Album Notes

A step by step approach for learning how to sing harmonies above and below a melody. Three CDs with over three hours of instructional narrative, fully produced music tracks and guide vocals. One, two or more singers can learn two and three-part harmony singing. Vocal coach Susan Anders has successfully used these methods for over twenty years with pop, R&B, folk, rock and country singers.

Songs:
Chapel of Love
Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)
I Can See Clearly Now
Angel From Montgomery
Bring It On Home To Me
Centerpiece
One of Us
Walk Away Renee

Harmony Singing By Ear uses two complementary methods to teach singers how to harmonize by ear. After reviewing some music theory basics, piano-vocal instructional sections walk you through how to find the upper and lower harmony parts for eight songs. Those same harmonies are sung on fully produced music tracks. On these tracks the vocal parts are panned to different speakers--singers can pan to one speaker and just hear their part, pan to the middle and hear both parts, or pan to the other speaker to practice with one or two other parts. In this way, beginning harmonizers can control how much or how little of the other voices they hear, making it easier to stay on their part. More confident harmonizers can sing without the guide vocals. Singers who simply want to learn and sing the harmony parts can skip the instructional tracks, go right to the music tracks, and pan their speakers to the right to learn the harmony part for each song.
Though much of Harmony Singing By Ear focuses on the how-tos of parallel harmonizing above and below a melody, singers will also learn about call-response, blue note, chromatic and block chord harmonies. Music tracks without vocals are also included so singers can practice their parts "without the training wheels". Plus, there's a supplementary section of exercises to build one's harmonizing skills as well as a section on polishing harmony parts once they are learned. The songs range in style from pop to R&B to folk to modern rock to jazz.

Skill Level: Beginning to Intermediate. The early songs are very easy, the later songs increase in difficulty.

Vocal Ranges:
Melodies: F# to A alto/high tenor range
Upper harmonies: A to C alto/soprano range
Lower harmonies: D to C baritone/tenor/low alto range

All parts can be doubled an octave above or below the harmonies on the CD to allow lower and higher singers to join in. Doubling is explained during the instruction.

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Vocal coach Susan Anders has been teaching singers how to harmonize for over twenty years. She is the creator of the "No Scales, Just Songs Vocal Workout" Volumes One and Two, a song-based voice training method that is being used by singers worldwide . Susan's articles on singing have appeared in Acoustic Guitar, Acoustic Musician and Drama-logue . Susan is also a singer-songwriter: her two most recent CD releases are "Release" and "You Can Close Your Eyes Lullabies". Susan was born and raised in Berkeley, California and now lives in Nashville, Tennessee.