Harmony

when I first learned to sing, harmony was hard for me. I knew a classmate who had been in the Philadelphia Boys Choir. He was the quintessential Philly Boys Choir member- blond bowl cut, plump Irish dimpled, adorable. I had tried out for that same choir a few years earlier and had been rejected. I was hideous looking when I was younger. This young man was almost a professional singer already. Great voice, but more importantly, harmony was now second nature for him. I would stand next to him in chapel choir and ape his singing, trying out his easier harmonies that fall at the end of certain hymns, which we would repeat over, and over, during the course of our years at The Episcopal Academy. "Aaa-meeeen," that was the easiest. I would go up as everyone else went down. The feeling of nailing a harmony is indescribable (and yet here we are...). Atoms vibrate and reverberate through your head as the perfect chord moves through your body effortlessly. It is as if a ghost is passing through you. Suddenly your body feels alright, and not like a bag of lumpy flesh, bones and gristle. You feel better than that. You see the potential for what human beings can be as a harmony moves through you. 'We can all be more,' a part of you thinks. 'Why aren't we doing this all the time?'

The trick to singing a harmony is not paying any attention to your fellows involved in the chord. The moment you listen to their voices, yours finds a way to turn and drive off of the road. Why? I'm asking you, because I'm still not sure. The easy answer is that we can't do two things at once. But I can do that. And so can you probably. So why? Well who cares? I want to get this harmony right, I don't have time for your whys. Concentrate on your note, YOUR note. Imagine that there is no other part but yours. Throw up a veil in front of all the other choir members and just SING.

When this is mastered, you can move on slightly. You can hear your voice singing and also, you can hear the accompaniment somewhere in the back of your head, like a memory or a dream sequence from a movie. Don't let it grab your attention, or off the road you go again. But keep it in the corner of your gaze while at the same time not looking at it. Similar strategies have been employed in the capturing of unicorns.

There is a third stage to this process, and that is when you are probably ready for the Philadelphia Boys Choir, though you might be forced to try out for the mens choir at this point. This is when you can swim in and out of a melody picking notes where you will, all while the wave takes you. You have mastered the harmony. And now all you want to do is make more.