Thoery on Harmony

[Kilisab]

Just wondering if there was any theory on harmony, specifically on vocals and guitar. Not mear transposition of notes, actually harmony.

[cgecko1219]

its pretty much just intervals within a key

[Nicko_Shmicko]

yep, 5ths and octaves tend to sound good. It is very difficult to get them right though...after years of singing i still suck at singing harmonies

[allthegoodnamesweregone]

7ths are realy nice but hard... remember its the first the 7th and the 3rd that are the strongst notes in a chord though...

[gaslight]

How do you have names in bold?

Anyway, harmony all comes down to intervals within a key as was mentioned previously.

It breaks down something like this, technically speaking:

Unison (or Perfect 1st)
Minor 2nd
Major 2nd
Minor 3rd
Major 3rd
Perfect 4th
Tritone (Aug4 or Dim5 depending on the note itself)
Perfect 5th
Minor 6th
Major 6th
Minor 7th
Major 7th
Octave (or Perfect 8th)

Notice how within this there is a pattern indicated by the way I have formatted the text.

Underlined is the dry or neutral intervals, these are neither consonant (harmonious) or dissonant (not harmonious).

Italic indicates the dissonant intervals.

Bold indicates the harmonious intervals.

Moving outside the first octave, you begin to deal with compound intervals, which continue on as 9ths,10ths,11ths, and so on.

Some basic things:

* Perfect intervals, the 1,4,5 and 8 are different to major and minor intervals. Perfect intervals can never be made into minor or major intervals through accidentals; instead they become Augmented when sharped, or Diminished when flattened. Likewise, minor and major intervals can never be made into perfect intervals.

* See how the pattern goes with how the intervals relate to eachother? Going from the root note, the minor second is more dissonant than the major second, then you reach harmony with the minor third, harmony with the major third (big difference in the tonality), before reaching the Perfect 4th, then the Tritone, inbetween the 4th and 5th, is a very dissonant interval. After the Perfect 5th the pattern reverses itself; the minor 6th is harmony (though can feel slightly unstable due to the distance, and tends to feel like it wants to resolve to the Perfect 5), the major 6th is harmony (though can sound a bit unstable), the minor 7th is slightly less dissonant than the major 7th (as we saw earlier with the major 2nd being less dissonant than the minor 2nd) which wants to resolve up to the root note again in the form of the octave or perfect 8. It looks complicated in writing but it's quite simple in a visual form.

I hope that is at least slightly helpful.

[metBANS]

yep, 5ths and octaves tend to sound good. It is very difficult to get them right though...after years of singing i still suck at singing harmonies

Maybe a 5th for one note... You never have moving parallel 5ths. Basic lesson in Music Theory class in my HS. I tested out of it (lucky, by one question) and still skip a blow off class like driver ed to sit in sometimes. That is what the teacher was talkign about.


Cheers!

[Kilisab]

Thank you all, especially gaslight for taking your time on that.

On your pattern gas, are you saying you can't use "perfect" intervals in harmony or simply stating they aren't harmonius? Whatever this harmonius word means, as I have never come across it. I've pretty much always regarded your harmonius intervals as melodic, with the exception of P5 as the "generic".

And does the pattern repeat into the 2nd octave?

[gaslight]

Oh, perfect intervals often sound really nice for harmony, they were the first notes used for harmony, often in church choirs and things like that. It's just that they way I have been taught this, there are three "types", so to speak. Perfect intervals aren't classified as harmonious intervals, but that doesn't mean they sound bad :). It is like, perfect intervals sound nice right, but they also sound kind of neutral or dry when played together, whereas with a minor or major third you can really hear how they interact harmoniously.