Fascinating John, I didn’t know but I would have guessed the standard singing harmonies were derived from Thirds and possibly Sixths. I was taken by the Fifths where I thought the harmony had a certain medieval chant feel to it.
A good find John, I learnt a lot, thanks for posting.

Richard

Thanks for sharing, John. Indeed, very interesting! I kind of figured that the 3rd (and therefore the 6th) are used in vocal harmonies, but the reason why the (power chord!) 5th is NOT being used struck me. Good discovery!

Thank you for posting. Lots of interesting information and great examples.

This is an excellent find, John 👏👏. Thank you so much for sharing! It’s already sparking so many ideas in my head 😂.

I’ve tried some of this in a few of my own songs – sometimes it works, other times not so much 🤣🤣. I’ve thought of playing single harmonised notes on the guitar, then trying to sing along to this. I haven’t bothered yet and I’m imagining it might be more difficult than it sounds, but I may give it a go if the right song comes along 👍🎶😎

Thanks again!

Yep, good video.

A couple of observations:
– harmonizing (mostly) in thirds is primarily done for songs with accompanying instruments. This helps avoiding clashes with the underlying chords (the first example from the Beatles repertoire alludes to that). In chorale arrangements for SATB choirs or barber shop quartets, things are usually very different!
– placing the harmonizing voice above the main melody line is also rather specific to “popular” genres; the potential problem with that is that the ear tends to take the highest line as the melody line.