OT - vocal harmonies in a band

[Bob L]

Guys,

 

Not a keyboard question - but wondering how you sort out vocal harmonies in your bands? We have three band members singing in a quartet ( guitar, bass, drums, keyboards). Right now I am the only one singing lead. We are a classic rock band ( hoping to add some 80s and funk to set us apart...).

 

Do you have separate rehearsals to work out vocals? Who figures out the vocal parts ( actual notes, and then who sings what)? Do you work this out while the non singing band members "hang around"?

 

I want the band to focus more on this in 2013 as I think it will really make a difference in pleasing the crowd and sounding full. What has ( or has not ) worked for you guys?

 

Oh... and have a great 2013!!!!

[midinut]

If you are just a quartet, I think you would be fine incorporating vocal practices into your regularly scheduled practices. As far as who sings what parts, it usually works out naturally for each person to pick a part that is within his/her range. Not so easy if everyone sings bass and nobody can hit the high parts, but you get the idea. Since you're the lead singer, and technically they are singing backup to you, if anyone needs to resolve a conflict of who sings which part, it should be you. Plus you're able to show them each their part on the keyboard If you need to.

 

Hope that helps ... now don't forget the Little River Band. Awesome harmonies if you can cover them. Cool tunes too. Good luck.

[Rockhouse]

We always set aside about 30 minutes per practice just for vocals. Personally, I found it best to sing only my part over the top of the chords. That way, I'd better grasp my line as if it were the "main" line (even if it wasn't).

 

Then, after we all did this a few times alone, we'd combine parts and blamo, we had good harmony.

 

I'm sure there are great vocalist who can pull harmonies just by hearing other vocalists, but not so much me.

 

We always figured that if every vocal line works over the chords, they should work well together. That seems to work about 99% of the time.

[Losendoskeys]

Guys,

 

Not a keyboard question - but wondering how you sort out vocal harmonies in your bands? We have three band members singing in a quartet ( guitar, bass, drums, keyboards). Right now I am the only one singing lead. We are a classic rock band ( hoping to add some 80s and funk to set us apart...).

 

Do you have separate rehearsals to work out vocals? Who figures out the vocal parts ( actual notes, and then who sings what)? Do you work this out while the non singing band members "hang around"?

 

I want the band to focus more on this in 2013 as I think it will really make a difference in pleasing the crowd and sounding full. What has ( or has not ) worked for you guys?

 

Oh... and have a great 2013!!!!

 

You need to take it track by track that you play, and it obviously depends on the complexity of the track as to who can actually sing it well and play at the same time!

 

For Los Endos/Genesis there are quite a few tracks I can't sing - think 9/8, 13/8 time signatures! - and play at the same time but I harmonise most of the time with the lead vocalist.

 

We work through each track as we learn it.

Start with the lead (Gabriel or Collins) vocal then I will put in the harmony.

If it is multipart, we try to work out the harmonies per the original and only add as necessary - less is more!

We will sing acapella if possible so we can hear what each other is doing, then add the instruments once we are all comfortable with our parts.

Here is an example of four part harmony (around 1:30)

[video:youtube]

[J. Dan]

They usually fall into place without much effort. Some of them are no brainers due to vocal range - i'll usually just take the highest part. If the guitar player is singing that part, I'll take the next one down. It helps if everybody comes to practice already familiar with all the parts. The only thing we need to decide before practice is who will be singing lead, since we sometimes switch that up a bit.

[reidmc]

One tip. . don't just select songs to learn because they have cool vocals, or they are cool songs. Look for some songs that suit the vocal capability of your group.

 

This may sound like a no-brainer, but I've spent plenty of time working up tunes that quite frankly, band vocalists can't really sing.

 

Related to this, remember that a good two-part vocal is better than a mediocre three-part vocal.

[DanL]

We take a half hour or so before practice to run vocals. Then when we run the new tunes, we can run the vocals again with all of the instruments in context.

 

I usually arrange the vocals and learn all the parts so I can teach everyone else what to sing. What part each of us sings depends on vocal range. My drummer and I have similar ranges but he likes singing the higher parts and I like that weird part that is hard to hear but makes the chord pop, so it's never an issue for us.

[Griffinator]

As I mentioned in another thread, my new band does two weekly rehearsals - one full band, the other just the vocalists, where we work with just a piano and our voices and fine-tune the harmonies.

[Bill H.]

Who figures out the vocal parts ( actual notes, and then who sings what)?

That job usually falls on the keyboard player. I know that it's always been mine in every band I've been in. We can see moving harmony lines within chord structures on keys much easier than guitar players can on frets. It's also easier for us to play individual lines for singers to follow until they get it down.

 

In bands with experienced singers who pick up things quickly we'd just roll vocal practice into the main rehearsal. For difficult parts, the rest of the band would usually get tired of hearing the same lines repeated over and over and take an informal break while we'd work things out.

 

[Griffinator]

Who figures out the vocal parts ( actual notes, and then who sings what)?

That job usually falls on the keyboard player. I know that it's always been mine in every band I've been in. We can see moving harmony lines within chord structures on keys much easier than guitar players can on frets. It's also easier for us to play individual lines for singers to follow until they get it down.

 

 

In bands with experienced singers who pick up things quickly we'd just roll vocal practice into the main rehearsal. For difficult parts, the rest of the band would usually get tired of hearing the same lines repeated over and over and take an informal break while we'd work things out.

 

Pretty much this.

 

My last band, harmonies was all on me. Hell, I was the one that suggested we do the vocal harmony sessions. I suggested it again this time around, but this time I have an accomplished singer and another multi-instrumental guitar player who can pound out his own parts, so it might go smoothly, who knows?

[wmp]

Do you have separate rehearsals to work out vocals?

Absolutely. Almost all of the rehearsals I've done with my band have been vocal rehearsals. Mostly just me and my number one lead singer to sort stuff out, then with all three ladies at once.

 

Who figures out the vocal parts ( actual notes, and then who sings what)?

Mostly me and Suzanne. We work out what we want, she handles most of the details with the singers, and I do the same with the players. Who sings what part is pretty much decided by our various ranges and abilities. I always get the bottom part.

 

Do you work this out while the non singing band members "hang around"?

Absolutely not. Nobody has a lot of time to rehearse and it's important to make the best possible use of everybody's time. For my first gig I never had anything but a few vocal rehearsals. For my second gig I only managed one partial band rehearsal. In hindsight it was much better and more efficient to have the new B3 player come by the next day to work with me one on one.

 

My situation is a little different than yours in that we don't have regular rehearsals and there's a pretty clear division between the players and the singers. All of your singers are players too, so you might get more bang out of everybody's time if you leave your non singing player out of vocal rehearsals.

 

We do all of our practicing at home alone and show up for rehearsals prepared. I'm in a small apartment and I like it here because it's quiet. Kicking it out with the full band would get me in a lot of trouble. I put the band in headphones for our partial rehearsal so the ladies could have something loud enough to sing along with without bothering the neighbors too much. Even at that, they can't open up and belt it out in a room this size.

 

[Bob L]

A lot of great feedback and reinforcing the direction our rehearsals have been taking (separate ones for the singing members, etc.). Appreciate the advice and support and everyone have a great 2013!!!!! Keep playing!

[Griffinator]

I always get the bottom part.

 

Oh, the layers and layers of entendres here... :D

[wmp]

I always get the bottom part.

 

Oh, the layers and layers of entendres here... :D

 

 

Solo Keyboard Player for fine dining

I'm sure she didn't mean it quite like that either.

 

This is a real problem. I get into lots of trouble without even realizing it. Playing side man it's easy to limit the conversation to when, where, and how much, and keep my mouth shut. I have do as much of that as I can to get along. Playing band leader I have to speak with people without offending them too much. It's not easy.

 

I record everything at rehearsals and so do the ladies. If you need to reboot a piece of spastic or comatose equipment, avoid using unfortunate expressions like polish reset, especially if one of your singers has a Polish surname. It's good to get audio and video of all rehearsals and gigs from as many angles as you can so you can see when you're scaring the women folk and when you're not. You miss all of that when you're concentrating on other things. These recordings can also be useful for musical stuff, like working out vocal harmonies and arrangements. That happens almost automatically with little more than a suggestion from me, so it's better if I keep my mouth shut, play with learning Reaper and abuse a different instrument on each pass, working out the instrumental stuff while the ladies work out the vocal arrangement. There was no example recording for our Christmas tune with the feel we wanted, so this was the chart. Reaper is cool. I could play back the piano track for the ladies while adding new tracks and assigning the inputs for the next recording pass. They did a much longer IV I on the end than we wanted, so I hacked their vocal tracks back to a sorter amen after they left, spackled over the ending, and sent rehearsal recordings to the rest of the band. The EP is where I wanted the guitar player on that tune. Not a bad usage of rehearsal time.

 

I can make more money playing terrible guitar and pretending to sing in the subway than Joshua Bell can make playing some pretty good fiddle. People pay more attention to crappy vocals than great playing, especially if you're saying something they can relate to. Tunes about how much work sucks tend to do very well in the subway. I might have to go back to that if I scare off the women. These are polite church going ladies and I'm not. I've got them doing some stuff that wouldn't go over well in most churches.

 

That's not exactly what I meant either.

 

Yes, vocals are important.