Easy Way To Write Vocal Harmony – This “How I Produce” video is a part of a Vocal Production mini series and is all about how to write vocal harmonies. We go through both simple and slightly more advanced (but still accessible!) techniques for vocal harmonisation that will allow you to create some great sounding harmonies for your track!

Harmony can be a huge and confusing topic – many people study it for years! But there are some simple techniques that we can use to write vocal harmonies without needing a vast and indepth knowledge of music theory. This video is aimed at beginner and intermediate musicians, audio engineers and home producers.


Topics and Timings:

1. Intro (0:00 – 1:12)

2. Do We Need Music Theory? (1:12 – 2:18)

Is music theory really essential when writing vocal harmonies?

3. Simple Harmonies (2:18 – 2:30)

Simple harmonic devices we can use that require no music theory

4. Octave Doubling (2:30 – 5:38)

What is octave doubling and how can we create octave doubles?

5. Repeated/Pedal Notes (5:38 – 6:57)

Creating a harmony line out of one repeated note

6. Chord Notes (6:57 – 8:23)

Creating a harmony line using the chord progression of the song

7. Intermediate Harmonies (8:23 – 11:11)

Some more adventurous harmonic techniques we can use and what genres they’re commonly heard in

8. 3rds (11:11 – 11:36)

Creating a harmony line out of 3rds

9. 4ths (11:36 – 12:00)

Creating a harmony line out of 4ths

10. 5ths (12:00 – 12:40)

Creating a harmony line out of 5ths

11. Final Thoughts (12:40 – 13:51)



The vocal example used is “Happy Birthday”. The background music was written and produced by George Agombar.

Thank you so much for watching this video, I hope you found it useful! Please let me know what you thought in the comments and if there are any videos you would like to see.


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