Quote:
Originally Posted by hb
Thanks for the post, it gives me another opportunity to ask a silly question to a bunch of musicians, but I live with the theory that the only silly question is one not asked! I understand that the basics of harmony is "fitting in" "or going with the flow", or "sounding alike", but when one is thinking of, say, a barbershop quartet, which is what I think of as "harmony", what is really going on? I know it's a different kind of sound, but what the basis of it all? How does this sound come to be?????
thanks to all in advance,
hb  |
Again, hb, it all comes down to chords. A plain old major or minor chord uses three notes; barber shop quartets have 4 voices, so the harmonized melody is always four notes 'wide'. You'd have to look at each tune individually to really say what's going on (as in chord flavors, like 9ths, 6ths etc.), but at any given moment, any slice in time, there's a chord going on. You often hear moving lines, where one voice is answering another with a separate melody ... it's still all chords.