Estimated reading time 7 minutes
Table of Contents
Introduction
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 in tune.
The post 10 Elements that Impact Singing in Tune discusses the ten components that effect harmonizing in tune. Today, we’ll look in detail at the fourth element, Harmony Is Tone Color. Here we’ll talk about learning to sing in tune. If you’d like a practical singing lesson, see:
This article uses technical musical terms. For definitions, see the Glossary at the end of the post.
Harmony Is Tone Color: Review
In the fourth element section from 10 Elements: Harmony Is Tone Color, we learned that these factors impact singing in tune:
Click the links to review each concept, which will then be expanded in the present post.
Fusion and Harmony Is Tone Color
Mobile users: for best results reading the chart, tilt your screen 90o to the right.
- The chart above contains the harmonic overtones from the root, third, fifth, and octave of a C major chord. You will see that the color coding shows the lowest common partial between the different chord tones.
- The number on the left of each note label defines the partial number. The number to the right of each note defines the theoretical cent value for each partial.
- Basically, harmony happens when the ear goes, “Wait does this harmonic go with this note or this note?” At that point, the notes fuse into a single, large complex tone, creating a shift in tone color. This result happens as the balance of the harmonic overtones changes when some harmonics get reinforced while others become masked.
- “…when a chord full of pitches is produced in a manner approximating the tuning of partials, the result is that the individual pitches tend to disappear into the Gestalt of the sound itself” (Lies My Music Teacher Told Me 68).
- The shift in tone color, as the notes of a chord lock into tune, shows what harmony is. This is what you need to listen for. Fusion shows you our first tuning cue, and it remains an extremely important one. Our sense of harmony comes from the tone color that note fusion creates.
- For vocalists, you sing on the vowels, which creates your tone color. Gerald Eskelin states, “From a vocal standpoint, ‘vowel’ is simply another name for ‘timbre’… The sound of a pure ‘ee’ is very different from the sound of a pure ‘oo.’ In a sense, they are simply different ‘instruments’ created by changing the relative strengths of partials” (Components of Vocal Blend 14).
- As you watch the following video, listen to the vowels and how the tone color shifts as the singers change harmonies.
A Cappella Singing Video
Beats and Harmony Is Tone Color
Beats Video
- So, how do we define beats? By hearing them. Please watch the above video. (Wearing headphones will make it easier for you to hear the beats.) Can you hear the pulsating wah-wah-wah sound in the video? If yes, you have just experienced beating partials.
- If you make the beats go away as you sing, you’ll have tuned the harmonies accurately. In addition, Ternstrom and Sundberg found that tuning up the first common partial played an especially important role.
- They state, “The results indicate that the accuracy of intonation increases if the lowest common partial in enhanced by a formant…” (69).
- Thus, when tuning the octave in our C major chord chart above, making the lowest common partial beatless brings the intervals into tune. Therefore, the lowest C partials (color coded green) help with tuning the octave. Likewise, the E partials help tune the major third (red) and the lowest Gs (light blue) for the perfect fifth. Finally, the B partials (orange), help tune the minor third.
- The next factor, showing that harmony is tone color, has to do with the critical bands. This gets perceived as a buzz between the notes of a harmonic interval.
Buzz and Harmony Is Tone Color
The Buzz
- The critical bandwidth creates a buzz (or roughness) between partials that have very close frequencies. Partials within the critical bandwidth travel down the same neural pathway, while those outside it don’t.
- When the partials reside outside the critical bandwidth, you don’t hear roughness. Conversely, when the frequencies lie within the critical bandwidth, you do. The more harmonic overtones that fall within the critical bands, the greater the dissonance of the interval.
- For example, in the C chord chart above, the root and octave have no patrials that fall within the critical bandwidth. (For most of the audible frequency range, the roughness starts when the partial’s intervals become slightly smaller than a minor third.)
- However, partial number five in the root lies within the critical bandwidth from partial number three of the fifth. Therefore, the fifth sounds more dissonant than the octave. Likewise, the root and third have a set of partials within the critical bandwidth.
- The interval of a minor third, between the third and fifth of the chord, has two partials within the critical bandwidth. Partial numbers four and five in the third reside within the critical bandwidth from partial numbers three and four respectively of the chord’s fifth. Thus, the minor third sounds more dissonant than either the octave, the fifth, or the major third.
- The next section gives you a practical example of this harmony-is-tone-color concept in action.
Soundtrack Example
- Listen to the track below. It has fifths (C & G) played in descending octaves on the keyboard. In conventional music theory, all these fifths should have the same level of consonance.
- You can hear that the fifths have more and more buzz as they go lower on the organ. This happens because the critical bandwidth becomes wider as the pitch goes lower. This explains why the last fifth sounds rough and dissonant. Nonetheless, according to music theory it should still be consonant.
- The critical bands define consonance and dissonance. Harmony is tone color. However, the critical bands also contribute to the harmony’s tone color.
Fifths on the organ:
Inharmonic Partials and Harmony Is Tone Color
- What happens when the partials don’t conform to the harmonic series? We can see the harmony-is-tone-color concept at work here too.
- According to William Sethares, master gamelan tuners use the roughness of the critical bands to tune inharmonic instruments in the gamelan orchestra. Gongs and straight bar xylophones comprise the main instruments of the gamelan (see the above right picture – the bottom picture for mobile).
- In this case, beating partials don’t get used for tuning the instruments. When discussing two master gamelan tuners, Sethares states, “Neither tuner uses beats when he tunes, although they are both well aware of their existence” (215).
- When the sound of harmonic and inharmonic spectrum instruments gets combined, they tend to tune approximately to the equi-pentatonic or equi-heptatonic scale. The equi-pentatonic scale has five equal notes per octave, while the equi-heptatonic has seven.
- Western xylophones have most of the wood on the underside of each bar carved out. If you squint at the above left picture (top for mobile), you can see this in the closest bars. This reduces the inharmonic partials, allowing the Western xylophone to be tuned to equal temperament (the piano’s tuning).
- The first video below shows a performance at the Hilton College, a boy’s private school in South Africa. You will observe that the African xylophones have straight bars, which will retain the inharmonic spectrum. However, the harmonic intervals played on the instruments sound just fine.
- Nevertheless, the tuning of the melodies has an exotic quality. This results from the melodic stretching that happens when inharmonic spectrum instruments tune harmonically. Particularly, you can hear that the last three melody notes in the song have been stretched compared to Western tuning.
- In the second video, you can hear the impact of the tuning the on melody even more.
South African Xylophone Video
Swahili Balaphone Video
Conclusion
Harmony is tone color. However, the three components that comprise tone color gives you different controls for tuning up harmonies. Eliminating beating combined with listening for the sound of note fusion and listening to the buzz from consonance/dissonance all factor into harmonic tuning. Use them to your advantage.
© 2021 Geoffrey Keith
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Glossary
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Color Code Key Signatures for LD Students
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Playing the Piano with Color Coded Notes
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Singing Rhythm Syllables in 6-8 Time
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