Helpful Article on Writing Vocal Harmonies

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Oooh, this one is getting saved in my favorites!

Thanks, Scrubs!:D
 
The one thing I wish the author had emphasized more throughout the examples is that the harmony doesn't have to move at the same time. It's an excellent description of voicing, but a lot of the examples given can also be solved in other ways that might be more pleasing by changing certain harmony notes at different times.

For example, at one point, the author suggested an F#-A-C chord in G major, which naturally would tend to resolve to G-B. My natural inclination, assuming the A is the melody (or the C, really), would be to do one beat on the original chord, then drop the F# to a D for a beat, -then- resolve the upper parts to G and B.

Alternately, if the F# happens to be the melody, do a mid-chord change from C to E, under the assumption that this is probably really a Dmaj7 and can turn safely into a Dmaj9, and the E naturally leads to a high G, resulting in a (relatively) clean G-B-G. This also can be a bit more striking than the alternatives with a B or D on top, since both ends of the chord are the root.

That said, this is an excellent article. I guess what I'm really saying is that there should be a "part 2". :-)
 
there's really a lot that goes into harmonizing vocals. However it really comes down to music theory. There's a lot of rules that comes into play when harmonizing. Ex. Tension and diminished depending on melody, If you're playing a G chord and the melody contains something not within the triad (not G-B-D) and the note value is an eight note or less, you harmonize with a diminished chord. Likewise, you use a tension if the value is larger than an eight, which means you just add the note to the harmony. In short, there's really a lot to know when it comes to arranging and harmonizing and I would highly recommend buying a theory book. Paul Hindemith's Traditional Harmony is a standard.
 
blarg said:
there's really a lot that goes into harmonizing vocals. However it really comes down to music theory. There's a lot of rules that comes into play when harmonizing. Ex. Tension and diminished depending on melody, If you're playing a G chord and the melody contains something not within the triad (not G-B-D) and the note value is an eight note or less, you harmonize with a diminished chord. Likewise, you use a tension if the value is larger than an eight, which means you just add the note to the harmony. In short, there's really a lot to know when it comes to arranging and harmonizing and I would highly recommend buying a theory book. Paul Hindemith's Traditional Harmony is a standard.
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This isn't the same person as the composer Hindemith, is it? I think I'd rather learn music theory from Schoenberg or Ives.... :D

But seriously... I don't have the slightest clue what you just said. Well, I understand what you said, I just can't figure out what you meant.

My first pass at parsing that is that if I have A G-B-D triad in the chord and the melody hits an E, I should consider harmonizing with a G and a B-flat, which is clearly not the intent.

My second pass at parsing that is perhaps you meant C#-E-G, which could work in some styles of music...a tone poem, for example....

Or are you simply saying that for eighth notes (or quarters in moderately fast passages) you can get away with all sorts of dissonance, up to and including diminished chords against major chords, so long as they pass quickly on to something more in-chord?

Or are you saying something entirely different relating to whether to modify 7ths, 9ths, 11ths, and 13ths within the chord?

Or are you saying that the chord should momentarily be diminished on top of the major chord if you have a note that's a half step off from the chord, e.g. G-B-D-Bb-C# resolving quickly to G-B-D-B-D?

Any of those would be plausible interpretations of what you said (though either of the first two would have you branded an undeniable wacko of the Charles Ives' later works variety). :D
 
That article did my head in a bit..

I didn't like his anti-fifths agenda :(

edit: does anyone have a simpler explanation for notes wanting to 'resolve'? I've heard that term used so much but never quite gripped onto it completely..
 
DeathKnell said:
That article did my head in a bit..

I didn't like his anti-fifths agenda :(
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There's nothing wrong with fifths. I recently wrote a piece for church choir, brass, piano, various other stuff in which essentially the entire piano and chorus part consisted of contrary motion in open fifths. It can be quite stunning if done tastefully.

That said, most of the time, overuse of fifths does sound rather dull.... I think I wrote the piece that way almost entirely as an exercise to prove that it could be done in a way that still sounded interesting....


DeathKnell said:
edit: does anyone have a simpler explanation for notes wanting to 'resolve'? I've heard that term used so much but never quite gripped onto it completely..
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Bleh. It's not a pleasant subject. The way I tend to think of it (and I'm sure this is very incomplete) is this:

1. Notes tend to want to move toward the nearest note in the nearest voicing of a fairly common chord. There's probably some logical priority to this as far as what to do when two chords are equidistant, but....

2. In the case of chords that change by "walking", i.e. one or more of the notes moves up or down by either a half step or a whole step, the progression as a whole will want to continue moving in that direction.

3. In the case of a note that recently skpped, it will simply tend to move by moving by the least number of half steps to a note in the next chord.

4. If #2 and #3 conflict, and would result in a note that's outside the resulting chord, you have a voicing problem that will usually result in a skip of a voice (which is generally, IMHO, somewhat undesirable in a harmony, but fine in a melody; opinions will no doubt differ).

5. If #3 alone results in two voices being on the same note, you have a voicing problem.

The article tends to focus on points 4 and 5 and how to solve those sorts of problems.
 
The author of that article (and several other good ones) is lykwydchykyn from this board. Still around?
 
dgatwood said:
The one thing I wish the author had emphasized more throughout the examples is that the harmony doesn't have to move at the same time. It's an excellent description of voicing, but a lot of the examples given can also be solved in other ways that might be more pleasing by changing certain harmony notes at different times.

For example, at one point, the author suggested an F#-A-C chord in G major, which naturally would tend to resolve to G-B. My natural inclination, assuming the A is the melody (or the C, really), would be to do one beat on the original chord, then drop the F# to a D for a beat, -then- resolve the upper parts to G and B.

Alternately, if the F# happens to be the melody, do a mid-chord change from C to E, under the assumption that this is probably really a Dmaj7 and can turn safely into a Dmaj9, and the E naturally leads to a high G, resulting in a (relatively) clean G-B-G. This also can be a bit more striking than the alternatives with a B or D on top, since both ends of the chord are the root.

That said, this is an excellent article. I guess what I'm really saying is that there should be a "part 2". :-)
Click to expand...


Ok I'm confused by a lot of what y'all are saying. First Blarg is talking about using "diminished" to harmonize. Diminished what? Why diminished, and what does it have to do with the price of eggs? Is he talking specifically about the F#-A-C diminished chord, because he said "contains a note not in the G triad." But there's lot of notes that aren't in the G triad: A, C, E, and F#. Dgatwood replied to this much the way I have, but Blarg still hasn't explained what he meant, so I thought I'd second the motion.

And then above, Dgatwood, you call F#-A-C a Dmaj7, which it's not. It would be D7. Is that what you meant to say?

I never thought there could be so much hooplah about vocal harmonies. It seems like a pretty simple subject to me, providing you know some basic music theory.
 
famous beagle said:
And then above, Dgatwood, you call F#-A-C a Dmaj7, which it's not. It would be D7. Is that what you meant to say?
Click to expand...

Yeah, right, flat 7. My bad.
 
Purge said:
The author of that article (and several other good ones) is lykwydchykyn from this board. Still around?
Click to expand...
Tom,

Last Activity: 03-09-2005

It's been awhile...
 
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