Start With the Scales
With harmony, one person sings a song using one pitch while another person sings in a new pitch and/or adds notes around the initial pitch.
To sing harmonies, start by becoming informed about the major and minor scales. A scale is actually just a set of 8 successive notes within one octave, named using the letters A to G.
The major scale has note intervals that run whole-whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half. A minor scale has note intervals that go by whole-half-whole-whole-half-whole-whole.
When you sing harmony, the notes usually are from a major scale.
Find Two Voices
When someone sings in harmony, they sing around the original pitch and melody. The first person begins by singing a note from the melody. The vocals are sung over a progression of chords from an instrument and those chords are essentially harmonies themselves structured in a way to give a major (happy) sound or a minor (sad) sound. There are other flavors of chords however these are the primary two. But I digress. The second person will join in singing the same note, taking it to the next higher or lower pitch.
This practice is basically repeated many notes throughout a song, with the second voice singing above or underneath the melody the entire time.
Making Harmony Work
When you find yourself first learning to sing harmonies, you will require to get really comfortable with the tune. Many instructors advise learning both voice components. As a rule you will need lots of practice in making harmony work, but you will find those lucky few who seem to be able to join a melody at a different pitch with ease. It’s called on-the-fly harmony, because the harmonizer merely jumps right into the song and begins singing.
A one who can do on-the-fly harmony has a talent for quickly finding center pitch and also the melody. After listening to the melody for a small amount of time, they can determine the pitch and melody and then start singing. These are the same steps utilised in ear training.
In actual fact, the exercises for ear training should be considered to develop harmony skills as well. To illustrate, one may play a specific note on the piano, ascertain the pitch, and then imagine yourself singing it. Next, you'd actually sing it with the note on the piano. Try it again, but this time sing a note higher than the note played on the piano. The third time, sing a note below the piano note. Now you're singing harmonies.
If you take online singing lessons, several programs have interactive pianos and voice feedback. Using the software, you can practice matching pitch and then going higher and lower. Practice is the best way to develop perfect pitch.
No Mystery
Harmony is used in many differing kinds of singing, including country music, pop music, and rock music. The Eagles are famous for their capability to combine four very different voices into a melody with two or more harmonizing. Another example of lovely harmonies early on was the memorable sound of The Andrew Sisters. Boyz II Men are a recent example.
Adroit harmonizers make it seem simple. The principles behind this kind of singing are actually not difficult to understand, but it requires practice to learn how to correctly isolate pitch after which you can drop higher or lower.
