Frequently Asked Questions
Please note: you may also want to check out the FAQs page for Harmony Singing By Ear—additional harmony questions are answered there.
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Are there differences between this and your Sing Harmonies iPhone App?
More Harmony Singing by Ear and the Sing Harmonies Iphone App are complimentary learning tools with some notable differences. The Sing Harmonies App
helps you to learn and polish your vocal harmony by playing and muting individual voices while playing 4- part vocal arrangements of "Lean On Me", "Teach Your Children", and "Proud Mary"--these songs are also on More Harmony Singing by Ear. Please note that the vocal arrangement for "Lean On Me" on the app is slightly different than the arrangement on More Harmony Singing by Ear. Since on the app you can mix which vocals are audible, it's an invaluable tool for strengthening your harmonizing skills. More Harmony Singing by Ear teaches you how to harmonize on your own as well as teaching you the harmony parts for several songs. So the Sing Harmonies App
teaches you harmony parts with an innovative method, and More Harmony Singing by Ear teaches you how to find your own harmony parts. If you are a bass singer and want to learn bass vocal parts, you'll find those on the Sing Harmonies App.
You can, with some modifications. The upper harmony instruction and sung vocal parts are all in alto range and sometimes will be too high for you. If you are comfortable singing along with those parts an octave lower you can still learn a lot about harmonizing. Doing that you will end up singing all of the harmonies as lower harmonies, that is, harmonies below the melody. If you want to work on upper harmonies these CDs will not work for you since the melodies are all in alto range. The lower harmonies taught throughout the CDs all fall in a baritone range. There is some instruction on the CDs about singing an octave below, and you can also try to sing an octave below the "Isolated Vocal Parts" audio sample on the main detail page to see if that works for you.
A baritone singer wrote in with another option: he used the Audacity audio editor to pitch-shift the tracks to a lower key. It is available for free from Sourceforge here: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
I can do simple harmonies above a melody but that's it: will these CDs help me?
Yes—this program includes some simple harmonies above a melody, but progress to more difficult upper and lower harmonies to advance your harmonizing skill.
The first three songs are about the same difficulty level as the songs on Harmony Singing by Ear, but then progressively become more difficult. The last two songs, "Baby Baby All the Time" and "Drive My Car", have some advanced intermediate jazz and seconds harmonies.
You'll find those details here.
The first song reviews most of what you learned on Harmony Singing by Ear, so you should be fine working with these new songs without reviewing Harmony Singing by Ear.
Skip the instruction tracks and go directly to the music tracks to learn the harmony parts. Shift your speaker balance or pull away one earbud to hear more of the part you want to learn. See the next answer for more information about that.
Yes, but you won't be able to completely isolate specific vocal parts. You can listen to the different speakers to hear more or less of your part, or if you can listen on headphone or earbud, you can pull one headphone or earbud off your ear to isolate the parts. Another option is to buy a used, older stereo receiver on ebay since older receivers often have a speaker balance dial— of course, make sure the receiver has a speaker balance dial before you buy it.
You'll find that further down the page here.
No music reading is required to use these CDs. However, it is helpful to know a small bit of music theory, which is covered on Harmony Singing By Ear. It would make more sense to start with those CDs first to learn the basics of music theory.
Music tracks without vocals are included so you can practice any and all parts on your own. One of you will need to sing the melody while the others sing the harmony parts. The starting notes for all the parts are in the CD booklet.
"Baby, Baby All the Time" also is on Singing with Style, without the harmonies. All of the other songs and tracks are new productions.
Yes, many singers have told us that they only listen to the CDs in the car. You might have difficulty if you want to pan your speakers or repeat instructional sections while driving, though.
Yes, young people age ten and up can benefit from More Harmony Singing by Ear, and we've heard from parents of even younger children who liked it. The earlier singers learn harmony singing the easier it is to pick up. However, some younger people may not have the patience to sit through the theory and instructional sections. These singers can still improve their harmonizing skills by learning the individual harmony parts and then singing them with the 3-part tracks. The lyrics for "Baby Baby All the Time" are adult in nature, but don't include any offensive language. However, please note that the word 'hell' is in the song "Teach Your Children".
I'm not sure what my vocal range is so I don't know if I can use the CDs.
You can get a rough idea of the range of each part by listening and then singing along with the "Isolated Vocal Parts" sound sample for "Lean On Me" on the main detail page for More Harmony Singing By Ear. Some of the later songs go lower or higher than these samples, but you'll get a decent idea. Remember that you can also sing any part an octave higher or lower to fit your range. How to do that is explained in the audio sample "Teaching Sample 2: Singing an octave above or below a part".
Write us at zannadiscs@bellsouth.net and we'll email you a copy.
You'll find that here.