I need help!!
I have been putting offf trying harmonies for ages now and I thought it was time I learned how. So please if anyone knows how...tell me!!!!
Thank you!!!!!

Heli wrote:

I need help!!
I have been putting offf trying harmonies for ages now and I thought it was time I learned how. So please if anyone knows how...tell me!!!!
Thank you!!!!!

Learning to harmonize is really about learning how to listen well to a song as a whole beyond the instrumental and the melody. Sometimes it's not apparent, but in many songs, there's usually a lot going on such as whispers, adlibs, etc. but usually the most easiest to detect is the harmonies.

I'll be back with more later. Switching OS.
2 minutes later... back.

Pick a song you love to bits and can listen to on repeat.
By listening closely you should be able to differentiate the different elements and activities happening in the song. Don't listen while trying to multitask other things like homework or watching tv or surfing the web. Just stop, listen, and pay attention. You'll hear the melody first. That's always most prominent, but if you listen further beyond the melody, you'll notice the high harmonies or low harmonies that come and go.

To actually sing the harmonies...
First: know your range. Know where you're comfortable singing in regards to highs (head voice/whistle) and lows (mix/chest).
Harmonies are usually a few notes higher or lower than the melody. If you know you can sing high enough or low enough, then you should be able to execute them. Start from singing the melody and gradually lower or heighten your voice until you reach the appropriate notes of the harmonies. If you need to, use a piano/well tuned guitar to hear the harmonies better or use vocal removal (sometimes vocal extraction leaves artifacts of the harmonies when it gets rid of the melody). Sometimes these options may not be available, so the key to listening and thus singing harmonies is in careful listening. Sometimes that means cranking the volume up higher than you're comfortable because harmonies are understated, but careful listening to all elements as if they were separate and then gradually moving up or down from singing the melody and listening to yourself so that you stay on pitch is key to learning how to sing harmonies.

lol I didn't know how to do harmonies and I'm still learning right now, but I found that practicing harmonizing made me improve a lot. For certain songs I use audacity to take off some of the main vocals and just sing the harmonies. Also another important thing for harmonizing the first time is kind of memorizing the harmonies...like how your vocal chords feel when you sing certain harmonies...it makes harmonizing in the future much easier...well for me at least XD

If you wanna practice harmonizing and you're not too good at it. I suggest trying to sing certain duets between a girl and boy...like the one I started out w/ is a duet by IU and Kim Soohyun from Dream High. You can start w/ that.

Anyways yeah....this is what I think and what I've learned from my experience w/ harmonizing

P.S. using audacity and a usb mic to make an acapella w/ harmonies is what I use the most to practice harmonizing

P.S.S. here's a link to my first harmonizing thingy..(I just used a random guys voice I found on youtube lol)

http://www.box.com/s/iz2apgytab8f985joxcr

GOOD LUCK! ^_^~~ I bet you'll get good at it soon! ^_^ :chiaki:

Thank you soo much guys!! I'll practice hard!! ^^

I'd pick a song where the harmonies are really apparent... eg. Soba Ni Iru Ne (Thelma Aoyama), that's what I started with. And like Lauren said, just listen to it a lot until you can pick out at least some of the harmonic notes, and get to know the general direction the notes move in (going higher, lower, large or small intervals, etc.) You probably can't pick out every single note of harmony right away, but if you can get at least some you should be able to figure out most of the rest by just kinda singing along to the harmony~

And then after ages of practice you get good at it. Like everything else in this world. Derp. <3