From the course: Vocal Production Techniques

Unlock the full course today

Join today to access over 22,500 courses taught by industry experts or purchase this course individually.

Working with harmonies

Working with harmonies

From the course: Vocal Production Techniques

Start my 1-month free trial

Working with harmonies

- Harmonizing vocals in the studio is one of those topics where every producer or vocalist will have a different approach. One thing that's helpful I find is to have a piano or or MIDI keyboard handy so you can find and play notes to sing. Some producers will arrange and have all the harmonies played out as mini sequences so they can quickly move through the parts. Other producers rely on the singer to come up with harmonies on the spot. A good place to start is with the third and fifth scale degrees above the root note. To get a little more interesting, you can try experimenting with other scale degrees like the second, sixth, or seventh. Or even working in the octave above those. - When it comes to harmonies I've been able to sort of pick up on them just in my head. Having a mother who's a backup singer, the gig rubs off on you a little bit. But it's good to have the keyboard around if you want to build a slightly more technical harmony that's not just your sort of standard three…

Contents