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Your favorite harmonies?


veracohr

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Lots of great vocal harmony examples already given.

 

[EDIT: I have to mention the whole David Crosby solo album, If I Could Only Remember My Name, which still strikes me as utterly amazing. I wasn't the biggest CSN fan -- although they were very good in the studio and made extraordinarily well crafted, high calorie confectionery music that continues to be pretty stunning in its craft and creative integrity -- that is, it doesn't really sound like much that came before -- but, anyhow, back to Crosby, that DC solo album just knocks me out cold.]

 

These guys aren't going to be to everyone's taste and I'm not holding them up as technical exemplars but rather as a pair of guys whose vocal duos consistently send shivers up my spine...

 

 

 

 

This is about as different as one could get from that...

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqb2NjIheuE

 

And this is about to ethereal as one can get and still keep a toe on the ground...

 

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+1 for the Eagles

+1 for the Everly Brothers

+1 for Poco

+1 for The Beatles

+10 for CSN

+1 for Yes

The Corrs, Wilson-Phillips, Trio (Linda Rondstat, Dolly Parton, & Emmilou Harris)

Little Big Town, Simon & Garfunkel, Nickel Creek, Toto, EW&F, Lady Antibellum, Bread

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Ah So many. Big fan of the Beatles' harmonies. Like Jeff I prefer lines with, erm, independent meloldic integrity over the parallel stacks of most three part harmony in pop. I also have a thing for lines that split off lyrically, really expanding the contrapuntal possibilities. In fact I don't dig a lot of three art harmony pop/rock, unless there is some true counterpoint.

You know what underappreciated rock band had a great ear for rock harmony? The Posies. How about some of what Os Mutantes did? yikes! I also think the first Proclaimers album, This Is the Story, the one they did entirely as an acoustic duo, has a lot of organic, geneticically telepathic and unrehearsed-sounding counterpoint on it, not quite the level of sophistication that Garfunkel is capable of when it sounds like he is just making it up (dare you to find two S&G versions of "American Tune" on which he sings the same part) but really enthused and interactive just the same...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRodnS7lZaQ

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I like it when they do the odd-numbered notes: 1 3 5 7 9 11 13
And also some of the even ones thrown in: 4 6 8
If you do them all, it gets a little busy.

But if done with taste and some discretion,
it can bend your ear toward nirvana's direction.

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today anything in Db minor tonality

 

 

 

So, Lick My Love Pump is Dm isn't close enough? Dm being the saddest if all keys, I suppose when you don't want to go to 11 on the sadness scale, Db minor is good. Sadder but not saddest.

 

But that's a key. What does this have to do with harmonies? BTW, I'm thinking Lick My Love Pump is Db minor done up in a Yes-style I've Seen All Good People acapella tour de force, but in minor of course, that would be lovely. And sad. Sadder.

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But that's a key. What does this have to do with harmonies?

 

 

Harmonies are usually diatonic to a key, except you additionally compose chromatic extensions, and/or change the key (tonality) in a song, or not?

 

Tenor saxophonists like to blow over Db major/Bb minor. This tonality has some lubed fingerings on the tenor sax.

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Harmonies are usually diatonic to a key, except you additionally compose chromatic extensions, and/or change the key (tonality) in a song, or not?


Tenor saxophonists like to blow over Db major/Bb minor. This tonality has some lubed fingerings on the tenor sax.

 

 

Get your lubed fingerings off my tenor sax!

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Okay, dunno if people will think this is from left field, but the early R.E.M. albums have beautiful harmonies, in my opinion ("Murmur", in particular, but also "Reckoning"). Very very simple and basic, but quite beautiful.

 

 

Agreed, Ken! I'm still in awe of that album! If you haven't "Read" it, there's a 33 1/3 book about the recording (audio book). http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_7?asin=B002V5BPRE&qid=1311036102&sr=1-7

 

It's the best of that series (33 1/3), IMHO! "Quite beautiful" you hit the nail on the head!!!

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