3 part Vocal Harmony

[davidshek]

We had a blast with the harmonies at my TB:RB party Wednesday night. I usually had a mic in front of me when I was playing drums or guitar, and my gf Maria and her friend Susan were on the other 2 mics for most of the night. The 3 of us have worked on harmonies before for playing out at open mic nights, so it was a breeze to nail some of the Triple Fabs. Others were, well, much harder.

But we did get a triple vocal FC of "I Feel Fine" that night with me singing the lead

[HMXForrest]

One thing I want to understand better is the detailed scoring data at the end of songs for vocals. Is there somewhere that explains that further? Not as a matter of keeping score really - just trying to see how correct we got things and where we need to work on correcting mistakes.

The detailed vocal results are organized in columns, one for each mic, and show you how well your singing matched up against each of the available parts. So if, for example, you get 80% in blue it means that over all of the notes in the blue line, you were at the right pitch 80% of the time. It counts even when you aren’t being scored against that part. So if two people are singing the same part, they both will get credit on the vocal results screen even though only one is scoring at a time. Or if you’re singing a part and there’s another part at the same pitch, you get vocal results credit for both even though you’re only scored against one for the phrase.

[meeees]

trying to play guitar and sing harmonies at the same time has made it seem easy to play and sing melodies, which is NOT easy for me bc I can't sing at all

soooo much fun though

[west siide]

HMXForrest,

Thanks for the reply...but I'm sorry to say I'm not sure I quite understand yet.

I do understand your first point about 80%. However you lost me on your next comment about "counts even when you aren't being scored against that part". Do you mean if you sing that portion correct, the blue, even if you're not the blue track, you'll get credit for the percentage, but of course no addition will be made to the score? If so, then I understand!

Let me ask another question or the same question rephrased another way.

If I'm the Red or Orange track, and I look at my scores, clearly I want to see whichever one of those I'm aiming for to be at 100%, correct? You do you achieve 100% if you sing all of those sections correctly?

If I am the Red/Orange tracks, for certain songs, I'm also singing the Blue track in part of some songs, right?. During the time that I'm supposed to sing the blue track, if I get all of the blue track correct, will I score 100% in that column? Or will I score 100% in that column as long as anything blue I sing is correct regardless if I'm supposed to sing it or not?

Is the idea:
1) If you're the blue line, to get 100% in blue and 0% in the red and orange lines?
2) if you're the red or orange lines, to get 100% in the blue and 100% in your respective color while getting 0% in the other color? Or should you not get 100% in the blue as you only sing part of that track?

I hope that is a bit clearer...and thanks for your help.

[folkeye]

It is a challenge, ESPECIALLY if you have a dense friend who can't carry a tune on easy helping.

[oRabbit]

Harmonies are totally awesome. We only have two mics right now, but my wife usually sings lead and I'll sing the harmony while playing guitar. It's totally hard and I'm all over the place with the harmonies.

The way I think I understand is that it doesn't necessarily bring the score down if one of the harmonizers is missing thier pitch as long as the lead is being filled, but if you are hitting them, you get a better score..is that true?

Thirdly, it's darn hard to harmonize! The problem that I think most non-singers have in listening to popular songs is that you are used to singing the main tune of the song and you can't easily switch gears to sing a harmony part that is off the main tune of the song

This is my hardest problem at the moment...always singing the lead pitch, but I'm getting better with deafening practice

[west siide]

Right, the way I understand it is that the score only goes up if your harmonize.

My question is more along the lines of interpreting the percentage scoring so I can appropriate judge my performance and figure out how much work I need to do to be more accurate.

For me it's really not much of a scoring issue. I honestly would like to learn how to properly harmonize. In the few sections that I was able to do it correctly with my sister, it actually sounded quite pleasant (even if we sing flat) and I want to improve my ability...but to do that I need to be able to evaluate my performance!

[oRabbit]

If I am the Red/Orange tracks, for certain songs, I'm also singing the Blue track in part of some songs, right?. During the time that I'm supposed to sing the blue track, if I get all of the blue track correct, will I score 100% in that column? Or will I score 100% in that column as long as anything blue I sing is correct regardless if I'm supposed to sing it or not?

Is the idea:
1) If you're the blue line, to get 100% in blue and 0% in the red and orange lines?
2) if you're the red or orange lines, to get 100% in the blue and 100% in your respective color while getting 0% in the other color? Or should you not get 100% in the blue as you only sing part of that track?

I hope that is a bit clearer...and thanks for your help.

From what I've seen and understand (I hope this helps you):
If you are the red/orange track, you ONLY sing the red/orange parts. You do not sing the blue portions (unless you don't have a second singer because ALL blue notes must be sung by someone to pass the song). The only time you would is when they mesh together and turn black. There's not a way to be a solo singer and get 100% in blue and 100% in red/orange.

edit: ^^ this means that in many songs, the person singing red/orange doesn't have anything to sing for long periods of time.

[niphty]

Okay, so the scoring works is that you nail 100% of the lead / harmonies, regardless of who's singing them. We're not entirely sure here, but I don't think Harmony 1 specifically follows one singer, it's just the (typically) higher of the two. That's one of the big questions I have, really.
So tonight, we had three singers: a friend, my wife, and myself. We managed to get into the triple fabs, but we found out we were all swapping parts. Generally, if I was on lead, I kept it, and the other two would sing the others if they could get it. If one of them sung the lead, during harmonies they would often jump up (as someone else mentioned before) to a harmony, and I would drop from a harmony down into the lead for that part.
I've found that I follow John's vocals well, and so that's what I'm attempting to stick to. Funny, since my name is John as well =D I'm also the only one who can do George reliably well, especially when his harmony sinks below the lead. My wife does Paul well, and our friend hit Ringo's pretty accurate, though he could often pull the high harmony on anything, as he's really good at singing as it is.

So, back to the original bit, Getting a FC guarantees 100% and full bonus. Someone HAS to get a fab score every single line. It doesn't even have to be the same person. You could set up three mics on a solo and you could each sing one line, going around person to person, and it would count you as only having sung 33% INDIVIDUALLY, but the score of the track was FC'd =D It's a bit complicated, but suffice to say the harmonies, in general, are bonus points. Double fabs and triple fabs are the bonus. I'm just having a hard time sticking to just one harmony track, as we all tend to trade around. Which is why I wonder if harmony 1 is always the same Beatle =D

[Ultrace]

The option is fun and we use it extensively here. Unfortunately, I'm not very good at harmonizing so much as just singing along. It will take a great deal of practice for me to recognize and hit the harmonies instead of the lead, especially while vox---- ing.