Worship Musician Magazine October 2020 | Page 108

KEYS
WHAT HARMONY DO I SING ? ( PART 2 ) | Ed Kerr
In the last issue I gave you some tips on how to find a great sounding duet harmony someone can sing along with a lead vocal . Knowing how to help your vocalists ( or yourself ) find a duet to sing with a melody is a great skill for any musician , and it seems like keyboard players are the ones on the worship team most often leaned on to discover vocal parts like this .
Becoming comfortable with finding duet harmonies is more important than ever since duet vocals are heard much more often than three part harmonies on recordings . Knowing how to find that third vocal part is an important skill , though . Sometimes you may want to let your vocal arrangement “ blossom ” later in your song . Perhaps for a second bridge or a final chorus . In those spots hearing the third part sung can really add to the impact of what you ’ re singing .
Your understanding of chord theory will again come into play as you develop your skill at figuring out three part harmonies . Recognize that the chords in your song in their most basic form contain three notes . Please refer to my previous article for some important details about this . In that article I stated that the interval of a sixth and its inversion , the third , is the interval most often used when creating a duet harmony .
So , as you work to determine what other note to add when you ’ re creating three part harmonies , you ’ ll need to know the three notes that each chord in your song contains . For my examples here , I ’ m going to use “ What A Beautiful Name ” as I did in my previous article . We ’ ll look at the song in C major . Here ’ s the duet part I showed you for a Chorus . The melody is shown as the top note , with duet harmony shown below it .
F F F F F F E E A A A A A A G G What a beau-ti-ful name it is , E E E E E E D D G G G G G G F F What a beau-ti-ful name it is , F F F F E D C A A A A A G F E C The name of Je-sus Christ , my King
If you go to your keyboard and play these notes , you ’ ll discover that there ’ s fairly big gap between them . That gap is a sixth . The two notes are six notes apart in the C major scale . To find the note to add for three part harmony , you ’ ll need to find the note that fills that gap for each chord of the song .
You ’ ll need to know the chords that accompany this section of the song to figure this note out . Here ’ s the lyric of the chorus with chords above lyrics . F
C
What a beautiful name it is C
G
What a beautiful name it is G Am G F The name of Je- sus Christ , my King
Remember that we ’ re working with triads here , three note chords . This is when memorizing the chord spellings for the four chords used in your song is so helpful . It ’ s also helpful , even essential , for being comfortable creating piano parts , pad parts , organ parts . Here are the chords used in this chorus and the three notes they contain :
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