One has to be careful when dealing with pop artists' musical training.
Some had formal training and it was purposefully omitted from bios.
Don't forget back in the day when there was still music education in
schools they had choir classes. Many of those student learned to read
music and sing complicated musical pieces with complex harmony. A
popular piece in the 1950s was "Poinciana" a latin tune with modern
harmonies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4NafK3NFhA
A high school choir learning that one song with it's upper partials of
chords was enough to allow them to sing a lot of other songs with
complex harmonies. It seemed that about every high school choir back in
the day was singing.
And don't underestimate what some artists learned from being in church
choirs.
On 11/02/2013 12:22 PM, TurquoiseB wrote:
Given the response to my recent posts about Crosby, Stills, & Nash, I
shall continue on the general theme of vocal harmony. It's to some
extent a "lost art" in modern music, and that, to my way of seeing, is
a pity. It's a high art.
One of the best harmonists I know of in music is Emmylou Harris. In
her taste for this artform, she continues in the footsteps of her
mentor, Gram Parsons, and his love for the country harmonies he grew
up with and introduced her to.
Although I appreciate the more formal art of musical composition, and
"charting out" harmonies on sheet music before attempting to perform
them, for me, there is nothing quite like "spontaneous harmony," the
thing that happens between two or more musicians who suddenly find
themselves on the same musical wavelength during the performance of
the same song, spontaneously. Here are a few examples.
With Rodney Crowell (pure Louvin Brothers harmony):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g8EqgRk-nw
With John Starling (from the folk group Seldom Scene):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYs2RbCcKsk
With Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cnieh0Y1V-o
With Mark Knopfler:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsMO0A1iE0I
With Gram:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO8C9fqC3uk
