My drummer, bass player, and guitar player sing backgrounds. They play and sing. I can sing all the harmonies, but I can't do it alone.
Aaron Neville
My brother Art was a doo-wopper. He had a group that sat out on a park bench in New Orleans and sang harmonies at night, and they'd go around and win all the talent shows and get all the girls, you know.
I like to be surrounded by harmonies and fullness and richness and vitality.
Al Jardine
I like The Four Freshmen, anything with good harmonies, some Beach Boys. I like the girl groups as well, like The Dixie Cups and all that.
Alex Turner
I'm trying to play tunes in a new way, using all the same scales, harmonies, structures, but twist everything a little bit so that it comes out sounding different.
Allan Holdsworth
Holiday Shores' ambition far exceeds its members' recording budget. The band's boyish vocal harmonies wash in and out with the tide, and reverb radiates from the guitars like heat off a sun-baked parking lot.
Anthony Fantano
The albums 'Heaven On Earth' and 'Runaway Horses' and 'Live Your Life Be Free' were harking back to when I was a young girl and listening to Californian radio - lush productions, complicated melodies, harmonies like the Beach Boys and the Mamas and Papas. That's what those albums remind me of.
Belinda Carlisle
A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.
Benny Green
I've been singing since I could talk, pretty much. My dad was really musical and taught me how to sing harmonies and got me a karaoke machine with tape decks.
Bonnie McKee
I bought a Three Dog Night album when I was pretty young, and I remember listening to all those songs. That's just greatly crafted songwriting, and the songs have such great harmonies. I remember marveling over those and trying to figure them out on piano. That was my early education - figuring out records, older records, as a kid.
Borns
I used to think of George Michael as being mechanical, like a scientist in a white coat, working in a laboratory, creating perfect harmonies, and all the while I was secretly admiring him.
Boy George
I really enjoy listening to players on the cusp of swing into bebop like Charlie Shavers, Clifford Brown and Clark Terry. They balance immense facility on their instrument with rhythm, melody, and more complex harmonies of the time.
Bria Skonberg
I like hearing the sort of harmonies people get into in different parts of the world. I love music that has a sense of allure to it, and exotic tunes. That's what I'm drawn to.
I had this big thing about guitar harmonies. I wanted to be the first to put proper three-part harmonies onto a record. That was an achievement.
Brian May
My brother Carl taught me how to play bass. I'm a self-taught keyboard player, though - I figured out our harmonies at the piano.
Brian Wilson
We've recorded over our voices once and double the harmonies, make them thick. The Four Freshmen do that.
Bruce Johnston
I always laugh when I listen to my old stuff. I was just trying way too much back then. Doing too many harmonies and too many runs and all the crazy stuff. Rapping all funny and animated.
Bryson Tiller
I think Alison Krauss is one of the most amazing singers ever. As a songwriter - this is gonna sound cheesy - I love Randy Newman. And my mom passed on a love of Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. At one point I was so into the Indigo Girls, just like I was so into the Dixie Chicks, those female harmonies.
Cam
Because I don't play guitar any more, African harmonies and rhythms have been an inspiration to me. I love the raw origin of the sound. It complements my voice and words naturally.
Cat Stevens
I had to learn right away how to improvise behind Ornette, which not only meant following him from one key to another and recognizing the different keys, but modulating in a way that the keys flowed in and out of each other, and the new harmonies sounded right.
Charlie Haden
Not many people know this, but when Yes first started doing club dates back in 1968, '69, we did a few tracks from 'The Magic Garden' album in our set. We just loved the harmonies that the 5th Dimension had as well.
My family is very creative. My grandfather played the guitar in Cuba. My sisters, my mom and two aunts would do harmonies, so I would see them and think, 'I want the attention.'
I tend to like the traditional sound: three-part harmonies, guitar, and piano. I mean, a well-played guitar is a joy forever... or something.
Brazilian music has many of the ingredients that I strive for in my own music: Strong melodies and a disciplined but intense rhythmic concept, and interesting harmonies.
Putting beauty in your life can be an amazing therapy. I love harmonies and a good melody.
You have those songs that are very special to you that you don't want to get ruined by production. Something like 'Start Again' shouldn't be touched. It's a classic-sounding song on a piano and violins and harmonies, and I think those songs are perfect as they are.
I love a band that has a banjo, that does group harmonies and yells out the word 'Hey' or 'Woo.' I live for it.
Living here on Earth, we breathe the rhythms of a universe that extends infinitely above us. When resonant harmonies arise between this vast outer cosmos and the inner human cosmos, poetry is born.
I don't dictate the solos and I don't dictate the vocal harmonies.
I was obsessed with harmonies and how to put songs together in lush soundscapes. But I don't know what it was all about, really.
I remember being obsessed with 'The Score' by The Fugees. I used to listen to a lot of really melodic music with a lot of harmonies. The Beach Boys used to make me happy, and Simon and Garfunkel, and I used to listen to a lot of film soundtracks as well.
I pay such close attention of the record making process that most people would assume are very little and wouldn't be that big of a deal; the packaging, the title, and the harmonies, I think, are arguably as important as the lead vocals.
I did write more mainstream stuff with DK. But you could always tell the records that I wrote in contrast with everybody else's because the format was a bit different. The harmonies were used in a different type of way. Way more metaphors in the mix.
When it came time to do 'One Hundred Years' I had been encouraged to really make a Styx album without the guys. I gave myself permission to do that. I set out to get people who sang with me who could make those harmonies.
I do some three-part harmonies on 'Throes of Rejection' and 'Hard Lines, Sunken Cheeks,' but I didn't go overboard with it.
I would say 'Bye Bye Love' is one of my favorite influential songs to this day, and ironically, they were so in sync with their harmonies that they sounded like one person. That approach to hearing and formulating harmonies stuck in my head, so when I joined the Eagles, my ear was trained to be able to hear a vocal that way.
There is no reason to suppose that taste is in any way a lower sense than the other four; a fine palate is as much a gift as an eye that discerns beauty or an ear that appreciates and enjoys subtle harmonies of sound, and we are quite right to value the pleasures that all our senses give us and educate their perceptions.
There's music to dance to and make love to, music to cry to. I'm starting from scratch, coming fresh. But my sound still embodies the same soulful, intricate harmonies.
I was in a church choir early on and that really helped me musically in terms of chops, learning how to sing harmonies.
I often use the same harmonies as pop music because the complexity of what I do is elsewhere.
The Raspberries was formed as kind of a reaction to prog rock, which we didn't like. 'Let's bring some songwriting and harmonies back to music' And we did that.
When I had my first experiences of choral singing, the dissonance of those close harmonies was so exquisite that I would giggle or I would tear up, and I felt it in a physical way.
If it's a heartbreak-related stress, I like to listen to Lauryn Hill's 'Forgive Them Father' the most, especially the harmonies.
I was in a choir as a kid. It was from those early days that my outlook on harmonies and arrangements were nurtured. I always took that with me, even on the earliest Bad Religion record, which strangely was only about six years after that.
The vocal arrangements are a big part of the formula for a Bad Religion song - layered harmonies and background vocals. So when I start to describe the elements of Bad Religion's sound, it starts to sound like a Christmas choir.
I consider myself a jazz singer. I think I stick to the roots of improvisation, singing in front of the beat, behind the beat, playing with notes and harmonies.
To me, country music is emotions, certain harmonies. But it's all in the emotions - a lot of good times, a lot of hard times.
My favorite over the years is probably 'All I Have to Give.' That's probably my favorite. It's one of the first songs that the five of us were featured on the lead, and I just think it has such a great sonic sound with all the melodies and harmonies. It has a little bit of a mixture of R&B and a pop sound. It's just a really good feel-good song.
Something we're really known for is our signature harmonies, our great melodies - stuff that just makes you feel something and moves you.
I can't get enough of this guy called Baths. He's a total L.A. dude and really young as well. It's super-electronic, but with almost Hall & Oates-style songwriting. Without the context of the production, it could be super-cheesy, but it has amazing harmonies.
