Worship Musician Magazine September 2020 | Page 130

KEYS
WHAT HARMONY DO I SING? (PART 1) | Ed Kerr
Keyboard players can have lots of different
responsibilities on worship teams. We are often
able to read music, so if our worship leader
or music director has a piano part that needs
to be played, we may be called upon to do
that. When there’s a desire to make a smooth
musical transition from the key of one worship
song to the key of the next one we might be the
one with the theory background to make that
transition happen.
When someone’s battery is dead in the parking
lot after rehearsal. Never mind. You get the
point. Lots of keyboard players can often
do lots of different musical things. Are you
ever called upon to play vocal harmonies in
a rehearsal? If you’re able to read music and
have a subscription to SongSelect or some
other online resource, you could download the
parts and play those parts.
What if you don’t read music or if the vocal
harmonies aren’t written out anywhere for you
to play? That might be a scary moment for you.
I have some tips here that can help you not be
as frightened next time one of the singers on
the team asks you what harmony note they
should sing.
ONE. Don’t hate me for this: you could spend
some time learning to read music. It’s an
invaluable skill that could serve you not just
when you’re wondering what vocal harmonies
are here and there, but also for other useful
things like writing out a musical hook that you’re
supposed to play during a song or maybe even
writing out a line for another instrumentalist on
your team to play, maybe a violinist or cellist or
lead guitarist.
TWO. Develop your sixth sense. Huh? I’m
suggesting that you learn specific musical
intervals, the distance between two notes of the
scale. Here’s a chart showing those intervals in
the key of C:
C-D second C-E third C-F fourth
C-G fifth C-A 6ixth C-B seventh
Becoming comfortable with knowing the
intervals between the notes in the scale will
be a great help to you when working on vocal
harmonies. This is especially true of the interval
of a Sixth. That’s because this interval is one
of the most common distances between the
melody of your songs and an effective harmony.
That said, here are the notes of a C major scale
and the note that’s a 6 th below it.
PITCH NOTE BELOW PITCH NOTE BELOW
C E D F
E G F A
G B A C
B D
Try this for yourself. Think of a song you’re
familiar with in the key of C. How about “What
A Beautiful Name”? Here’s the lyric for half of a
chorus, with the melody’s note shown in bold.
F F F F F F E E
What a beau-ti-ful name it is,
E E E E E E D D
What a beau-ti-ful name it is,
F F F F E D C A
The name of Je-sus Christ, my King
Play that melody at your keyboard. Just one
note. Now, I’ll show the note that’s a sixth
below each of these melody notes.
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
Now spend some time getting used to playing
those two notes. Since we’re in the key of C,
you’ll find that once you’ve positioned your
hand over the first sixth, F over A, you can just
move your hand to the left or right as needed to
reach the next sixth. By the way, this sequence
of sixths is called parallel sixths. If you’re ever
130 September 2020
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