Singers: Do you harmonize "by feel"?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Professional and shower singers alike are welcome to answer.

I love to sing. Always have. And I almost always sing harmony when I’m singing along with CDs, hymns, caroling, etc. One year a friend and I got together with another woman and tried to get a three-part a capella group going. Unfortunately the third person dropped out after a few months. But those half-a-dozen rehearsals were like magic. We were all natural harmonizers, and after one or two practice starts on a song, we’d let loose with some brilliant stuff. Amazing because we’d never sung together before, and yet we’d just automatically produce fabulous three-part harmony.

I mentioned to a friend of mine, who’s studied music extensively, my near-compulsive habit of singing harmony. And she told me that many trained musicians cannot do it – cannot sing harmony by ear. She said it’s unusual – most singers need the part written out, and have to practice. These people can’t create their own harmony.

This surprises me. Can it be true, or is my friend blowing sunshine up my skirt? I know that for complex multi-voice pieces, of course one must learn a specific part and rehearse, but how can a musician who can sing be unable to just noodle up their own simple harmony to accompany a melody? I’ve never had any voice training, although I did take piano lessons (and still play almost every day) and played flute in HS band (have a flute, but rarely play it). I play the piano strictly from sheet music and suck at improvising, transposing, etc. But my harmony singing is completely by ear. I’ve even caught myself harmonizing to songs I’ve never heard before. Sure, I had a few clunkers, but mostly I could “feel” where the song was going. And it wasn’t always a formulaic chord progression either.

(On a side note [pun not intended], I seem to do descants a lot – in fact, I almost never sing below the melody. I’d describe my range as somewhere between soprano and alto.)

Singers, what are your thoughts about this?

2

I’ve done some singing on stage, folk/acoustic stuff.

The group I used to sing with was similar to yours, Scarlett67, natural harmonisers. I can’t actually read music beyond guitar chords and tab (and even tab I’m pretty rusty), and I just seem to drop into lower harmonies, under the melody line, quite naturally.

I’ve done some choral singing as well, and I have a much harder time sticking to the line I’m supposed to be singing. I keep wanting to find a harmony to it, and having to remind myself that the middle of Handel’s “Messiah” is not really the time or place for noodling.

Honestly, I can’t imagine not being able to find a harmony to a song.

3

Yes, that’s me. Not that I’ve done choral singing, but I often sing just the harmony. Sometimes I switch back and forth midsong between melody and harmony. This drives Mr. S nuts – although he likes my singing otherwise. It doesn’t bug me because I can hear both parts in my head.

And I’m constantly amazed at the number of excellent folk musicians I’ve met who can’t read a note of music. How do they do it??? Wow.

4

I naturally harmonize to the point, sometimes, that I have to outright focus on the melody line to sing it. It isn’t a matter of seeing the part written. I just know the gaps between notes, and I know what makes harmony, so I know how far up to go. I don’t count or anything, I just … know what’ll work. And yes, to the point where I can do the harmonies that move around a lot. It’s a helluva lotta fun.

Part of the reason for that is that when I was growing up I wsa exposed to a LOT LOT LOT of multipart songs, and my family (father’s youngest of eleven) is kinda large, so in family gatherings you’d generally have lots of people on each part. And my mother sang to me a lot, and when I was singing with our family I’d usually be near her. She’s an alto.

So most of my bam harmonies, so to speak, are generally just lines that happen to occur where an alto line might, or two steps down on the sheet music, or something like that. I’m slowly gaining the ability to do the harmonies for tenors (which is difficult because with some of them I really have to belt notes to get them whole, and when you’re wrong … ouch).

I don’t read sheet music, so in that sense seeing the notes there wouldn’t give me much. Given a starting note I can usually extrapolate a good bit from the start, and given one run-through I often don’t need another. I can then go about making the harmony line, though again I don’t read sheet music and I can’t write music at all (I actually have line notes in my notebook from me trying to “write” music. Doesn’t work. I can’t tell what I meant at all).

So for me it’s just something I learned, not anything I get from the written piece.

5

Some people are more adept at picking out chord structures than others. I’m not a singer per se, but I can and do pick harmonies out alright. And people with better voice control do a better job. I think I can safely say that both these conditions apply to you.

There are also those people who can’t do anything without absolute instructions, who need to use music. They tend to not have as much “creativity” as people like you. While such people can become technically proficient musicians, they can’t improvise. That requires a creative streak. I fall somewhere in between, though I tend to rely on music.

I can’t say if your friends’ opinions are accurate, as I’ve worked with both kinds of people. I find that the distribution of creative and non-creative is about equal so I can’t say it’s unusual. But it’s a really cool ability to have!

6

I can sing a harmony, but in my head, I’m looking at the line I’m singing. It’s a matter of getting a feel for the chord structures, then figuring out what kind of a line would be best to complement the melody, and then going with it. I always screw it up, though - the curse of being a tenor. :slight_smile:

Esprix

7

The muse strikes in different ways.

Yes, it is possible for someone to be able to sing well, yet be unable to create harmonies “by ear”. Unfortunately for the rest of us, the people who can’t do it don’t always know they can’t do it…

In a related issue, back in the high school band my instrument was trombone because I had perfect relative pitch, and I could tell immediately whether I was playing in tune, and compensate accordingly. Not everyone could do it.

(Thanks to the slide, one can play an out-of-tune trombone in-tune by modifying where one stops the slide. I imagine someone playing a fretless string instrument, such as a violin, could do the same thing.)

I bring it up because it seems to be at least a related skill.

8

I majored in music in college but didn’t specialize in voice.

Your story reminds me of the ear training exercises we music majors were required to do. We had to differentiate between, for example, a major 3rd and a minor 3rd. Or a chord was played and we had to write down what the chord was. This was extremely difficult for me, as well as for the vast majority of music majors. I would say maybe only 5% or so could do it relatively easily.

From my experience it seems like it’s really difficult to “train” an ear which isn’t that way naturally. Also, I’ve noticed that the people who do have perfect pitch, can’t understand how others can’t hear it too. I know you’re not claiming to have perfect pitch, but I would hazard a guess that your natural harmonizing ability falls in this realm as well. I think it’s something innate.

9

I see you’ve met my ex-girlfriend…

=)

10

Scarlett, I’m like you- I always pick out the harmony. I went to college to study voice- I wanted to become an opera singer. Mind you, I took the private lessons and such, but I never did well in Music Theory and I am sorely lacking in that aspect, as those courses fell by the wayside at the behest of my voice teacher. I know that I am good at sight-reading, and I have a very good ear for the correct pitch (I can’t STAND it if a note is even slightly off-key). I have always been able to pick out harmony, and I LOVE stuff like the Beatles because they have such groovy harmonies in their songs. One thing I noticed is that sometimes when I’m listening to a song, sometimes it seems like the harmony is actually the lead vocal line, I guess because my ear is more focused on that. This is a very interesting discussion- thanks for bringing it up!

11

I can harmonize on my own–sometimes! If I’m trying to sing harmony in a choir, I’m usually going mainly by feel and using the music as a reference. I can’t do it reliably, though, and usually try to learn the part well. Just singing along with any old music, I’ll go back and forth between the melody and my own harmony.

I do, however, always know when I’m singing the right note in a piece, whether I’m doing the melody or the harmony. So that’s useful.
Does anyone have an opinion on harmonizing with music they’ve heard all their lives? Is it easy or hard? With hymns I’ve heard since I was a baby, I sometimes almost have to sing the melody, and it’s tricky for me to learn the alto part.

12

I think the “I love to sing. Always have” part is key. Since you (I’m guessing) pretty much grew up singing and harmonizing you naturally gave yourself the ear training that vexes the music students that greenlady refers to.

Ear training was just so much torture for me, but it turned out to be one of the most useful things I took away from music school. Before ear training I could harmonize pretty well, but that’s probably because I had been singing since I was a little kid. I’m a drummer, btw.

As for classically trained musicians not being able to harmonize by ear - that doesn’t really surprize me because maybe it’s not a necessary skill (at least to get into college). Although it’s always a plus to be well-rounded as a musician, it’s important, especially in the classical world (and especially if they’re young and auditioning for everything), to be able to sing difficult passages with accuracy and grace. They’ve developed their ear to the point where they can tell if they hit a bum note they’re off key, but they may have traded developing their sense of harmony for other disciplines and techniques that are more critical for the task at hand.

13

Trained opera singer and musicologist checking in. IMO, experience in listening is the key.

Years ago when I sang alto in choir I could harmonize “by feel” fairly well, but after years of singing primarily soprano solo repertoire I have a hard time of it. I’m just out of practice listening for harmonies, and it gets rusty. It helps me a lot to have the music since I am a pretty good sight reader. Incidentally, standard alto and bass lines (sung an octave up just for kicks) are fairly predictable to my ear, but I never got the hang of tenor.

For me, sight reading can get to be a crutch, though, and often substitutes for really listening to the harmony and predicting where the next chord and, therefore, my next note are going. When reading I pay more attention to the intervals in my line alone and only secondarily listen to the harmony, just to stay in tune. This tendency might partially explain why many trained musicians lose (or never learn) the ability to improvise by ear.

Tavalla’s mention of Handel brings another thought to mind. Much classical vocal (and instrumental) music is too complex to improvise harmonic lines. Once you get to anything more tricky than hymns or other basically diatonic music in homophonic textures, then singing by ear becomes less useful that being able to read the written music. So there is little incentive to listen in a way that would foster improvisation.

When I think about the repertoire I’m working on right now, Wagner, Faure and Duparc, the possibility of predicting what the next harmony is going to be in many passages becomes rather low. The music is too chromatic, with frequent shifts of key and modality. I can’t imagine improvising that harmony. Sometimes I feel lucky finding my melody! (No perfect pitch here.)

I’m not really up on popular music, but I suspect that harmonies may be easier to predict. From what little I’ve heard recently there seems to be a fair amount of parallel motion, movement in thirds, repetitions of harmonic patterns and so on. That kind of music would be more amenable to improvisation of harmony.

You also have to take into account the “sanctity” (la di da) of the classical composer’s music. For better or worse, the harmony written by the composer is typically sung or played exactly as written and isn’t meddled with in performance. Just another reason why improvising wouldn’t be a skill worth practicing. Use it or lose it. Too bad about modern practice because, historically, trained musicians were expected to be able to improvise. Nowadays, unless you play jazz or get the occasional cadenza, improv simply isn’t a part of the training.

14

My wife cannot for the life of her tell whether a chord is major or minor. When I say “flatted third” I may as well be speaking another language. Which, in a sense, I suppose I am.

I very much agree. My brother-in-law whistles unknowingly off-key constantly. Well, probably not constantly, but a little of that goes a long way when you’re one of those cursed with the ability to tell.

Oh, well, I’m getting old. Soon I’ll be deaf and it won’t bother me any more. :smiley:

15

Wow. A lot of fascinating ideas. Thanks for the great discussion, all!

My ability to harmonize was certainly not inherited. My mother used to yell at me for singing the harmony in church (even though it was right there in the hymnal) because “it sounds like you’re singing the wrong notes and you’re screwing everyone else up.” No I WASN’T, but thanks for appreciating me, Mom. :mad:

And yeah, most of the music I “noodle” to is pop and folk, which are more amenable to improvisation than classical. (Side note: While trying to transpose Joe Jackson’s “Hometown” on the piano so I could sing and play it, I discovered that it uses the exact same key and chord progression as Pachelbel’s Canon in D. Wonder if he knows that? :D)

16

I’m a trained musician (piano), but I’ve always done a fair amount of singing as well, largely untrained. I can usually harmonize fairly easily, especially if I either know the song or if it’s popular music, where the chord structure is a little more predictable. It helps that I sing bass, also, so roots and fifths figure prominently.

I was also a member of SPEBSQSA (barbershop quartet society) off and on for a number of years. Now that’s interesting harmony (though also still predictable, within the confines of its genre).

Most of the guys who sing barbershop are not trained musicians, and can’t read a note of music. The joke is that even those who can read music don’t let it interfere with their singing. Still, the more experienced ones can listen to the lead (melody) and find their way through their part. Barbershoppers call it “woodshedding,” and it’s an acquired skill. I’ve seen four guys get together at conventions and huddle together while they woodshed a song that only the lead knows. They might even be four perfect strangers. But they come up with passable harmony.

I think it’s all what you’re used to. Classically trained singers who are music-bound can hear and anticipate the harmonies (and even fine-tune their pitch during a performance), but they’re less apt to create harmonies on the fly, due to their larger experience of adhering to what the composer originally wrote. Were they also to get involved in a different type of singing, where improvisation or freestyle harmonization were the norm, they would probably be able to do it after a period of readjustment. Most, not all, would, I bet.

17

I can’t do it. I can sing it, but it needs to be mapped out… I have to really concentrate on the harmony so as not to start singing the melody of the song. (usually—) I mean, I can pick it out and everything… Just can’t quite get the hang of singing it without mapping it out.

(i’m assuming that you don’t mean, singing the same notes in a different pitch… but actually singing your own thing or the harmony lines from the song)

18

I can read music, was trained in high school to sight-read , but I believe I also have a natural “feel” for harmony. Unless it’s a really tricky harmony, I can sing it pretty well without music. For the trickier chords and harmonies, I sometimes need to work with it over time, and go to the piano to figure it out. The most important thing for any singer, though, is loving it!! Which I do, and I wish I had more opportunities for singing. But I live in Joeblowville and even karoake is hard to come by!! :smiley:

19

My husband is pretty good at harmonizing naturally (he plays fiddle–I don’t know if that has anything to do with it). I sing alto but I have to learn the part.

20

I sing entirely by ear. I can’t read music for voice at all. For instruments, sure, but I don’t know how to make my throat make a C (a bouncy C?). I CAN find the note if I’m given a pitch, but that’s a match game. I can’t, a minute later and without a guide pitch, give you a note that I’d swear to be a C.

Still, I sing fairly well by ear. I normally sing melody, dropped an octave since I’m a baritone. I don’t normally have any trouble finding a harmony part to sing if I’m in the mood to do so.