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Chapter 3 - Producing Harmony
Harmony Modes Background
A quick description of why the harmony modes are required is that they help
Harmony4 “sing the right notes”. Each harmony mode requires different input
from you and is capable of producing different harmony sounds. We will use a
little allegory to explain.
When you and a fellow musician get together to play and sing, typically some
musical information is passed from one to the other before commencing the
song. You do this in order to make sure the music sounds pleasant and not
discordant. The information can be as simple as the name of a song you both
know, a musical key or even pointing out the chords on your instrument. In this
respect, Harmony4 is similar. You will need to share some musical information
in order for it to do its job properly. The ways in which you communicate this
information to Harmony4 are through the “harmony modes”.
Like your friend in our analogy, Harmony4 has intelligence that can contribute to
making good music. You can choose to use this intelligence or not depending
on the chord structure of your song and the harmony lines you have in mind.
You make this choice when choosing presets to produce harmony in your song.
The factory presets are organized on the basis of the four harmony modes:
² Scale
² Chords
² Notes
² Shift
The “intelligent” harmony modes, Scale and Chords, calculate a harmony map
with the following inputs from you:
1. The note the lead vocal is singing at any given moment;
2. Either the key and scale you’ve set at the beginning of your song (Scale
mode);
3. or the chord root and type interpreted by Harmony4 from incoming MIDI
track (Chords mode).
The map has an output note associated with every input note. This creates a
harmony melody that moves with your lead melody while generally sounding
harmonically correct with your accompaniment.
The non-intelligent modes, Notes and Shift, each have unique requirements so
we will deal with them individually:
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