Step by Step Guide to Learning to Sing Harmony Spontaneously (Part 2)

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share my step by step process that I am using to learn to sing harmony on the fly.  This is the second of a two-part series.

In my last video, I shared the three components of learning that I've applied to learning to sing harmony spontaneously.  Consistency (I dedicate an hour per weekday to this learning process), training (I downloaded an online course that I'm working through), and practice (after I learn a concept from the training, I practice it exhaustively until I can hear and sing that harmony with practically any song).  So, what happens if I can't find the harmony and I need help?  This is true for me in portions of almost every song -- even songs that are relatively straightforward.  Intellectually, I understand how to find the harmony based on the training since it's generally just a third up or a third down from the melody line, but there are times that my ear just isn't hearing it. 

Working Out the Harmony

Here's what I do.  For this process, having a keyboard or a piano would be best.  My keyboard is currently on loan, so I started out by using this Piano app on my iPad (The Piano Free).  It's not perfect, but it's pretty good.  Several weeks in, I found myself feeling limited by the range of the iPad app and purchased this amazing fold up piano for just over $50 bucks.  I'll provide the link below (https://www.amazon.com/Folding-Portable-Keyboard-Educational-Beginner/dp/B07MDGZSXB), but it has 61 keys and folds up into almost nothing.  I wouldn't want to perform a concert piece on it, but it's more or less perfect for my needs.  So, here's what I do.  

• Find Lyrics - First, I find the lyrics to the song I'm practicing -- for example, say I'm learning harmony for The Star Spangled Banner.  I search for the lyrics and paste them into a note.  I use Evernote for this.
• Find the Melody - Next I then plunk out the melody on the keyboard and write down the notes above the lyrics for at least one refrain and one chorus.  I do this using just alphabetical notation, but you could do this in musical notation if you are good at that and you find it more helpful.  This is tedious, but it is necessary when you are starting out.  If you happen to have sheet music to the song you are working on, that eliminates some of these steps.
• Determine Key - This next step requires a little music theory, but not much.  I have to figure out the key that the song is written in.  Now that I have written down the notes that are used in the song, this should be relatively simple.  One cheat that I learned is that songs tend to end on the tonic note or the note that names the scale -- so if a song ends on a C, in most cases, the song is written in the key of C.  You have to know the key in order to work out the harmony line since notes that are not in the key will be too dissonant for good harmony.   Once I've determined the key, I actually will put little stickers on the piano keys to help me remember which notes are in the key and which aren't.  This is mostly because I got sick of playing the wrong notes and is a nice handicap for my aging brain.  I use these stickers that are only slightly sticky so that I can remove them and replace them for the next song.  For example, here are the notes for this song.  Looks like it uses three sharps, which you may already know, or you can always do a Google search, means that its in the key of A.  And here is my keyboard with all of the notes in the key marked with my stickers.  
• Play melody - Once I have the notes and the key, I can play the melody line on my keyboard and attempt to sing harmony with that.  It's generally easier for me to hear the correct notes to sing since there is less going on.  OR I can figure out the harmony by going a third above or a third below the melody notes and determine which notes I'm singing wrong.  The stickers make it easier to find the third above -- 2 notes above the melody in the key or a third below -- 2 notes down in the key.  It's a bit painstaking, but as my ear becomes more trained, I'm making fewer mistakes and the harmony is coming much easier.  Once I can sing it all the way through with the piano, I sing with the 
• Original music - It's definitely harder to find the harmony with the original music, so many times I'll have to stop at certain points and make sure that I'm singing the right notes by plunking it out on my keyboard.  I try to sing the entire song through without errors several times before going on to another song.  Then the next day I'll sing through this song again, since I may have lost some of the harmony during that short break.  I still go back and sing some of my earliest songs just for fun or while driving to make sure I'm still hearing the harmonizing notes.  If you are working with sheet music, I try to find a recording of the song that is as straightforward as possible.  For example, I'm working on Christmas Carols from sheet music, but then I'll try to find a traditional choir version of the song.  If I try to harmonize with individual artists, sometimes their improvising is too complicated to comfortably sing harmony with.
• More advanced - Now that I've been doing this for a couple of months, I'm hearing the harmony more easily right away and I don't have to do all of the steps listed above.  I really like the Apple Music interface on the iPhone for this, since they have the lyrics to most songs that scroll as the song is playing.  I play the song and when I expand the screen, I can hit this icon right here to see the lyrics.  It is nice that the lyrics line up with the music that is being played, like a karaoke app.  In addition, if you need to work on the harmony of a particular part of a song, you can just hit the lyrics for that part and it will go back to that portion without having to deal with the teeny tiny rewind and forward controls.  That said, and I just learned this, if you pull the controls up, you can make more granular adjustments to fast forward and rewind in smaller increments.  Now I'll sing through the song with the original music, note the parts that I have trouble with, figure out the key on my keyboard, and just work on those specific portions without writing everything down.  In addition, now that I’ve been doing this a while, I found it more instructive to note the scale degrees rather than the notes.  So, for a song in the key of C, instead of writing C E G, I would note the scale degrees 1 3 5.  This is more instructive since I’ve found that I have more trouble with specific scale degrees like 5 to 7.

I have also started a Trello board to keep track of my progress with this project.  The first list is Saher Galt's workshops parts 1-5.  I have checklists within each card to check off which lessons I've completed.  Then I have a list of songs that I'm working on, when I've mastered them, I moved them to this list which contains all of the songs that I can sing harmony to all the way through with no screw ups.  Then I have a list for songs that I've tried out, but that are a little above my ability level, and finally, a list of songs ideas that I'd like to try and other resources.

Right now, I'm mostly practicing what I've learned so far from Saher's workshop with songs that I've always wanted to learn the harmony to.  Once I feel like I really have the hang of doing harmony a third up and a third down, I'll return to his workshop to learn some additional harmonizing techniques and then use those new ideas to practice some more.   I don't need to be an expert at this -- I just want to be able to sing harmony spontaneously and confidently.  I'm finding the third up harmony to be the easiest for me to hear and sing since I'm trained as a first soprano.  My daughter, who is an Alto 1 or Soprano 2, finds the 3rd down easier to find.  In addition, there are some intervals that are just too difficult for me to hear and sing regularly -- as I said before, I'm thinking specifically of the 5th to 7th interval, so I'm learning to improvise on those notes as well.  Do whatever works for you.

For those of you, like me, who have always thought of this as a mountain that might be too high to climb, doing it little at a time like this is working well and is surprisingly satisfying.  In just about a week or two, I was confidently singing harmony to songs that I've always wanted to learn.  After a couple of months, I'm now picking out the harmony spontaneously to brand new songs.  AND I now know how to slow things down when I lose track to figure out where things went wrong.  Let me know what you think.  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!