Vocal Harmony Theory

Harmony is a fundamental aspect of vocal theory.

A harmony is a combination of complementary musical notes. A guitar chord, for instance, is made up of harmonic notes strummed at the same time. As a human voice cannot sing more than one not at any one time, multiple singers are needed to make harmonies. Because of this, all singers interested in vocal theory should have a working knowledge of vocal harmonic theory.

History

Harmonic theory has a long history in many different languages.

As a study of how musical notes complement one another, harmony has held an important place in the history of musical theory. Western musical theory became regularized by the Ancient Greeks in at least 300 BCE. The earliest currently available literature on the subject is in Latin and dates from about 300 CE. While many alterations have been made to this first theory of music, no other theory has replaced it.

Musical notes.

Musical notes.

All harmonic theory is based on notes. The basic musical notes are A, B, C, D, E, F, G. If a basic note has an additional note between it and the next basic note, that additional note is either flat or sharp. For instance, the note between A and B can be called either A# (A sharp) or Bb (B flat). Note all basic notes have these additional notes between them. The additional notes are: A (can have # or b), B (b), C (#), D (# and b), E (b), F (#), G (# and b). The sharp of a basic note is the same as the flat of the note above it. For instance, A# is the same note as Bb, C# is the same as Db, and so on.

Scales

Singing is basically moving up and down scales.

Scales are a series of notes that relate harmonically to one another. The C scale is the easiest scale on the piano and goes: C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. Each of these notes harmonically sound with one another. To make a melody in the scale of C you would only pick notes from the C scale, you would only play notes from the C scale to make a C chord, and if you wanted to sing a note to harmonize with a note from the C scale, you could pick another from the same scale.

Types

Major scales can make a song sound happy.

There are many different types of scales. The two basic types are major scales and minor scales. These can help vocalists choose how they want their harmonies to feel as a major scale generally seems quite upbeat while a minor scale can sound sadder. There are other types of scales, but the major and minor variations are the most common, the simplest and the most important for beginners to know.

Applications

Vocal harmony theory is useful for all sorts of music.

Harmonic theory is an essential part of any vocalist's training. Not only does it help vocalists sing harmonies that compliment another vocalist's melody, which is generally what backing singers do, but an understanding of harmony also helps vocalists write new and interesting melodies to chord sequences. Once a vocalist is aware of the scale that a chord sequence is written in, he can write a melody in the same scale, utilizing major or minor scale types to create melodies that harmonize with the basic chords in ways that can change the way a piece of music feels.

References

• Dictionary: "Harmony"
• Center for the History of Music Theory and Literature: "Thesaurus Musicarum Latinarum"
• Teoria: "Harmonic Functions"