Oh... well, yeah. Should be simple for you then. I'm mostly a guitar player so yanno... I look at everything from the perspective of a fretboard. Just thought I'd try to help clarify. Sorry.

@ beepster:

 I'm formally trained and have been reviewing things that I did know and finding out things that I hadn't known, but used without realizing it.

I started taking classes in elementary school where we learned about melody, harmony and rhythm. However, I got into harmony in the later years. During that time, I taught myself - messing with software, reading books and to this day I'm still messing with software, reading materials, watching videos either reviewing stuff I do know or picking up on things I didn't realize.

Heck, I even 'taught" some of my classmates.

For instance, the major/minor keys. I was taught to go up a (major) sixth to find it relative minor; however, I noticed I could simply go down a (minor) third. This helped with determining intervals - especially if there compound ones.

To which the teacher (sub that day) said: "He's a good teacher!" lol

All of this helped shaped the sound that identifies me to people. "He adds color to his music." And this can be heard in my arrangements.

I do realize I put it on a bit thick and I don't mean to. I just say whatever comes to mind. Note, don't take that to mean me boasting, but I will tell you what I do know. Like I said, harmony and its intricacies are my favorite part of music.

Back to the voice-leading, that was just one example. There are many combinations.

I'll give you an example regarding one of my arrangements. Blossoms.

The strings (though on one track), can be split into four voices. (Five, but I look at them as in root note + chord - especially if it's beyond a 7th like on a piano.)

However, what my left hand does makes no difference; it's my right hand I'm worried about. So, to maintain comfort, my fingers don't move any more than an third (of some kind). And I know that the top note likes to "step down", so the other notes have to accomodate however they can to make this work. (It depends on where she wants to go and you can't tell her where! Don't ever make this mistake!)

Tension/Release or Conflict/Resolution. (Consonance/Dissonance)

That's the magic behind the magic of chord progressions/harmony.


@Jeff:

They're great! Thanks for the link! I bet you'll never forget that experience!!

Sorry for not replying, guys. I'm in the middle of a bunch of mayhem right now. Lots of cool posts here. I'll be back. Cheers.

I read something awhile back that the Beatles to avoid that problem with out of sync s's and t's was the one singing harmony didnt sing it to begin with.  So only one singer is ending the word or phrase with an "s" or "t". 

Though takes a bit of practise to pull it off. It's hard to un-learn all your parts to just drop the plosives and sibilance. Well at least I find it darn difficult! The other option is 5 hours of painstaking manual editing ;)

mmmm...I have a real bad habit of enunciating my words...that I got from doing theatricals.

Now I have to find ways to rid myself of these plosives...

Yeah, it really works. In a typical situation, the masking effect of the lead vocal tricks the listener into imagining the harder sounds are actually in the BVs. Obviously, this trick doesn't always work if you want BVs alone at some point. In that case, you'll need a "lead BV" slightly louder than the others doing the harder sounds.

mike_mccue


Here's a demo excerpt of something we did at my place last month. This harmony demo is a 2nd gen mp3 copy of an excerpt from the song demo mp3.

7 singers, some singing doubles:

http://harmoniccycle.com/.../demo/harmony-demo.mp3

Absolutely beautiful Mike. Left me wishing I could hear more.