Harmony

When thinking about aspects to make your song more exciting, harmony is an important key! Harmonies in a song are different notes stacked on top of each other. This layering of notes should sound complementary and be pleasing to the ear as it will add a sense of uniqueness to the song. Harmonies can be either lower or higher pitches than the melody, but never the same note as the melody.

To make harmonies for your song, think of it in terms of chords and notes. You can look at all of the notes that make up whatever chord is being played, and use those notes for your harmony. This way, all of these pitches will sound supporting to one another, adding some dimension to the melody! As an example, a very basic music scale is C major. C major consists of notes C D E F G A B. Let’s say that a vocalist is singing in the key of C; this would mean that the back-up singers can hit any of these notes that make up a C major scale.

Not only do harmonies take place in vocals, but they can be layered with instruments, as well! Take guitar for example, when writing your song you can add multiple different guitar parts that all complement one another using harmonies. This effect will make your song stand out and sound very unique!

Harmony is explained well in this video below, from Dave Conservatoire, which will give you a visual of this element!