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.
Here we start a series of singing exercises with harmony that anyone can use. How? This post has sing-along sound tracks. Young musicians, non-musician parents, and pre-musician adults (anyone who can open their mouths and sing) will find them priceless. Later posts also contain sing-along songs. Check them out in The Intonation Flight Simulator.
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, read Why Use a Synth Voice Instead of Real Voices.
This post uses musical terms. See the Glossary at the end of the article for definitions.
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.
Especially, 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.
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
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