My theory students are going to be writing vocal harmonies for one of their assignments. To give them guidance, I will be talking through one possible approach to adding harmonies to “Shout” by Tears for Fears. Here’s the original song:
Here’s the acapella.
I’m not arguing that this song needs harmony vocals; it’s just a good teaching example because it doesn’t have any. Also, the melody and chords are pretty simple without being boring.
There are endless possibilities for harmonizing a vocal. I approached “Shout” using a reliable formula: one harmony part a third above the melody, and another a fourth below the melody. You can see and hear the result in this score video. I explain what’s going on below.
Download the score: MuseScore | MusicXML | PDF
My first step was to use MuseScore to mindlessly add thirds on top of each melody note. (This is very easy, there’s even a keyboard shortcut for it.) The program takes whatever note you give it and adds the note that’s two slots higher in the G natural minor scale. So if the melody note is G, MuseScore adds B-flat. If the melody note is A, MuseScore adds C. If the melody note is B-flat, MuseScore adds D, and so on. The result sounds pretty good in places and terrible in others, depending on the notes and how they relate to the chords. Independent of that, the whole thing sounds robotic and same-y. So the next task was to edit all these thirds to produce a more varied texture that fits the chords better.
- In the first measure in the chorus, I thought it would be more dramatic to have the words “Shout, shout” in octaves rather than thirds.
- In the fifth measure in the chorus, having the top voice move from F to E is smoother than having it jump from F down to B-flat. It also creates a nice sixth with the melody.
- The verse begins with the melody jumping up and down between F and D, and it sounds awkward to have the harmony follow suit a third higher. Instead, I harmonized the first syllable in the word “violent” in sixths and the word “times” in fourths. This smooths out the harmony part, and also creates more intervallic variety.
- In the second measure in the verse, the melody has a lot of F’s in it, and a third above that is A. That note clashes hard with the Bb chord. So I just moved the A’s up to B-flat, which fits the chord better and also introduces some more nice spacious fourths to offset the closer-sounding thirds.
- In the third measure in the verse, mindlessly putting a third from G natural minor on top of C gives us E-flat. However, the chord there is C, not Cm, so the harmony part should be on E-natural. I put one of the notes a fourth above the melody rather than a third so the harmony part forms a neat stepwise countermelody.
For the low part, I started the same way, mindlessly adding fourths below every melody note. (With MuseScore’s keyboard shortcuts, that means adding the note a fifth above and then moving it down an octave.) As with the top part, some of these notes work fine, and others don’t. So once again, my task was to go through and move the notes in the low part around until they made more sense.
- In the first measure of the chorus, I put the low part above the melody rather than below it so it forms a cool power chord with the high part.
- Throughout the tune, many of the low notes work better as thirds than fourths, because they can fall on unused chord tones. Also, mixing up thirds and fourths in the low part creates a more varied texture.
- In the fifth measure of the chorus and the first measure of the verse, I once again moved the low part to the middle to fill in some wide intervals.
Notice that the three-part harmony results in a lot of triads. These are not “real” chords, they are just the emergent result of the counterpoint. But in Western European tradition, the whole idea of chords came out of counterpoint in the first place. European composers weren’t thinking about chords at all before the 18th century; they were thinking about multiple independent melody lines that intersected according to particular rules. Over time, melodies came to intersect in certain predictable patterns of intervals, and those patterns of intervals took on lives of their own. Some music theorists argue that it’s still counterpoint all the way down. It’s a perspective worth considering. Block chords are a useful abstraction, but they have their limits as a conceptual tool.
Taking a step back, I don’t think it’s actually necessary or desirable to work out vocal harmonies on the page. If you have some strong and experienced singers to work with, they should be able to work out harmonies on a song like this by ear just fine. The results will probably be smoother and more organic-sounding than anything I’ve presented here. Writing harmony parts on the staff is a great exercise for music theory students; but for real life, I’d recommend some combination of the staff and your intuition.