How do you work out a musical harmony?

[blackettstreet]

I'm in a band doing a lot of Avenged Sevenfold covers and I'm supposed to be doing backing vocals, which involves lots of harmonies. But I can't actucally hear what the backing vocal harmonies are on many songs. I can hear the lead vocals notes, so how can I use that to work out the harmony?

Thanks for help

 

[Zoe]

I'm in a band doing a lot of Avenged Sevenfold covers and I'm supposed to be doing backing vocals, which involves lots of harmonies. But I can't actucally hear what the backing vocal harmonies are on many songs. I can hear the lead vocals notes, so how can I use that to work out the harmony?

The easy way would be to find a karaoke version of the song which will have the lead vocals removed. If you are not used to harmony though it can be difficult though as even if you learn the backing part you can find yourself in unison with the lead vocalist when you hear them. If you want to write the harmony part yourself though based on the lead voclas though I will leave that for someone with more knowledge in music theory to explain.

 

[deltic1989]

I'm no musical expert though i do play a bit of guitar, but I've asked a friend who is a bit more aware of musical matters than myself.
He says: Basically the harmony parts are done by jonny christ, sinister gates and, some by Jimmy 'The Rev' Sullivan. If you want to hear tha best harmonies from A7X i would suggest listening to "A Little Piece Of Heven" from there if you pick up the harmonies you will learn to recognise the sounds of them for when you try to do it for other songs.

 

[Birdbrain]

The easiest way to do this would be to find out what chords are used in the songs you are trying to look at. Sometimes in sheet music you have the tune then above you have things like C, Dmin, F, A C7 above or below.

Once you have the chords you can work out what notes will fit in the harmony. For example a bar of C chord means the notes C, E or G will fit in the harmony. You can then write out harmony parts from there.

 

[blackettstreet]

thanks everyone. unfortunately i can't find karaoke versions of the songs i'm doing but i'll have another look, and i'll do that chord thing