Backing vocals can add a professional touch to your music – but only when done well.
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If you’re trying to write backing vocals for your next song and you’re running into problems, it could be that you’re violating some basic principles. Backing vocal harmonies, when they are well written, well-performed and well-recorded, can give your music a truly professional sheen.
The guidelines for writing good background vocals could (and probably should) be a long list. But that’s because every separate genre of music has its own particular way that vocals sound. So the kind of principles that might guide your writing of country backing vocals would differ considerably from what you’d find in jazz, folk, or other styles.
Having said that, there are two basic guiding principles that apply to almost any genre of music. If you’ve tried creating backing vocals recently, and it’s not working out for you, see if you are violating either of them:
- Vocal harmonies are more prevalent in a chorus than in a verse. That’s because vocal harmonies tend to add musical energy to a song, and increased energy is what you’re often looking for in a chorus.Using vocal harmonies everywhere can be tiresome. Unless it’s a style that’s known for its treatment of harmonies (e.g., Barbershop, vocal jazz, etc.), good songs often show a mix of unharmonized and harmonized melody lines.
- The kind of harmonies you write has a lot to do with musical genre. So it’s important to be listening to lots of recorded music in that genre, and try to pinpoint exactly what it is that makes the harmonies work.
So when backing vocals don’t work (and assuming that they’ve been recorded well and performed well), your first course of action to fixing the problem is to ask yourself: Is there just too much vocal harmony everywhere in my song? And if that’s not the problem, then ask yourself: “Am I violating the norms of vocal harmony for my chosen genre?”
If you can say ‘no’ to those two questions, then the problem lies with the actual writing – you’re using notes that don’t fit the chord of the moment.
Here are some things you can do to make sure that the notes you’re asking your backing singers to perform are the right ones.
- Familiarize yourself with the melody, and finalize the chords you want to use as your basis for harmony. Let’s assume that I want to harmonize this melody line in a folk-pop style: [LISTEN]
- Notes on strong beats should be in the chord. Here’s a basic strong beat harmonization (the melody has been removed so that you can hear the harmonies more clearly).
- Notes on weak beats don’t have to be in the chord, but should be on their way to the next strong beat chord tone. Here’s that strong beat harmonization with some passing tones added in to the vocals.
That will get you a basic harmonization. Beyond that, you’ll want to make other choices:
- Where to sing actual words, and where to hum or use a neutral-syllable (“doo”, “la”, etc.)
- Where to have 1 harmonizing vocal line, where to have 2 or 3.
- Where to have harmonies at all, and when just to have a solo vocal melody.
When I listen to backing vocals that aren’t working, it has more to do with the fact that I’m hearing them incessantly, and my musical brain gets fried. Even with excellent backing vocals, the ear can tire of it. Groups that are known for their backing vocals know when to use them and when not.
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Written by Gary Ewer. Follow on Twitter.
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How do you decide when to use words vs when to use nonsense syllables in vocal harmony?
(Also, is there a musical term for that? DuckDuckGo has been most unhelpful so far.)
I’ve written melodies for a 3-part harmony, but the two backing vocal lines do not perfectly overlap with the rhythm of the lead line. This is a common technique that some of my favourite bands – Boston and the Beach Boys, ie – use all the time; ie, having the chorus start with “ooh” backing vocals before the melody comes in, then sometimes words are doubled and sometimes syllables are used.
I’m planning to try a few different things and use my ears, but the possibilities are virtually endless and I could use some guidance or general principles.
Thanks,
Alex
Hi Alex:
The term “nonsense syllables” is the correct term. Technically, they’re also called “non-lexical vocables”, if you’re talking about “la la la, etc.”
How to use nonsense syllables often comes down to 1) genre (and era), and 2) the musical energy you’re trying to generate. The way you might use backing harmonies will be different in one genre compared to another. So to figure that one out, just give a listen to as many songs as possible in your chosen genre and make note of when there are backing vocals, and then specifically when they’re nonsense, and when they’re singing the actual text that the main vocal line is singing. Try to find patterns in the way various writers use them.
Regarding vocal or musical energy, you definitely get a different feel from “ooh” and “ah” than you do from the rhythmic effect of singing the words of the lead vocal. In a way, “ooh” and “ah” are a kind of orchestral effect. When you choose a long “ooh”, for example, you’re doing what an orchestrator might do when laying down long lines in the strings or woodwinds.
You’l notice that for arrangements that use backing vocals that there’s almost always a mixture of nonsense syllables which then eventually switches to singing words. The Beach Boys’ “California Girls,” for example, uses mainly long syllables “ah” or “oh” in the verse (and alter, “Ooh-wah, ooh-wah…”), then switching to using backing vocals with words in the chorus. The best thing to do is to try to determine for yourself what you think the effect is that they were trying to achieve. For me, I hear more musical energy in the singing of words in rhythmic sync with the lead vocal.
So it’s not so much about rules, but mostly about what you think the song needs. In fact, most groups that do backing vocals have their own distinctive sound, because they all create and use backing vocals in a slightly different way. So don’t worry if your treatments sound a bit different from everyone else’s… that’s to be expected.
I’ve written a few blog articles over the years about this, so you might find this article helpful: “Creating Good Backing Vocals For Your Song Recordings”
Cheers,
Gary