Howdy. As some of you know, I usually try and theme my posts in some way to relate in some way to what's currently going on in the world at large.
This is not one of those posts. In fact, this cropped into my head pretty much fully formed the other day when out with the dog and wondering just what the hell I was going to write about this month, and is the first of what I hope will be an occasional series of articles on skills I've had to acquire over the course of my career as a professional musician and teacher - but specifically, skills no one warned me I would need.
The biggest and most glaring of these is singing. Now, an awful lot of people make the assumption that if you can play in instrument, you can automatically sing, too - at least to a halfway presentable standard. After all, music is music, right?
Nuh-uh. Step forward Slash, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Angus Young....... and, um, me. For some people, music is something they love to create and play despite the fact that the most natural, instinctive instrument of all, the one that we are all born with is just a bit on the wonky side. Or in my case, almost entirely defective - I started with almost no range, ability to project, pitch or sustain a note. Some people are born natural singers - I was born with the natural ability to clear a room. Seriously, I have demos from the mid 90s on cassette that are under lock and key because they could be used as blackmail.
Now, this is not a post on how to turn yourself into a great singer - because although I'm a hell of a lot better now, I am not and will never be one - but it is about how to get yourself started as a pretty useful backing vocalist. We often have misconceptions about backing singers, that they're just "singing along" with the lead vocal, but there's a bit more too it than that. Truth is, well arranged vocal harmonies can really lift a band or an arrangement head and shoulders above the competition.
There are plenty of great tutorial books, videos and YouTube channels on vocal technique and I'm not going to delve into that stuff here - breathing exercises, projection, vocal resonance and so on are best explained by proper vocal coaches. What we're going to look at here is the additional theoretical understanding needed to generate the harmonies that can lift a chorus and make it soar.
The first thing to understand are the basic principles of harmony. I'm going to skip through with just the bare bones today for the purposes of time, but we'll start with the chromatic scale (all 12 notes, each one a semitone apart):
A - A#/Bb - B - C - C#/Db - D - D#/Eb - E - F - F#/Gb - G - G#/Ab
Now, as comprehensive as that is, it sounds godawful. Too many notes, too close together. So the next step is the major scale:
Root - tone - 2nd - tone - 3rd - semitone - 4th - tone - 5th - tone - 6th - tone - 7th - semitone - Root
A B C# D E F# G#
In Western music, harmony comes from stacking notes separated by 3rd intervals on each other:
A - 4 semitone/ 2 tone (major 3rd) - C# - 3 semitone (minor 3rd) - E
So in this example, if A was the melody note being sung by the lead singer, one backing singer might hit the C# above it, one the E above that (although if the lead singer is female and the backing singers are male, it's probably more feasible to move both the harmony notes down by an octave).
So now you've worked out what you should be singing, the next trick is learning how to actually do it. Pitching a backing vocal, for the uninitiated, can be infuriatingly difficult. The best thing to do, to begin with, is to play your note and then sing it. When you can do that, play the chord and sing your note over it, and when you can mange that, play the melody note and sing your harmony against it. You can also familiarise yourself with the various intervals by playing your chord and singing the root, 3rd and 5th notes separately, this will help train your ear. Be patient - time and practice will get you there.
Hopefully that's got some of you started working on your vocals - backing vocals are an incredibly useful and marketable skill for any musician to have, so get to practising and see you next time!
This is not one of those posts. In fact, this cropped into my head pretty much fully formed the other day when out with the dog and wondering just what the hell I was going to write about this month, and is the first of what I hope will be an occasional series of articles on skills I've had to acquire over the course of my career as a professional musician and teacher - but specifically, skills no one warned me I would need.
The biggest and most glaring of these is singing. Now, an awful lot of people make the assumption that if you can play in instrument, you can automatically sing, too - at least to a halfway presentable standard. After all, music is music, right?
Nuh-uh. Step forward Slash, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Angus Young....... and, um, me. For some people, music is something they love to create and play despite the fact that the most natural, instinctive instrument of all, the one that we are all born with is just a bit on the wonky side. Or in my case, almost entirely defective - I started with almost no range, ability to project, pitch or sustain a note. Some people are born natural singers - I was born with the natural ability to clear a room. Seriously, I have demos from the mid 90s on cassette that are under lock and key because they could be used as blackmail.
Now, this is not a post on how to turn yourself into a great singer - because although I'm a hell of a lot better now, I am not and will never be one - but it is about how to get yourself started as a pretty useful backing vocalist. We often have misconceptions about backing singers, that they're just "singing along" with the lead vocal, but there's a bit more too it than that. Truth is, well arranged vocal harmonies can really lift a band or an arrangement head and shoulders above the competition.
There are plenty of great tutorial books, videos and YouTube channels on vocal technique and I'm not going to delve into that stuff here - breathing exercises, projection, vocal resonance and so on are best explained by proper vocal coaches. What we're going to look at here is the additional theoretical understanding needed to generate the harmonies that can lift a chorus and make it soar.
The first thing to understand are the basic principles of harmony. I'm going to skip through with just the bare bones today for the purposes of time, but we'll start with the chromatic scale (all 12 notes, each one a semitone apart):
A - A#/Bb - B - C - C#/Db - D - D#/Eb - E - F - F#/Gb - G - G#/Ab
Now, as comprehensive as that is, it sounds godawful. Too many notes, too close together. So the next step is the major scale:
Root - tone - 2nd - tone - 3rd - semitone - 4th - tone - 5th - tone - 6th - tone - 7th - semitone - Root
A B C# D E F# G#
In Western music, harmony comes from stacking notes separated by 3rd intervals on each other:
A - 4 semitone/ 2 tone (major 3rd) - C# - 3 semitone (minor 3rd) - E
So in this example, if A was the melody note being sung by the lead singer, one backing singer might hit the C# above it, one the E above that (although if the lead singer is female and the backing singers are male, it's probably more feasible to move both the harmony notes down by an octave).
So now you've worked out what you should be singing, the next trick is learning how to actually do it. Pitching a backing vocal, for the uninitiated, can be infuriatingly difficult. The best thing to do, to begin with, is to play your note and then sing it. When you can do that, play the chord and sing your note over it, and when you can mange that, play the melody note and sing your harmony against it. You can also familiarise yourself with the various intervals by playing your chord and singing the root, 3rd and 5th notes separately, this will help train your ear. Be patient - time and practice will get you there.
Hopefully that's got some of you started working on your vocals - backing vocals are an incredibly useful and marketable skill for any musician to have, so get to practising and see you next time!
