Have you ever been singing a song by yourself and you could hear the harmonies that were “supposed” to be there but weren’t? every time i sing Take it easy, of The Eagles, I arrive at the choir and I imagine that I have Don Henley and Timothy B. Schmidt at my side. Without the vocal harmonies, the song just doesn’t have the same impact, the same magic.

Imagine trying to make Kansas’ Continue Wayward Son, only! I do not think. The same goes for Bohemian Rhapsody, for Queen. There are certain songs that just can’t or shouldn’t be performed without those magical voices. So what the hell do you do about it if you’re a solo artist?

Well, for live performances, you’re pretty much bound to have to get a few other singers for harmonies. Actually, depending on how technically savvy you are, there are little machines that can split your voice and play it back as harmonies, but that’s another thing for another article. And trust me, it’s a huge pain to get decent results. Yes, I have tried it; No, I don’t anymore ;).

However, you can record yourself singing harmonies to yourself (yourself?), right now if you wish, with tools you probably have at home. As long as you have a PC with a sound card, an mp3 player and some kind of microphone. Those little $4.00 PC mics are fine to start with… no seriously, I’m serious. If you have the stuff I mentioned and want to try it out right now, all you need to do is download the open source audio program called Audacity from their Sourceforge site on the interwebs.

The reason I said you need an mp3 player is because of the headphones or earphones, not the player itself. Plug those headphones into the (normally) green hole on your PC’s sound card. (“hole” = “cat” if you insist on using technical terms). You may need to unplug your speakers first, which is fine. Then plug the microphone into the pink hole… I mean… plug in the sound card.

You only need to configure a couple of things in the software before you begin. Open Audacity and go to Edit/Preferences to open the Audacity Preferences window. Check the box next to “Play other tracks while recording a new one.” Then click “OK”. Next, access the “Sounds and Devices” window from the Windows Control Panel. The icon looks like a gray speaker. Go to the tab marked “Audio” and in the section called “Sound Recording”, click the “volume” button. That will open the Windows Mixer”. Find the channel that says “Stereo Mix” or “Wav Out” (depends on what sound card you have), and check the “Mute” box on that channel. Just close Windows Mixer and are you ready to rock!

Record the melody by boldly pressing the button with the big red dot. An audio “track” will appear as if by magic. Start singing into the microphone. When you’re done, click the Audacity button with the big yellow square (meaning “stop”). Go back to the beginning of the song by clicking the Audacity button with the double purple arrows pointing left. You can now add a harmony by simply pressing the red dot button again and singing along with your recorded voice on the first track. Do this as many times as you like (there’s no practical limit in Audacity), for a 3 or 4 part harmony. Hell, become a choir. I once became an abbey of chanting monks!

That’s all about it. You just sang harmony with yourself and didn’t spend a penny! There are many things you can do to improve the sound once you’re done, such as reducing noise, panning vocals left and right, etc. If you’re interested in learning about that and many other cool things you can do with that recording studio you didn’t know you had, check out our tutorials on the Home Brew Audio website. The first video tutorials are free, and subsequent lessons are only $7.00 each. Other lessons will show you how to create a voiceover with music behind it, how to create loops, and how to edit audio, make multitrack recordings, and more. The tutorial that covers the things we did in the article is there too, in case you were wondering ;).

So come and visit us at Home Brew Audio. Health!

jake weston