That’s a pretty huge question, Carol and I’ll try to give some pointers - but as I haven’t got time to re-write the book, they will only be pointers and ideas, not laws, rules or commands: that means they can all be broken whenever you want. It is often the breaking of rules that makes music ‘interesting’ but if you break them all the time, it sounds like junk.
1. The two most basic approaches are a) harmonise with the chord, b) harmonise with the melody. These two approaches will give slightly different feels and might lead you in different directions. These will give you “vertical” harmonies. If you want to be more adventurous you can get into counterpoint and polyphony – like two separate melodies intertwining (bit tricky – listen to Bach for counterpoint).
2. I think that what people think of as ‘close’ harmonies tend to be thirds. A two-part harmony based on fifths can sound ‘interesting’ – that’s good if that is the effect you are trying to achieve (sometimes called ‘consecutive fifths') but usually something to avoid. Try playing a melody on a single guitar string and then use a power chord approach to harmonise to hear what consecutive fifths sound like.
3. When we were taught 4-part harmony at school, we were told that the bass line could jump up and down and the top line could dance about as much as it likes, but the two middle harmonies should move as little as possible – again this is a good rule to break if you want an interesting effect but sticking to it will give an effect of ‘close’ harmony. In practical terms this means that the harmonies – whether above or below the melody line – stick to the same note whenever possible.
4. Kids’ choirs often practice “rounds” where different sections will sing the same thing – but starting at different times (e.g. Frère Jacques). You can use this kind of technique in modern songs in a ‘call and response pattern’.
Putting these together into a song can generate a classic. Listen to the Beatles doing “Please Please Me”. In the verse, the single harmony stays on one note, in the bridge the "response" to the "call" is two voices harmonising, the hook is in three parts and the bridge harmonies are more or less reproducing notes from the chords, with a low response to the “In my heart”. Nothing particularly innovative there – but they use four techniques in a single pop song without overdoing anything. That's the song that made me pick up the guitar seriously, I think.
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