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St. Anne's Reel - The Harmony Part

by Steve Kaufman

Hi Friends and welcome!

Hopefully by now you have memorized and mastered the lead arrangement to this song from the last session. Now we are discussing the harmony. Harmony parts are beautiful to hear when played along with the lead. They are not too swift by themselves though (g). They are fairly easy to figure out technically but still take a little experience. You will get better at arranging tunes and harmonies the more you try.

What you want to do first is select a pretty straightforward version of the lead part. A version to a melody without too many twists and unexpected variance. Later you can make them more involved and difficult.

Once you have your melody, you can start to figure out a harmony or "twin" part. The first step is to look at the lead notes and see if you can figure out the notes that are a third above the melody. For example if your lead note is a C, your harmony would be an E. C is the 1, D is the 2nd and E is the 3rd. If the lead is a C#, the harmony would probably also be an E. If your lead were a D note, your harmony would be an F. If you were in a key with sharps or flats you will also have to take them into consideration and you're your harmony notes accordingly. If your lead was a D note in the key of D, your harmony would be an F#. This also depends upon the chord in the background. If you were on D, the above example would hold but if you were playing against a G chord the lead could be a D but the harmony would probably shift to a G note because F# is not normally found in a G chord. If the background chord were a G major 7th you could play the F# but otherwise not. The simple rule of thumb though, and to keep it on a more simple and "street playing" level, if you do the math and the harmony note is supposed to be "X" (whatever "X" turns out to be) and it doesn't sound right, you simply move one fret up or one fret back and you will hear the harmony note fall into place. This simple rule will help take care of sharps and flats and accidentals that occur in the arrangement.

So you see it is not as hard as it sounds. You are better off trying to figure the harmony parts through note reading. You will eventually be able to do it by ear but that takes time and practice and it helps to have a basic understanding of notation. The [B] part to this arrangement would have put the harmony parts way up the neck in the nose bleed section so I figured it out as a 3rd above and then dropped the notes an octave lower. This is a great effect.

Have fun with this arrangement of St. Anne's reel and I hope to meet you someday and be able to do some "Twin Pickin'" with you.

Bye for now -
Steve Kaufman

www.flatpik.com
www.acoustic-kamp.com