I enjoy singing a lot and I envy anyone with a stunning voice. You can learn how to sing in perfection, but it is possible that your voice is not that touching after all. There is not much you can do about that.

I also envy people who can just harmonize to a song as it is a walk in the park. It is a great challenge for me. I cannot harmonize to the main melody. Full stop. Furthermore, even if I am singing the main melody itself, it is difficult for me to stay in tune while somebody is harmonizing next to me.

Luckily, this is something you can learn by training your ear and practicing. But how do I practice? Well, the logic of harmonizing is easy to comprehend. Search the internet, and you have tons of articles, explanations of the 1-3-5 intervals, you have instructional videos on how to harmonize in general and so on. But when it comes to the point I want to sing harmonies to a song, uh-uh that doesn’t happen. And I am not a music student, and I am not a performer, and I don’t really have time to practice this on a regular base. Most of the time all I want is just someone teaching me the harmony for the song I want to sing. There is this app I found in iTunes called “Sing Harmonies”. (https://www.singharmonies.com) It’s just what I need. But unfortunately the app has a very limited number of songs.

I am calling out to all software and app developpers out there! And they wont be hearing my call as nobody follows my blog. ?

Ok, so I am not calling out to anyone. But I just wish that there were more apps like this.

By the way… Few days ago I found an article on the internet giving out the names of 25 top harmony songs/bands. Surprisingly, the Everly Brothers were not mentioned there. Don and Phil are a legend in this category for me. They influenced the Beatles and inspired Simon & Garfunkel. The Everly Brothers have a special place in my heart for many reasons, some of which I can tell and some of which I prefer not to tell. Well, they were not popular during my childhood or adolescence, but they were very popular in our house anyway. So, usually listening to their songs brightens me up and makes me smile. Except for one song which makes me cry every time I listen to it for many different reasons. I guess I have a habit of attributing many different meanings to each song I like. And what a song means to me, I share that info with very few people.

I once gave the chord songbook of the Everly Brothers to someone special hoping that he would play and I would sing. Well, that never happened. ?

Anyway… The two songs I can sing perfect harmonies to are Lean on Me by Bill Withers (thanks to the app Sing Harmonies) and Oh Carol by Neil Sedaka (that’s just my personal success!?).

Here are two videos teaching how to harmonize “All I Have to Do Is Dream” and “Bye Bye Love” by the Everly Brothers. Not my choice of songs, but all I could find for the Everly Brothers. Maybe I should work on them!

All I Have To Do Is Dream

 

Bye Bye Love