Need some harmony help....

The_Kid

The_Kid

Experienced
So, for the July 4th gig, I'm gonna take the plunge (read: hopefully not make an ass of myself) and play our national anthem at the beginning of our show, which we then kick off with "American Band". I have how to play it down...but need some help adding something to it to make it have more flair. I'll add a wah pedal to help with some expression of notes....but thought some sections would sound good with a harmony or two.

Enter the problem, I'm kinda harmony-illiterate. I get it to a point, by my theory knowledge is greatly lacking. I can tell you that I start the song in G, and the last note I end on is a D (cause i rip into in open drop D chord at the end.

the part I'm hearing a harmony on is the, "And the rockets red glare" pretty much through the end.

Anyone willing to give me some ideas to try? Everything I've tried just sounds like crap, and I'm sure its the key I'm choosing. I'm trying G.

thanks
 
Hey Kid,

I have done our national anthem once for national readio (Will Schut - Unconventional Shred Guitar - News) and our Anthem is, just like yours, not harmonised in a traditional way, that's to say that some notes will need different harmony(notes) on different occasions.

What you could do is figure out which harmony line you actually want to add and then use the custom mode in the Axe Fx Harmony Pitch by using sometimes a note from the original melody line and sometimes a note from the harmony line to add a harmonised note to. It's one hell of a job, but that might just be what you need to do to do the trick.

Good luck.

ps, I did the Dutch Anthem without a harmoniser, I just went "Old School Brian May Style" and recorded all lines sepreratly.
 
If you're playing the traditional arrangement, the easiest way would be to set V1 Harmony to -6. You could also use +3 if you want the harmony above the root. You could even use both voices if it sounds good to you. The tricky part is the phrase "flag was STILL there". When you hit "STILL" the chord is major instead of the usual minor. Most people probably won't notice since it's only one beat. But if you're in the key of G, you could re-harmonize it by playing an E note on STILL instead of the written C#.

I'm having trouble understanding the open drop D at the end unless you mean the next to last chord. I would turn the pitch block off before hitting that.
 
I'm not really sure where I learned the version I have learned....as I can't find any similar 'tabs' that would have initially helped me. On the final line "home of the brave", on the word brave...I play a D. Instead of just finishing with the single note, I tune to Drop D, and finish it with a big ol Drop D open chord strum.
 
I've watched that live when it happened. didnt even know my boys would be on there. It's mostly what got the bug in me to do it. lol
 
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