How do I get harmony in my ear?

March 12, 2009 4:21 PM

How do I get harmony in my ears?

I like to compose, and I've always been a very uninhibited melody maker. I can very easily get a key, a scale, or a progression in mind, and then sit back, close my eyes, and eventually come out with a melody I really like just by listening to my mind's ear. I can't do the same thing when I want to come up with a sequence of harmonies, though, either as its own thing or as an accompaniment to a melody. I have to rely on theory knowledge and engage in a trial-and-error process to find what I want to do. Sometimes I can hear harmonies under a melody I think up, but I have a hard time identifying them easily.

I guess my question boils down to two things:
1. How can I get myself to be able to generate harmonies as easily as I do melodies?
2. What ear training can I do to be able to hear less common chords? III-VI-II-V-I is a really easy progression to catch by virtue of being so ubiquitous, but I often get lost in novel progressions until a cadence happens.

posted by invitapriore to media & arts (10 comments total)

Listen to a lot of music with the kind of harmonies you like, and listen to it frequently. Ever listen to a CD so much that you can hear the next track in your head before it comes on? Even when you hear that track by itself on the radio or something? This is sort of the same thing. You're training your brain to recognize what notes go with each other.
posted by katillathehun at 4:32 PM on March 12

Do you play piano?

If not, you need to learn. And then you need to learn to read chords (In other words, be able to look at a guitar chart and play, say, a Gm7 on the piano.) You learn that and a whole world opens right up.

Also, and I am being totally serious here, go listen to a lot of vintage Elton John. I have gleaned a lot of interesting progressions from him over the years.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 5:38 PM on March 12

I learned how to harmonize from singing alto for years and years. If at all possible, join a choir, community chorus, whatever. While there are composers who are very innovative harmonizers out there, it is easy to learn the common tropes of alto, tenor, and bass singing lines (and they each have their stereotypical tropes). These tropes frequently involve things like leading chords, relative majors and minors, and other standard musical tricks. But hearing them as the different voices and understanding how different lines within a harmony work together will make you more effective (and more interesting).
posted by hydropsyche at 6:57 PM on March 12

"What ear training can I do to be able to hear less common chords?"

When I was at my last year of school, we did an ear training exercise like this - the teacher played the piano (or a recording) with a four part chorale arrangement for four or eight bars. We would have to transcribe it. Initially, we got to hear it four times, but by the end of the year, we only heard it twice. The arrangements started out plain vanilla I IV V I but soon moved to more sophisticated harmony.

Do that every day for a year and you get pretty good at hearing *everything*. I would be amazed if such exercises weren't part of someone's music curriculum still, and more amazed if you couldn't get recordings to practise with. But if you can't, find snippets of music where the progressions don't change too fast, arm yourself with scores to check your results against, and try to transcribe short passages every day. It will be hard at first, but as in every other part of music, practice makes the difference.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 7:14 PM on March 12

Seconding the recommendation to join a choir. Harmonies are all I can hear anymore.
posted by fshgrl at 7:42 PM on March 12

i agree w/ hydropsyche and fshgrl - join a choir. I never actually joined a choir, but I learned a lot about harmony by studying Bach chorales. In ear training, and theory, we were given a melody and chord progression and told write 4 part harmonies for the melody. It was eye opening.

Also, realize that harmonies aren't that complicated. In order to flesh out a chord, you need at most 4 notes, usually 2 or 3 will do.

You might also want to look at counterpoint as well.
posted by baxter_ilion at 7:48 PM on March 12

I agree with katillathehun, but listening isn't enough -- you have to listen, transcribe (or find a good transcription), and analyze. I recommend starting by reading through Alan W. Pollack's notes on The Beatles canon. If you don't understand something that he's talking about, look it up, listen to the song, play the song, and read him again.

Also the process that i_am_joe's_spleen refers to is called harmonic dictation.
posted by ludwig_van at 7:53 PM on March 12 [1 favorite]

Yes! It's been over 20 years, and I couldn't remember the name any more. But I still credit the exercise with developing my ear for harmony considerably.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 9:27 PM on March 12

Wow! ludwig_van, those Beatles notes deserve an FPP of their own.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 9:30 PM on March 12

I learned by singing You Are My Sunshine with someone who knows how to harmonize. It's a simple melody, so it's relatively easy to follow with the harmony. Get the experienced harmonizer to show you what you are supposed to be singing, then sing it while he/she sings the melody. It's a good start. It's nice to be able to play piano, but not necessary to sing good harmony.
posted by wsg at 12:25 AM on March 13