Explain harmonies to me

November 11th, 2023

This is not a happy song, this is an accusatory song. It is a dirge about losing someone dear. It is a lament about losing control over the life of someone dear who decided to move out, move on, and move up. Yet, this song makes me happy — because it takes me back to a simpler time in my life when I first heard it, and because of its exquisite vocal harmonies.

I know what I like, and most of the time I can understand and explain that feeling to myself or to others. With harmonies, I cannot. I know what I like and appreciate, but no words seem adequate to convey the emotion of hearing several voices harmonizing. The genre of music doesn't even matter — it could be folk, or rock, or country, or classical, or even religious. I will appreciate it the same.

I know that there is a balance required — a balance between consonance and dissonance. That is the most absurdly difficult thing to find, and yet in vocalization, it appears almost naturally. Vibrations and resonance are also important, and the human voice has a rich repertoire of that — that is sadly beyond my ability to understand, since I never learned to sing and use my voice for anything more than plain speech. Since each voice in harmonies is a wave and can be represented as a graph, mathematical knowledge would also be important for that explanation — it is a pity that the connection between math and music is not taught in algebra or calculus classes…

Still, with all the deep emotions I experience in vocal harmonies, my appreciation for monophonic plainsongs is not diminished. There is a place for both kinds within my moods and my emotional needs.