Make Friends With the Dissonance

A big part of singing close harmony is personal time spent learning your parts. “Sing it like it’s a solo” my teachers would say.

But a big part, and one I didn’t hear as often as a student, is that you have to make friends with the dissonance.

Dissonance can be hard to sing well, because our brains are wired for consonance. When we hear dissonance, the natural reaction – maybe even the reflex – is to adjust to eliminate it.

This can be overcome. (I like to think of dissonance as a spectrum: what you hear as dissonant is different than what I hear as dissonant, because of what we’ve been exposed to). Reacting aversely to dissonance can be overcome, but it takes time, and it takes persistence.

In addition to listening for the dissonances in rehearsal, here are some ways to make friends with the dissonance:

  1. Sing “Mary Had a Little Lamb” at a dissonant interval with a friend or a piano. (A tritone! A second! A seventh!)
  2. Take the time to repeatedly listen to music with dissonant harmony, until it makes sense.
  3. Don’t just practice your part – practice your part while playing a different part, to hear the consonance and dissonance.
  4. Sing at a friend, and tune minor seconds or other dissonant intervals, listening for the beats and the purity of the interval.

Learning to love dissonance is a big step towards successfully singing close harmony regularly. And if you don’t love it, at least make friends with it.