posted by tanlith
Just an idea... go to your local church and see if they'll let you look at the sheet music they use... it'll all pretty much be there...

Well, it has to be a pretty specific type of church...

I presume that "gospel", in this thread, means "black gospel". I'm not sure what would be a good commercial example: think the theme song to The Jeffersons for the gospel ~style~, if not the gospel ~theme~.

If you go into most protestant/evangelical churches, you'll find hymnals full of songs harmonized according to the voiceleading rules you learn in Harmony 101. That's a completely different beast. Anyway, churches where they sing the "black gospel" style are very likely not to have a note of what they're singing written down: gospel is typically taught to the choirs by rote.

[Mealz]

When you get your melody, just add extra notes below it going down the current chord. Occasionly add some higher as well.

This is assuming that you want fairly standard sounding parts.

ps - The bass part is rarely ever the same as the melody. It should be the root of the chord (except if you are using a chord like C/E - obviously the bass part would be an E)

The alto part would usualy be a third fourth or sixth below the melody etc.