Estimated reading time 4 minutes
Table of Contents
Everybody Harmonize with Singing Exercises with Harmony!
Feel embarrassed about singing out of tune? Singing Exercises With Harmony’s sing-along song tracks makes it easy to learn how to harmonize. Keep reading to learn how to work with the singing exercises with harmony.
This post uses musical terms. See the Glossary at the end of the article for definitions.
This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission from purchases made through the links. I’ll only recommend products I use, use in lessons, or ones my students or colleagues have recommended.
The Parts and Singing Exercises with Harmony
Mobile users: for best results reading the music, tilt your screen 90o to the right.
© 2020 Geoffrey Keith
The next post will explain the shape notes in the sheet music above.
Choral Arrangement:
The Vocal Parts
The short choral singing exercise with harmony parts above is from the post 10 Elements that Impact Singing in Tune.
Each sound track below acts as a harmonic sound model.
- Specifically, singing along with the specially tuned sound tracks trains the ear to hear how well tuned chords should sound.
- I say the ear, but really it establishes the brain’s mental pitch template as you listen.
- Let’s look at each part from the above score one by one.
Even thought there is no break in the synth-vocal parts, take a breath before each note.
- If you run out of breath, your pitch can sink, making you go out of tune.
- Start by singing the vowel oh, which blends well with the synth-vocal sound.
- When working on harmonic tuning, listen to the tone of the voice part.
Also, listen for the amount of buzz between notes and any beating (the wah-wah-wah sound).
- If you hear beating, adjust your pitch until the beating fades away.
- The song tracks use synthetic voices rather than actual voices.
- Research has shown that this will help with the ability to identify and produce absolute pitch information.
For more information:
Here are the parts:
Soprano & Organ:
Alto & Organ:
Tenor & Organ:
Bass & Organ:
The range of notes for each part is very narrow.
- This means that, despite the labeling of the voice parts, each voice type will be able to practice more than one part.
- Plus, children should be able to manage singing the soprano, alto, or tenor parts.
As you listen to the separate voice parts, notice how the shifting chords effect the melody.
- Can you hear the little “halos” around each note?
- Even though there is a little vibrato in the synth-vocal and organ sounds, you should sing the examples without vibrato.
- This is especially true when singing the vocal parts with the solo organ (next section).
Singing with the Organ Accompaniment & More Parts Work
Solo Organ:
Try to sing your part with the solo organ sound track.
- Pay attention to all of the things we talked about in the last section.
- After singing oh with the solo organ, try the vowels ay, ah, ee, and oo one by one.
Now let’s combine the voice parts.
- The following sound tracks give examples of singing exercises with harmony parts that are divided by gender.
- First, sing along with the soprano and alto parts followed by singing with the tenor and bass parts.
- Listen for how the tone color changes when the two voice parts combine together.
Soprano & Alto with Organ:
Tenor & Bass with Organ:
SATB and Singing Exercises with Harmony
Now, we will look at an example of a singing exercise with harmony in the full SATB vocal setting (without organ).
- SATB stands for soprano, alto, tenor, and bass.
- It indicates a four-part setting using all of the basic voice types.
- Once again, notice what combing all four parts together does to the tone color.
Be aware of how your part sounds as it sits within the four-part harmony.
- Try to sing your part with the rest of the arrangement.
- Then, try to sing the other parts.
- Practice these exercises daily until you have mastered them.
Once you have done that, get some friends together and sing the arrangement.
SATB without Organ:
Conclusion
This shows practical singing exercises with harmony.
- Once again, the sound tracks function as harmonic sound models.
- The next post, Shape Note Sight Singing Success, highlights melodic sound models and sight singing with shape notes.
- Melodic tuning focuses on the distance between melody notes.
- Conversely, harmonic tuning focuses on how the tone color shifts as notes combine going from chord to chord.
Have fun and keep practicing!
© 2021 Geoffrey Keith
Glossary
Explore Bach’s Epic Orchestral Music in Less Than Four Minutes
Would you like to explore Johann Sebastian Bach’s instrumental music but don’t have a lot of time to spend doing it? Bach is one of the most celebrated composers in classical music. He’s best known for writing delightfully complex polyphonic music. Keep reading to explore Bach’s epic orchestral music in less than four minutes. Estimated reading time 3 minutes.
Read More
Harmony is Tone Color
Do you want to sound like your favorite vocal artist? What exactly is harmony, and how does it affect singing in tune? Harmony is tone color, read more to learn how this fact impacts singing (or playing) in tune. Estimated reading time 7 minutes.
Read More
Chord Progression (Including the 12 Bar Blues)
What’s a chord progression? It’s when you have a sequence of successive harmonies. In this post, we’ll look at common chord progressions, including rock n roll, the 12 bar blues, and jazz chord progressions. These can work as either piano chord progressions or guitar chord progressions. Read “Chord Progression (Including the 12 Bar Blues)” to learn the harmonic structure for these three styles of music. Estimated reading time 4 minutes.
Read More
2112’s Guitar Tuning
Do you want to know how Alex Lifeson tunes his guitar in the sci-fi rock opera 2112? How does experience with playing the violin or viola impact how guitarists tunes? This space opera may be the only example of a guitarist’s tuning being included as part of the finished product. At the beginning of the section entitled Discovery the hero finds a guitar, then tunes and plays it. Read more to learn about 2112’s guitar tuning. Estimated reading time 7 minutes.
Read More