Harmonies

[RichS]

Greetings,

Years ago I purchased your album, mainly because I to used an AW4416 and was inspired by your production. I was wondering if you could tell me how you come up with your vocal harmonies, I watched your video and seen how you do octaves but what I wonder is, what harmonies do you use? 3rd, 5th??

It seemed in that video that I watched when you did the harmonies you didn't follow the root exactly note for note, just wondering how you do them.

Thank you and I love your music!

 

[Axl Torn]

I'm not sure but I think he follows traditional part-writing skills which you could learn in a music theory class.
They're really nifty for choir parts I believe so.
Every bunch of notes are labeled as chords. So he would be using the root, 3rd, 5th and even the 7th depending on the chord. Other wise it could just be the octave.
Theirs also inversions of the chords too make the the chords flow better as well as rules to make the harmony play out smoother.
It's confusing stuff heh

But for any other harmony it might be just a 3rd. They tend to song pretty awesome most of the time.

 

[RichS]

Thanks Axl Torn, I understand octaves and traditional harmonies but they tend to all follow the same melody or series of notes within a scale. What I see Matt doing is actually sing a completely different melody when he comes to the Harmonies.

The root that he begins with is followed strictly with lower octaves, note for note. The harmonies use a completely different melody all together, it's that different melody that interests me, why not simply follow the root, just in 3rds as the scale dictates?

I hope Matt chimes in and understand what I am talking about, lol

**Edit**

After watching the video again, I see that Matt simply creates a different part starting on a 3rd or 5th and octaves off of it.

I think I understand what he is doing now and it's genius!


.

 

[Matt Smith]

I hate to give such a worthless answer, but I really don't even think about it. I don't get nearly that scientific about it. Harmonies just come very natural to me, probably because I grew up singing and listening to so much music. The only time I get technical with it is if I feel like the part needs a third or fourth harmony, but I'm struggling to come up with one. In a case like that, I'll sit down with an acoustic guitar and pick out the opening chord of the choir part note by note (root, 3rd, 5th, whatever else). That will usually show me a note I've missed in the harmonies, and I'll take that note and build another harmony around it. But 95% of the time it just comes naturally.

 

[RichS]

Thanks for the reply Matt, I understand what you mean. Can you tell me though in the video you did, do you just sing along to a scratch guitar or keyboard playing the notes you are singing, then group and paste them throughout the song?

Thanks again!